Lillian Hellman: Rebellious Playwright

Meagan Kensil

Saugus High School AP US History and AP English Language and Composition Team Term Paper

THESIS: Lillian Hellman’s clashing childhood experiences in New York and New Orleans fostered a more cosmopolitan way of thinking as well as a rebellious artistic spirit that would later, with the help of her peers, influence her to participate in various left-wing movements. Her flamboyant personal characteristics and paradoxical life-influences developed to form literary works showcasing her views on social injustice due to moral corruption, as well as her own celebrity that would create a daring pathway for intellectual rebels after her.

I. Introduction

II. Biography

A. Family Background/Disruptive Upbringing

B. Unconventional Marital/Love Life

C. Hollywood/New York High Intellectual Lifestyle/Society

D. Radical Affiliations

III. Predominant Arguments and Rhetorical Style Analysis

A. Lillian Hellman was concerned with social injustice and moral corruption.

B. The Children’s Hour

1. Characterization

2. Irony

C. The Little Foxes

1. Characterization

2. Irony

D. Three

1. Complexity of Syntax

2. Sensory Diction

IV. Discussion of literary criticism on author’s works and explanation of author’s overall impact on American society

A. Literary Praise

B. Criticism of Hellman’s works and life

C. A modern celebrity and a pathway for those after her

D. Hellman’s Moral Stand

V. Conclusion

Lillian Hellman would grow up to be “one of the few people who bridged the gap between the left-wing theatre-movie world and upstage American society,” a fact which kept style with the conflicted life she led, a life that began with strong moral ideals very early on (Newman 16). Lillian Hellman’s clashing childhood experiences in New York and New Orleans fostered a more cosmopolitan way of thinking as well as a rebellious artistic spirit that would later, with the help of her peers, influence her to participate in various left-wing movements. Her flamboyant personal characteristics and paradoxical life-influences developed to form literary works showcasing her views on social injustice due to moral corruption, as well as her own celebrity that would create a daring pathway for intellectual rebels after her.

Lillian Hellman’s background is full of contrast that created a strong sense of irony and unconventional lifestyle. She and her parents spent half each year in New York with the Newhouses, her mother’s family, and the other half in New Orleans with her father’s. Hellman never found stability and felt this was possibly “the reason [she] never did well in school . . . and why [she] wanted to be left alone to read by [her]self” (Three 19). At a young age she had a keen sense of disadvantage with her mother’s wealthy family versus her “father’s financial difficulties” (Rollyston 17). The Newhouses’ snobbish cruelty frightened Hellman (26). Her resentment of snobbery, her father’s teachings on liberalism and equality (Hellman in Hollywood 161), and her close relationship with African American nanny, Sophronia (Three 611), caused Hellman’s agitation with injustice and greed. This righteousness would stay with her through her trial by the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) (Griffin 122). When she entered New York University she saw herself as “wild and headstrong” (28). She did not yet comprehend her goals, but already “question[ed] traditional American values” and would soon meet the people that would shape her adult life (Rollyston 31).

Dashiell Hammett

In reflection of her generation Hellman admitted, “We all thought we should be sexually liberated and act as if we were, but we had a deep uneasiness,” showing the confused idea of love that would shape her sometimes paradoxical point of view (Rollyston 47). This conflicted sentiment is exemplified in Hellman’s marriage to Arthur Kober, a writer. When Hellman married him in 1925, she actually loved Howard Meyer more, but found Kober allowed her “to live as if she were not married,” and loved him sufficiently (Mellen 16). Divorced by 1932, they remained in touch and fond of each other. Hellman’s short time in Kober’s circle caused her talents to stir (Moody 25) and he introduced her to the most important figure in her personal life and career, Dashiell Hammett, a talented detective story writer of the time. He became her mentor, lover, and one of the few constants in her life, which paradoxically coincided with the inconsistency of her life; that being a combination of love and infidelity. Hammett assured her of her work’s quality and motivated her. It became impossible to separate “Hellman’s conflicted relationships to men of great . . . power . . . from the complexities of her politics” (Poirier xvi). With an inclination towards rebellion, influence from men she did and did not love, and America’s intellectual society of the thirties, Hellman began to write.

