On The Theme Of Liberation In Lillian Hellman’s Three Feministic Plays

Lillian Hellman is one of America’s most successful women playwrights. From the1920s to the1930s, she was the only female playwright who could take rank with Eugene O’Neill. Hellman’s dramatic writing deals with a broad range of social and political issues. Her plays have been concerned with the prejudice on the professional women and lesbians, labor problem and the evils of strike-breaking; she has revealed the ruthlessness of industrialists; and her first award-winning play deals with the anti-fascist war. She wrote realistic plays exposing the injustice and oppression of society directly and showed her poignant criticism on them fearlessly. Lillian Hellman’s prominence lies in her political concern and social criticisms. And all the issues that she wrote about all show her strong passion for human liberation, which is a recurrent theme in her plays. This thesis attempts to explore the theme of liberation in three feministic plays of Hellman’s, which are The Children’s Hour, The Little Foxes and Watch on the Rhine.The thesis consists of three parts:introduction, the body, including three chapters, and conclusion. Each chapter focuses on one play. Chapter One explores the same-sex desire of women—lesbianism—in Hellman’s first play The Children’s Hour. In Chapter Two, a feministic war of economic independence as the theme of The Little Foxes is examined. Chapter Three is devoted to Hellman’s first award-winning play Watch on the Rhine, a war play in a family set. The theme of liberation is the major concern of Hellman’s dramatic works. And the liberation concern in Hellman’s plays is from feminist perspective, centering on women characters and describing women’s experience, but not restricted only to feminist concern. Hellman expresses her conviction that liberation should be fought for by people united as a whole—regardless of nationality, race or gender.