The Children’s Hour

"It’s a case that I was fascinated by, and one that shows how male attitudes about their own sexuality affects their judgement of female sexuality. This was a case in which two very proper Scottish schoolteachers – two women who ran a private school for girls – were accused of lesbianism by one of the girl’s grandmothers. A girl who heard them in bed told her grandmother, who told other parents, and immediately the two women were ruined. All the parents took their kids out of school, and the women sued the grandmother for defamation. The trial transcripts are absolutely remarkable. Essentially, the women won because the judges could not accept that two proper, hard-working, middle-class women could love each other sexually without the intercession of some male element. The main judge, Lord Benedict, said: “If I distrust these women, if I think that anything more than licentious buffoonery could result from them sleeping together, I would happily distrust my own wife.” We laugh, but this is a serious business. By bringing the case the women were denying that they were engaged in a sexual relationship, but it’s evident that they were. Lillian Hellman picked up on this case and wrote it up as The Children’s Hour , which became a very successful Broadway play, although it was banned in London, Chicago and several other cities. But she diluted the plot in very important ways. For one, she set it in a private school in New England – which is no big deal. But in The Children’s Hour , one of the accused women is clearly not lesbian while the other one confesses ultimately that she is, and tragedy ensues. They also lose the case. So the women suffered for their sexuality. The whiff of lesbianism is all over the play, and that’s what really drove it – it was a forbidden subject. But even in the 20th century, with Lillian Hellman writing it, the real truth of the case could not be brought out in a way that accepted that two women could have a healthy lesbian relationship. I haven’t seen the film but from what I understand it dilutes it even further, and takes the question of female homosexuality completely out of the picture. Yes, and that was the first production of it in London in a very long time. When you see that play in perspective, it becomes much more interesting."