In “the published world of . . . Liveright and the Hollywood of . . . Goldwyn, Hellman found herself among famous and powerful people” (Poirier vii). “[She] always knew she would be a writer” but it is strange she would write for the stage because her “tough-minded” image is not theatrical; her “ability to strip a character down to his words” called her to the theatre, says Bernard F. Dick (American Writers Supp. 1 para 14). Hellman generally “disliked and misunderstood theatre, except when writing or rehearsing” (Moody 73-74). When working as a screenplay adaptor for Goldwyn, she was frustrated by the “impersonality,” and personal “lack of intellectual companionship” (Hellman in Hollywood 20). She had not yet met Hammett and rarely saw Kober, so spent her days working and nights drinking. When she did meet Hammett, “she left Kober for a new world of literary . . . commitment,” (Newman 3). Hammett taught her: “‘a writer must learn to write by practice. Read, think, study, and then write some more.’” (Moody 31). She met more “glamorous writers” and became enjoyed internationally in literary circles (Newman 2, 39). It became more difficult to separate her intellectual and political affiliations, especially for the FBI.

Hellman and Melby

Hellman supported many radical movements and associated with Communist Party members, but her own membership is debated (Newman 3). Hellman saw “people turning toward radical solutions; [Hammett] one of them, with [her] . . . worried” (Three 609). Hellman did attend a few meetings with Hammett, but firmly claimed she did not join (609). On a ‘cultural mission’ in Moscow she met John Melby, an American in International Relations, and had an affair with him. Melby came to “deepen her insight into global politics of the [time]” (Newman 38). He found Hellman’s defenses of both America and Russia paradoxical (39). She claimed, however, to be “well aware of the shortcomings of both;” saying, “On the Right it is fashionable to pretend only Russia is at fault . . . There are too many on the Left who pretend only the U.S. is at fault” (135). Hellman said “it sadden[ed] [her] to admit [her] political convictions were never [truly] radical” (145). The FBI thought differently, taking reason to investigate and charge her as a Communist. The accusation and her belief that she was a “true patriot” influenced part of her memoirs and bitterness (162).

Hellman uses sharp characterization, irony, and sensory language to convey her fervent feelings on social justice and morality. She did not enjoy being idle and wanted to make a difference in the world (Griffin 105). “She knew [the play] must carry some social significance . . . [she knew] every man must bear his share of the world’s guilt” (Moody 178). “Her earlier plays are studies of the destructive forces in human nature, as in The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes . . . [and her memoirs] render the temper of her time as it . . . chang[ed] focus or direction” (MacNicholas para 40,42). “With an unsentimental view [Hellman] realizes, the need to continue--to live in and for the present; [because] so much of life is unclear and uncertain,” and you must “assess and reassess” (para 38).

Like her life, Hellman’s plays are full of irony. She uses the essential element of characterization to convey this and her message. The Children’s Hour, Hellman’s first play, is an analysis of the gradual destruction by a lie. “It centers upon two young women, [Karen and Martha], who open a school for girls and are destroyed when a malicious student charges them with lesbianism,” a socially-negative trait of the time Hellman uses to attack social prejudices in general (Griffin 27). Hellman begins by establishing Mary Tilford, a student at Karen and Martha’s school, who possesses a scheming nature and desire to make trouble with a willingness to betray her friends to achieve it (The Children’s Hour 8). Mary starts a rumor that Karen and Martha are lesbian partners (Griffin 58). Hellman establishes the rest of her characters, using foils; “Martha is ‘nervous’ and ‘high strung’ and far less composed and self-assured than . . . [emotionally stable] Karen, [who is] . . . attractive, outgoing . . . admired and respected” (Drama for Students “The Children’s Hour” para 22, 36). Hellman’s use of these two foils to create an ironic pair reflects her views in its representation of her ideal society where different people can come together, even in a contradictory world. The third part to this supposed love triangle is Karen’s fiancé, Dr. Joseph Cardin, “ideally suited for Karen . . . gracious, humorous, [and of] warm, easy-going nature . . . [who] recognizes that his cousin, Mary, is a spoiled, troubled child” (para 19). Again, in foiling Cardin to his blood-relation, Mary, Hellman gives an example where opposites can be united. The last of the key roles is Mrs. Amelia Tilford, Mary’s grandmother, and influential supporter of the school. Although fair and generous, she lacks judgment when it comes to Mary. She initially resists believing Mary, but becomes convinced the girl is telling the truth” (para 30-31). In this, Hellman attacks society’s refusal to deal with its issues by Mrs. Tilford’s refusal to deal with Mary’s. Hellman creates characters ironic to one another to exemplify the complexity and fragility of the balance of society when upset by unjust prejudice and a failure to search for moral truth.

