The Children's Hour (play)

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This article is about the stage play by Lillian Hellman. For other articles with the same name, see The Children's Hour (disambiguation).

The Children's Hour is a 1934 stage play written by Lillian Hellman. It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back she tells her grandmother that the two headmistresses are having a lesbian affair. The accusation proceeds to destroy the women's careers, relationships and lives.

The play was first staged on Broadway at Maxine Elliott's Theatre in 1934, where it ran for over 2 years, and in 1936 was put on at London's Gate Theatre Studio and Dublin's Gate Theatre.

1 Synopsis
2 Source information
3 Adaptations
4 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie have worked long and hard to build a school out of a reformed farmhouse. They run and teach this girl's boarding school along with the somewhat unwanted help of Aunt Lily Mortar, Martha's aunt. Like every school one student, Mary Tilford, is mischievous, she won't listen, lies and she's got an incredible ability to lead the rest of the girls into doing what SHE wants. One day when Mary feigns illness and is being looked at by Joe (the doctor who is also Karen's fiancé) Martha asks her Aunt Lily if she would still like to go back to travelling to the places she misses now that they can afford it. The aunt gets angry sensing that her niece is trying to get rid of her. She starts shouting about how Martha gets irritable and unreasonable when Joe is around, about how Martha is jealous and takes her jealousy out on her(Lily) every time. While Lily mortar is happily making a scene, two of Mary's friends are listening at the door trying to find out their friend was feeling okay, instead they hear the conversation. When there is nothing found the matter with Mary and she is sent to her room she squeezes the information out of the girls. Mary plans to run away to (Amelia Tilford) her grandmother's house and trying to get her grandmother, who spoilt her rotten, (and who also gave Karen and Martha a great deal of help setting up the school) to let her stay from school. When the grandmother refuses Mary craftily twists what the girls had heard, added a few lies and with the help of a book that the girls have been reading in secret convinces her mother that the school mistresses are in fact homosexual. On hearing this Amelia Tilford starts contacting the network of guardians and parents responsible for Mary's school mates. In a short while most of Mary's friends have been pulled out of school Rosalie Wells whose mother is out of the country stays with Mary. Mary blackmails Rosalie into swearing she will corroborate everything Mary says. When Karen and Martha work out why their students are all mysteriously being pulled out of school in one night they got to Madame Tilford's residence to confront her. Amelia tillford then tells her granddaughter to tell everyone what she had told her. Mary recites her story and when Karen coolly points out a glitch an inconsistency in her story Mary pretends to have been covering for Rosalie who reluctantly corroborates Mary's story for fear of being exposed herself. Martha and Karen leave and resolve to take Amelia into court. A few months after they lose the case, everyone still thinking that they were lovers. Martha's Aunt returns from travelling with a theatre and the women are extremely angry with her for not being at trial to testify that they were in fact just as 'normal' as everyone else. She goes for a bath and to unpack so that she could stay and "take care of her niece". Joe arrives as he has done faithfully through trial and after, he is helping the women out. He is excited and has found a job opportunity away from home and its troubles. He tries to convince Karen and Martha that the three of them can leave; they can lead a different life and start over. Martha goes to prepare diner and Karen stays Joe still talking at her, she is not listening however, she has become a woman obsessed and all she can think about is how she has ruined Joe's life, how the whole charade has ruined everyone's life and everything she and Martha had worked so hard for. She finally asks Joe to ask the question that she thought he must have wanted to ask: were she and Martha lovers. When she denies it he does not contest it in fact he believes her and suggests they move on. Karen decides that it's time Joe left her its time they ended their relationship. She explains that it can never be the same after the series of ridiculous events they've had to face, that she could never be the same again. She asks him to leave when he refuses she asks that he think about it alone and figure out how he felt. When Martha comes back and gets Karen to tell her what happened she is so overwhelmed with emotion and guilt as she discovers that she might have feelings for Karen, it is a moment of awful revelation and a frightening experience for Martha, Karen dismissively tells Martha off saying that she is tired and that things have just gotten to her and she should rest. Martha goes out of the room and commits suicide. Hearing the shot aunt lily hurries down and finds her niece dead. Amelia Tilford arrives begging Karen's forgiveness Mary's lies have been uncovered. Karen shows her that it is too late for Martha and everyone else.

[edit] Source information

Scotch Verdict: Miss Pirie and Miss Woods V. Dame Cumming Gordon (1983) by Lillian Faderman (author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers) recounts the historical incident Hellman drew from for her play. In 1810 in Edinburgh, Scotland a student named Jane Cumming accused her school mistresses Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods of having an affair in the presence of their students. Dame Cumming Gordon, the accuser's influential grandmother, advised her friends to remove their daughters from the boarding school and within days the school was deserted and the two women had been deprived of their livelihood. Pirie and Woods eventually prevailed both in court and on appeal but given the damage done to their lives, the win was considered a hollow one.

[edit] Adaptations

In 1936 the play was made into a film directed by William Wyler. However, because of the Production Code, the story was adapted into a heterosexual love triangle, the controversial name of the play was changed and the movie eventually released as These Three. Hellman reportedly worked on the screenplay, virtually all of the play's original dialogue was kept, and she was satisfied with the result, saying the play's central theme of gossip was unaffected by the changes. In 1961 the play was adapted, with its lesbian theme intact, for the film The Children's Hour, also directed by Wyler.