The Children's Hour Summary
Lillian Hellman

Everything you need to understand or teach The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman.

The Children's Hour Summary & Study Guide
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30 The Children's Hour Lessons
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The Children's Hour Summary

Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour premiered in New York at the Maxine Elliot Theatre, on November 20, 1934, with a cast of relatively unknown actors. The play was based on an essay the playwright had encountered titled "Closed Doors; or, The Great Drumsheugh Case." It related the true story of two female teachers who were condemned by their community when a student alleged that they were having a homosexual affair. It was produced and directed...

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Lillian Hellman Biographies (4)

Lillian Florence Hellman

550 words, approx. 2 pages

Lillian Florence Hellman (1906-1984), American playwright, wrote a series of powerful, realistic plays that made her one of America's major dramatists. She explored highly controversial themes, with m... Read more

Lillian (Florence) Hellman

13,698 words, approx. 46 pages

Like many other playwrights of the 1930s, Lillian Hellman urged a social conscience on the theatre. By her own admission, she is a moralist who cannot avoid the final "summing up," with the sometimes ... Read more

Lillian (Florence) Hellman

12,395 words, approx. 42 pages

At Lillian Hellman's funeral, John Hersey, referring to the title of Hellman's 1969 volume of memoirs, An Unfinished Woman, declared that Hellman was at last a finished woman. Just as some of her play... Read more

Lillian Hellman

4,528 words, approx. 16 pages

She has been called one of the most influential female playwrights of the twentieth century; the voice of social consciousness in American letters; the theatre's intellectual standard-bearer--and yet ... Read more

Essays & Analysis (1)

Lillian Hellman's Feminist Concern in the Children's Hour

3,520 words, approx. 12 pages

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations That is known as the Children's Hour. __ Henry Wadsworth. Longfellow, "The Chi... Read more

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