The plot depends upon dramatic irony because the audience knows the accusation is not true, giving Martha and Karen the ethos they need to be seen as tragic at the end. The conveying of the tragedy comes through situational irony, though; Mary’s friend Rosalie steals a bracelet, a secret Mary uses as blackmail to keep Rosalie quiet about the real truth of Martha and Karen’s relationship (The Children’s Hour 27). Because of this Rosalie does not tell the truth. The school is lost in court, and eventually Karen and Joe’s relationship is confused and ended (44, 58-60). At this point all begins to unravel. Karen loses her stability. Hellman conveys this through stuttered speech; “They – They’ve done it. They’ve taken away . . . everything” (58). Martha comes in to talk to Karen, and confesses, “I love you that way – maybe the way they said I loved you. I don’t know” (62). Karen refuses to listen and tells Martha to “Go and lie down;” minutes later, a shot is heard (63). It is now that the bracelet is found and Rosalie’s confession is made; the one object that could have saved the two women from destruction comes just a few moments after Martha commits suicide (66-67). To add to this irony, the news and truth comes from Mrs. Tilford, who played a large role in shutting down the school. At this point, Hellman uses Karen’s shocked emotion to tell the moral of the story by sarcastically talking of justice; “You want to be a “good” woman again, don’t you? (Bitterly) . . . A public apology and money paid, and you can sleep again and eat again. That done and there’ll be peace for you” (67). In this Hellman attacks the self-righteous attitude of society that is useless to the betterment of all people and usually too little too late. With tragic characters exposed to the wrath of injustice, prejudice, and untruth, Hellman strips them down to their utmost vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities created by social prejudice, through the irony that is life; the innocent are punished and truth is found only when ignorant bliss is pushed aside.

Similar to The Children’s Hour, much of Hellman’s rhetoric is based upon irony (mostly verbal), and characterization in her third play, The Little Foxes. With a “satiric element [Hellman] condemn[s] the Hubbard’s crimes against society” (Drama for Students “The Little Foxes” para 1). The play focuses on the Hubbard family and “voices Marxist disapproval of the Hubbard form of capitalism,” based upon Hellman’s liberal views and dislike of greed (para 1). Led by the eldest brother, Ben, the Hubbard siblings steal, deceive, and plot against each other for money. Regina, temporarily cheated by her brothers, even "murders" her sick husband, Horace, by refusing to fetch his medicine when he threatens to stop her from investing. These extreme selfish acts show the desperation, turmoil, and destruction created by the replacing of communal benefit with self-benefit in society. Their daughter, Alexandra, serves as a moral standard who dislikes the family machinations, and Aunt Birdie drinks to anesthetize the pain of having married a bully and lost her family's plantation to the rapacious Hubbards, serving as a representation of those hurt and weakened as a result of moral corruption in society (para 1). It is through the foils of Birdie, Alexandra, and Addie, the black maid, that Hellman conveys her subtle truths. Addie plays a small role, but her wise phrases such as “You ain’t born in the south unless you’re a fool” or “well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it . . . and other people who . . . watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain’t right to watch them do it” (The Little Foxes 180 – 184). Through statements such as this in the form of imagery, as well as others said sarcastically, the character’s true self interests are exposed. Hellman creates such contrasting images among the characters so as to provide her audiences with a choice; there is an ability to choose the greed, or the “Hubbard” within themselves. It is not difficult to relate “to the aggressive impulses of the characters” or realize that “there are hundreds of Hubbards sitting in rooms like this throughout the country” for audiences (Hellman in Hollywood 62). However, Hellman also provides the choice of innocence in Alexandra, before she may become a weakened Birdie-like person, and have the possibility to become a strong Horace Giddens, the voice of reason, and the tragic hero, full of dignity.

