The Children's Hour

In Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour,  a secret has a girls' school, it's teachers, and students in a fuss. Mary's curious young mind has the potential to ruin the lives of her brave and determined teacher, Karen and Martha. The plot follows a linear structure and centers around a secret. The play has 3 acts and each has a climax. These are all characteristics of a well-made play. But Hellman purposefully diverges from this traditional structure. In a typical well-made play structure, the characters would come to a "logical resolution" and all the plot points would be tied together in a nice little bow. In this play, however, the characters come to a tragic resolution, as the school is forced to close and Martha kills herself. Also, typically in well-made play, the audience has a better grip on reality than the characters. In The Children's Hour, the audience is kept guessing just as much if not more than the characters. While reading, I could not figure out if Martha and Karen were actually lovers or not.

Hellman's veer from the exact well-made play structure shines light on the destruction that can come from the minds of children. The decision to leave the audience in confusion begs us to ask the question "Does it matter if we know?"Mary's grandmother doesn't seem to think so.  She has no idea if her granddaughter is being honest or not. She doesn't seem to care either, the implication is enough for her to take action. The tragic ending is glaring indication of how little regard Mary had for the consequences of her actions.

The play reminded me a lot of the novel and movie, Atonement by Ian McEwan. In the story, young Briony see's things she couldn't understand, and accuses someone she loves of something awful. The results are disastrous.