The Children's Hour Essay | Critical Essay #3

The Children's Hour Critical Essay #3

In this uncredited review, the critic offers a positive appraisal of the debut of The Children's Hour, calling it a worthy "contribution to the adult theatre."

Twenty or thirty years ago Miss Hellman's play, enthusiastically received in New York, would doubtless have been stopped by the police. As it is both engrossing drama and a serious and sincere study of abnormal psychology, this change may imply a certain progress in the public's discernment.

The piece shows the tragic effects on two young women school-teachers of poisonous gossip spread by a pestiferous little pupil—one of those "problem" children who can so disrupt the life of a boarding-school that prudent head-mistresses decline to admit them if they know the facts. The two young women, who have built up their school by years of patient work and self-sacrifice, are forced to close it, and although they are objectively innocent, one of...
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