Lillian Hellman The Children’s Hour (1934)

Portia
The opening of Lillian Hellman The Children’s Hour, Mrs. Lily Mortar, is sleeping, the students are sewing.
Evelyn Munn, “using her scissors to trim the hair of Rosalie, who sits, nervously, in front of her. She has
Rosalie’s head bent back at an awkward angle and is enjoying herself.” However, the audience sees this
stark visual image of the infantile pleasure of exercising cruelty while hearing about mercy, for the first
words are those of a student reciting Portia’s famous speech in The Merchant of Venice. Portia’s plea for
mercy should make an exceedingly strong impression on the audience, for portions of it are interpolated
six times between the dialogue of Mrs. Mortar and her pupils. The visual image of cruelty is juxtaposed
with the words “pity” and “mercy,” which are repeated seven times during the opening moments of the
play: “in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.”
The Children´s Hour starts with the girls listening to Peggy reciting the Shakespearean
monologue of Portia´s speech from The Merchant of Venice. Portia makes a plea for
mercy during Antonio and Shylock´s conflict: “in the course of justice, none of us should
see salvation.” Shylock is a Jew, inferior to a Christian, who is mistreated by Antonio, and
who gets revenge through an authority figure: the Duke. Mary is a young girl, inferior to
an adult teacher, who is mistreated by Miss Wright, and who tries to get revenge through
an authority figure: her grandmother Mrs. Tilford.

1. Innocence of children. Mary is 14. The classroom as social reflection of society

2. Role of discipline
3. Intolerance in the play
4. How does being a woman affect the life of Martha and Karen?
5. Lillian Hellman uses the domestic realm in her plays, like Ibsens, the perfect milieu
for inequality
6. Fake news
7. Justice. Explain the correspondence Portia´s Plea and the play
8. Are Mary and Martha’s rooms close?
9. Role of Rosalyn and other girls
10. Karen Wright and Martha Dobie as "good”vs Mary Tilford and Lily as "evil”
11. Two lies crucial to the play’s outcome
12. Homofobia in the play
13. Significance of Martha’s suicide.
14. Role of love between Joe and Karen in the development of the play. Why do they
separate?
The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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.

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!