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

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 Children's Hour"

And every word will have a new meaning. You think we'll be able to run away from that? Woman, child, love, lawyer -- no words that we can use in safety anymore. Sick, high-tragic people. That's what we'll be.

__ Lillian Hellman, The Children's Hour

While Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Children's Hour" as quoted above eulogizes the happy hour for the children to play "between dark and daylight", Lillian Hellman's play by the same name deals with a dark hour when children, particularly one child of fourteen years...
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