Lillian Hellman represents one of many mainstream US playwrights who have capitalized (in a good way) on the basic well-made play format Scribe originated nearly 100 years before Hellman's Children's Hour.
My question: what do you see as some of the most significant departures from the well-made play form in this play? Identify them, explain how they're departures from well-made play norms, and persuade us that they're especially significant dramaturgical choices.
On a whole other level--and as an optional Question To Consider: while this play once held a solid place in the American literary canon of Great Plays, some feminist and LGBTQ critics have begun to see this as a problematic play for its attitudes toward same-sex female sexuality. To be sure, one can say the play is harder on those who would rush to judgment about lesbian people. It's also true that Hellman is merely reflecting the majority views of her culture.
At the same time, the "tragic lesbian"--a character who loves other women and tragically dies (usually of suicide)--is a well-worn trope in much 20th and 21st-century literature and theatre. It suggests that lesbian love is essentially some kind of incurable, tragic sickness that dooms the sufferer to isolation and an early grave. See, especially, the 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness. There's even a play that parodies that trope by a troupe called the Five Lesbian Brothers: Brave Smiles: Another Lesbian Tragedy.
The question, then: especially as we are increasingly aware of how homophobic attitudes may be contributing to suicides among LGBTQ people, is The Children's Hour a play that ought to be done today? Why or why not? Can you think of other plays that are technically good but that we probably don't or shouldn't produce today?
See you Wednesday,
JF
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