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MORAL QUESTIONS IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF LILLIAN HELLMAN

By

Pia Seija Taavila-Walters

.A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Inter-Disciplinary Studies

1985

Copyright by
Pia Seija Taavila-Walters

1985

This dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Grant, and our
children, Rebecca, Zachariah, Gabriel, and Rachel, without whom
this effort would have been nearly impossible. Their willingness
to pitch in and help out, their love, support, and encouragement

all contributed to the creation and completion of this project.

ABSTRACT

MORAL QUESTIONS IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF LILLIAN HELLMAN

By

Pia Seija-Taavila Walters

This study renders an analysis of Lillian Hellman's moral
code as seen in selected plays and memoirs. Hellman's morality is
a large and changing entity, open to the effects of such agents
as the passage of time, aging, the influence of associates, of
key epiphany-like crossroads or turning points. There are two
major components of her moral system, which help to comprise its
whole: truth and courage.

Much of the conceptual basis for the organization of this
material emanates from a model referred to as a "continuum." By
this term I refer to a line, much like a number line in
mathematics, along which lie various points pertaining to some
aspect or character of Hellman's morality, be it truthfulness or
her commitment to courageous activism. The end points of the

continuum theme represent the extreme positions of the subject of

any given chapter, with subsequent points living and sometimes
changing as non-static stops along the way from one end to the
other. We can utilize these points along the continuum as a means
of ascertaining the nature of Hellman's moral code and her
commitment to it, and through it we can examine many of her ideas
that focus on struggle, dichotomy, and tension.

The plays chosen for examination are The Children's £225,

Watch 25 the RhineI The Little Foxes, The Autumn Garden, and

 

Montserrat, for they best illustrate Hellman's ability to combine
the worlds of moral vision and artistic endeavor. Where
applicable, selections from her memoirs illustrate and give voice
to my perception of her moral positions, particularly as they
have expressed themselves in her works as well as in her daily

life.

PREFACE

This work focuses on the interplay between Hellman's moral
conscience, and her display of that conscience in her dramatic
compositions. I've always been impressed with Hellman as a strong
woman, and her reputation as a literary figure complements her
inner strength. This particular chapter discusses the inter-
disciplinary model as a useful critical tool, defining the
conceptual ideology of this approach while introducing the theme
of the "continuum” as one which is well-suited for analyzing the
complex and seemingly contradictory elements of Hellman's moral
code. There follows an examination of several of the key aspects
of Hellman's early moral development, a preliminary and necessary
component in any attempt to study and understand the nature of
her ethical commitment.

I think it's particularly important to think in inter-
disciplinary terms when examining the work of Lillian Hellman,
for so much of the content of her plays and memoirs is deeply
rooted in her personal philosophy of life and her activism. In
writing this work, I want to focus on the union of her personal
moral code and her public, artistic self, both with respect to
her artistry in the dramatic form as well as her commitment to
and involvement in various movements as well as social and

political causes. Hellman's strengths in these areas are models

"&-L

for emulation, and in those places where we might find ambiguity
or complexity there are examples of the ways in which Hellman
dealt with struggle and strife that merit our consideration.
Additionally, through an examination of Hellman's life and works,
we might ascertain such elements of direction that might be
worthwhile in our own lives as we face challenges of a moral
nature.

As an inter-disciplinarian, I have long been fascinated with
the ways in which connections between seemingly disparate
cultural, political, and social elements exist and interact with
one another. I like to envision the planet Earth as a whole
entity, whose peoples with their art, music, and other creations
and needs live in common with each other, sharing basic human
qualities, such as the need for food, shelter, love and warmth.
An equally essential need is the desire to express oneself as an
individual living in the world, to make sense of, to understand,
the nature and purpose of one's existence. One might question the
ways in which any given culture's political disposition is
related to its art, for example, or the ways in which economic
considerations determine the quality of life. The similarities
between art and music seem obvious, yet perhaps more ambiguous is
the relation between art and politics.

Certainly much can be gained by studying any society's
different parts in isolation from each other, segment by segment.
Yet I prefer to view these seemingly fractional elements as
connected and inter-related, primarily due to the fact that each

citizen lives under and helps to create, acts upon, the

conditions, both positive and negative, that determine the nature
of her existence, and I believe that we do well to try to
understand the ways in which the parts work together. Hence, I
lean towards the inter-disciplinary method of looking at things,
generally speaking, in a wholistic attempt to analyze and
assimilate the data of daily life and thought.

We ourselves are the end products of many interactive
factors and influences beginning with our parents, our peers, our
educators, etc. We are shaped by social structures and
institutions: governmental, religious, and educational facilities
form our thinking and often our characters. We accept or reject
new information as it becomes available to us, and we are known
to change our opinions when warranted. If, then, we are complex
and unique human beings who are the results of many factors and
their ability to interact within and upon us, how useful is it to
view our surroundings, each other, our thoughts, in terms rife
with departmentalization and fragmentation? All things are of a
whole in the mind of the inter-disciplinary thinker, who seeks to
make connections between herself and her world in all its
richness, ambiguity, complexity and detail.