The play opens in deceptive tranquility on a conversation with William Marshall, a businessman looking to industrialize; the conversation is full of irony, with a discussion of how “close” they are as a “family” and Marshall’s mentioning of how “remarkable” it is that they’ve “kept what belonged to [them],” and when they must explain they actually took the land from Birdie’s family, they turn it around by making her look like a stuck-up aristocrat, when she is the most humble and meek of them all (The Little Foxes 138-139). Marshall makes a statement:

MARSHALL: . . . you Southerners occupy a unique position in America. You live better than the rest of us, you eat better, you drink better. I wonder you find time, or want to find time, to do business.

BEN: A great many southerners don’t. (138).

Hellman gives Ben this simple statement because he is the laziest character; having them work for his profit and not actually earning anything he has, and knowing this, is proud of it. Ben’s arrogance ironically insults him, because due to it he fails to see the direct jab being made at the work ethic of people like him. But as wealthy people who are well aware of their wrongdoings and unaffected by conscience, the Hubbards yearn for more, and deserve less, so Hellman has them speak in the irony they live:

BEN: A man ain’t only in business for what he can get out of it. It’s got to give him something here. (Puts hand to breast) . . . Money isn’t all.

. . . BEN: That’s cynical. (Smiles) Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

. . . OSCAR: People ought to help other people. But that’s not always the way it happens. . . . And so sometimes you got to think of yourself. (141, 147, 161).

Each of these statements mocks their character. Ben is a man who cares little for his heart, and money is all, as for cynicism, he delights in it, and doesn’t find it unpleasant at all. Oscar cares little for anyone but himself, including his own wife whom he verbally abuses mercilessly, so for him to even consider helping others is an amazing feat, although he quickly reverts to his original mentality of self-interest. Hellman also uses Regina’s words to mock her character. Regina wishes she were a millionaire, so she wouldn’t have to be so “subtle,” but Regina is already extremely flamboyant. Alexandra’s innocence makes her incapable of following Regina’s orders because she cannot hurt her father (153). Although Regina allows Horace, the one person who willingly gives away money rather than hording it, the one person who does not wish to have his daughter forced into marriage, the one person of which money is not an object of desire, the one person who admits to Addie that he truly cares for her, to struggle and die without remorse, he gets the last laugh; “The Hubbards have had their great quarrel. I knew it would come someday. (Laughs) It came” (179). In a sense, Hellman herself is getting the laugh here. Allowing Horace to die makes him all the more a martyr, and it does not matter so much to Horace that he will die because he has no guilt of leading a corrupted life, but is glad to finally see justice in the collapse of the Hubbards. Hellman paints the demise of a family long corrupted through verbal ironies that ironically end with the dying hero.

Three is the collection of Hellman’s three sets of memoirs; An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time, all of which use variations in syntax and sensory diction to make vivid images and symbols for her arguments. In it Hellman takes a look back on her memoirs and her life, she comments on her widely debated credibility in these books; “What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth. I did not fool with facts. I see now in rereading that I kept much from myself, not always, but sometimes. And so sometimes in this edition I have tried to correct that. . . . Judge for yourself is the only answer” (Three 9).Hellman’s sentence structure in this quote is short and to the point, it shows her confidence, and the strategy of allowing judgment gives an implication of her credibility. Her smooth, flowing diction creates a sense of the inconsistency of truth by using words such as “slippery” and “unreliable;” an argument Hellman used to motivate her audiences to search for truth, rather than allow it to slip through society’s fingers into corruption (9). Hellman’s abilities as a playwright to create syntax and diction appealing to the senses helps convey appropriate connotations reflecting her opinion.

