The Children's Hour (1934)

Lillian Hellman wrote "The Children's Hour" with help from Dashiell Hammett, six years after they had first met. He suggested to her to write the first play within an established framework, referring to "Bad Companions" by Willian Roughead, a lawsuit accusing teachers of lesbianism in Edinburgh in the 19th century.

It was a smash hit, first produced at Maxine Elliot's Theatre in New York City on November 20th 1934, and ran for 691 performances in the United States, and performed in London and Paris afterwards. This play is going to be a tragic ending on a school stage, when one student tells a lie that two female teachers are lesbians. These two were supposed to be best friends, but one of them noticed there might be a lesbian element in her, and eventually she committed suicide. At that time, it was shocking and sensational theme in the United States where it was considered as a taboo. "The Children's Hour" made Lillian a celebrity at the age of 29.

Two young women Karen Wright and Martha Dobie worked eight years to save money to buy a farm, to start a school for girls. However, one single lie by a malicious girl Mary Tilford destroyed their whole life...

Here's a quote from "The Children's Hour".

KAREN: I don't want to have anything to do with your mess, do you hear me? It makes me feel dirty and sick to be forced to say this, but here it is: there isn't a single word of truth in anything you've said. We're standing here defending ourselves - and against what? Against a lie. A great, awful lie.
MRS. TILFORD: I'm sorry that I can't believe that.
KAREN: Damn you!
CARDIN: But you can believe this: they've worked eight long years to save enough money to buy that farm, to start that school. They did without everything that young people ought to have. You wouldn't know about that. That school meant things to them: self-respect, and bread and butter, and honest work. Do you know what it is to try so hard for anything? Well, now it's gone...

These Three of good - Karen, Martha and Joe - struggled to combat the evil threatened to destroy their whole life, by insisting on innocence to Mrs. Tilford and the public but all failed.

And then self-doubts begin to appear among these three. Joe questioned Karen’s innocence and Martha started to admit her guilty feeling to Karen.

Here's another quote from The Children's Hour.

MARTHA: I've been telling myself that since the night we heard the child says it; I've been praying I could convince myself of it. I can't, I can't any longer. It's there. I don't know how, I don't know why. But I did love you. I do love you. I resented your marriage; maybe because I wanted you...
KAREN: It's a lie. You're telling yourself a lie. We never thought of each other that way.
MARTHA: No, of course you didn't. But who says I didn't? I never felt that way about anybody but you. I've never loved a man... I never knew why before. Maybe it's that.
KAREN: You are tired and sick.
MARTHA: It's funny; it's all mixed up. There's something in you, and you don't know anything about it because you don't know it's there. I couldn't call it by name before, but I know now. It's there. It's been there ever since I first knew you. I don't know. It all seems to come back to me. I've ruined your life and I've ruined my own... Oh, I feel so damn sick and dirty I can't stand it anymore!"
KAREN: All this isn't true. You've never said it; we'll forget it by tomorrow.
MARTHA: Tomorrow? That's a funny word. Karen, we would have had to invent a new language, as children do, without words like tomorrow.

In the interview by Lucius Beebe on December 13th 1936, Lillian Hellman said about the theme of the play;

"It's a story of innocent people on both sides who are drawn into conflict and events far beyond their comprehension. It's the saga of a man who started something he cannot stop, a parallel among adults to what I did with children in "The Children's Hour."
- from "Conversations with Lillian Hellman" edited by Jackson R. Bryer

In the interview by Harry Gilroy on Dec. 14th 1952 from the New York Times, she said;

"Here's another observation I make about the play today as I work over it. On the stage a person is twice as villainous as in a novel. When I read that story I thought of the child as neurotic, sly, but not the utterly malignant creature which playgoers see in her. I never see characters as monstrously as the audiences do ......this is really not a play about lesbianism, but about a lie. The bigger the lie the better, as always."
- from "Conversations with Lillian Hellman" edited by Jackson R. Bryer