Hellman’s last memoir, Scoundrel Time, focuses on the HUAC trials and her disgust with those who gave in to the “witch-hunt.” In her letter to HUAC, Hellman’s most famous statement; “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions,” exemplifies her strength in applying consonance to the sensory diction she intends to create by using the letter “c” to make sharp “cutting” effects in sound, again reflecting her playwright-specific abilities. This metaphor likens society to fashion, which is fleeting, at times ridiculous, and ingenuous to character (Three 659). She is proud of her own conviction, but remains bitter about the whole ordeal. At the end of the memoir she claims, “I have written here that I have recovered. I mean it only in a worldly sense because I do not believe in recovery. . . . As I finish writing about this unpleasant part of my life, I tell myself that was then, and there is now, and the years between then and now, and the then and now, are one” (721).This change from concise confident statements to conflicted, cyclical, elongated sentences reflects her own conflicted feelings over the issue. In her responsorial commentary to the memoir, Hellman states, that she is “angrier now” and wishes now to take the “moral stand” she was afraid to take when she wrote the book (726). Her writing holds a great deal more pathos in the commentary, than the struggling ethos in Scoundrel Time itself, and is surprisingly more powerful. Hellman’s memoirs showcase her feelings and opinions through her own recollection of how she tried to stay true to herself throughout her life using diction and syntax appropriate to the emotion she strives to convey.

“Hellman’s works won with the public and the critics,” because she “kept curiosity alive without straining credibility” (Moody 85, 88). Critics praised her vivid portraits, her characters etched in hatred; her plays “skillfully communicated her burning conviction” (105). “Her work provides a rare instance where the excitations, the pacing, and the intensifications manage to create in us perceptions about human character that have all but disappeared from contemporary writing” (Poirier xxv). Hellman came to be known as exactly what she wanted, “especially accomplished at delivering a moral message in theatrically vivid terms” (Griffin 51).

Like any writer, she was criticized, too. It has been said that her only “real defects” were her widely criticized third acts (Hellman in Hollywood 69). Hellman will admit that perhaps they are sometimes “over-burdened . . . but [she] cannot help [her]self. [She] is a moral writer and cannot avoid . . . that last summing-up. . . . It is only a mistake when it fails . . . its purpose” (Moody 55). The important thing is that, “their messages were praised; audiences were undisturbed by the weaknesses;” (55-57).

True, sensationalism accounted for part of her success (Griffin 28) She took Broadway by storm with The Children’s Hour; it made her “a celebrity in her own right” (Newman 3). As an early modern American celebrity, and lover of the attention, she posed in “What becomes a legend most;” a Blackgama mink shawl ad (Hellman in Hollywood 137). In 1973 the New Jersey Branch of American Civil Liberties recognized her for her outstanding contributions, and in 1978 she received a standing ovation at the Oscars (137). Hellman was revered among feminists for her daring entrance into the theatre world where women playwrights were usually denounced (Poirier xi) as well as for her later participation in Liberties for Women. Lillian Hellman is a figure in history who has asked people to think, and has persuaded them to do so; without figures such as herself social progress might be a rare occurrence.

HUAC Committee Members

HUAC Committee Members

Admired by many, the few she was despised by gave her the opportunity for more admiration. Lillian Hellman is most admired for the strong ‘moral position’ she took against the HUAC committee, even in spite of her own fear (Griffin 120). She saw it as unconstitutional and felt she had nothing to hide (Three 620, 658). Her “letter to HUAC had a powerful impact in its time” (Griffin 122) and she would later join the committee calling for objectivity for the intellectual community, sponsored by Concerned Asian Scholars (Rollyston 456). Like others charged and tried, Hellman would not go to jail, but unlike the others, she escaped this through dignity and truth, not lies. Through this difficult period in her life Hellman stayed true to her values and was a role model for future intellectual rebels.

Lillian Hellman’s less-than-typical life, full of every sort of character imaginable and in touch with the conflicted world around her, gave her an amazing perception into the depths of human nature and its role in society. Hellman used this gift nobly to persuade people to look for truth; to see the truth in contradiction. Whether her own personal beliefs were right or wrong in the eyes of others mattered not to Hellman, the important thing to her was to stay true to her own conviction, her own truth, and never to agree just for the sake of social acceptance. It is impossible not to be affected by her deep integrity, because whether or not there is agreement with Hellman’s political, romantic, social, or literary views, it can not be argued that truth to one’s self is not the overall important rule. For those who search for truth and ask others to search for truth today, Hellman can be looked upon as a pioneer for social justice who “broke the rules” of conventional society and therefore paved the way for others to stand by their moral convictions and live a life of truth.