In attempting to understand the notion that we influence and
are influenced by our worlds, I wish to draw upon Ken Macrorie's
idea of the Moebius strip (Ken Macrorie, Searching Writing
[Rochelle Park, New Jersey: Hayden Book Co., Inc., 1980], pp. 12-
13). He had his writing students take a strip of paper, about
one-and-a-half inches in width, and twist one of the ends, so

that when the ends were secured with tape, there would be a twist

or

the

Uh!
in;
ha:
an
th

de'

or a "warp" which would then form the sign for infinity rather
than a circle. He had them write the word "Observer" on one side,
and the word "Observed" on the other. He wanted them to see that
when they observed the world, the material being analyzed had an
impact upon the one conducting the investigation. The observer
had an increased understanding of the interaction between herself
and the world through a consideration of this model, and it was
this mode of interaction that Macrorie wanted most to
demonstrate. It is likened to the concept of infinity for the
flow of direction is continuous, and the divisions between the
observer and the observed become blurred, indistinct at best.

Out of this circular model comes another kind of "strip":
the continuum. Used by philosophers to identify, place, and
illustrate dissimilar yet related concepts, it looks much like a
line segment with definite end points. These ends points are not
always absolute and unchanging in nature, but they do usually
exist as opposites or extremes in the concepts they seek to
represent. For example, when one discusses temperatures within a
discussion about the climate, she might use the terms "hot" and
"cold" to designate opposites on a continuum which might then
contain the points "lukewarm" or "chilly" as interim stops along
the continuum's length. Each of these points contains enough of
its own characteristics to remain independent entities, yet each
retains enough like qualities to be included in the continuum in
the first place. Oftentimes, however, absolute distinctions may
be difficult to ascertain, and one point along the continuum

might easily blend into another.

The primary benefits of the continuum theme are that it
allows for the existence of diametrically opposed elements as
well as the fact that it provides for a ready means of
visualizing a wide range of possibilities in any given dimension.
It is not my intent to suggest that dualism is the important
point. Rather, I wish to call attention to the tensions inherent
between and within the dichotomies Hellman discusses, both in her
work and in her relationships with others. In discussing
Hellman's life, for example, we can begin by naming one end point
her ”Personal Life", while naming the other end point "Public
Life." Then we can begin the task of determining the points that
lie along the continuum's length between the two extremes. This
is helpful in recognizing the fact that Hellman's private life
often became public, and vice versa, as in the example of her
stand before HUAC. In that situation, her moral stand assumed a
political and public life all its own, influencing many admirers
and opponents alike. The end point designations and their
counterparts along the not-so-linear path allow for the
discussion of diverse areas within one larger framework, and for
the possibility that two different concepts might yet be related
and might co-exist in the same plane of thought. For example, in
a subsequent chapter I analyze the end points of truth and
deception, showing that Hellman often held views and beliefs
about truth-telling and a search for veracity that are frequently
quite clear-cut and obvious in selections from her memoirs in
which the truth is recalled with startling clarity. On the

opposite end of the continuum, however, there exists a grey area

X1].

in which nothing is certain, and all attempts at determining the
truth are futile and frustrating.

The continuum model, then, is used primarily to allow for
complexity, for the possibility of the co-existence of positive
and negative qualities or concerns in any given topic area. With
this in mind, it is my purpose, in each subsequent chapter in
this work, to rely upon this model as a tool in understanding
Hellman's moral code, particularly as it lives in her plays,
memoirs, letters, etc., which exemplify the blending together of
didacticism and artistry.

The continuum model is of primary benefit for the inter-
disciplinarian for it allows her to view, in one sweep of line, a
wide array of seemingly disparate elements connected nonetheless
in their relationship to the whole. So many aspects of Hellman's
moral code are neither black nor white, existing instead as a
kind of grey mass, shifting in intensity and kind depending upon
the situations in which we find her or her characters. Rarely are
her tenets simple, devoid of complicating factors and conditions.
.Indeed, there were many times when she may well have preferred
simplicity, for the dictates of her often difficult nature
frequently left her puzzled, angry with herself for creating that
which seemed to be a harder way to go, upset that the answers
weren't faster, clearer. She often regretted not being able to
make more determined, definite decisions; so, too, did she often
wish to be less vulnerable to the destructive whims of her
companion Dashiell Hammett. So much of Hellman's life seemed to

exist as dichotomy, yes and no, love and hatred, pleasure and

0“‘

pain. Hence, the very tensions inherent within her life (and,
thus, in her work) are more easily studied, described, and
illustrated when using the continuum model, which itself is able
to contain such tension, such lack of absolute distinctions, such
complexity and such a lack of clear, linear constructions.
However, in order to envision the ways in which this model
can best be applied to Hellman and her work, it is first
necessary to understand the development of her moral code, its
background, particularly with an eye toward her early
development. Chapter One discusses some early turning points,
suggesting that they played key roles in the formulation of
Hellman's moral character, which is further delineated in

subsequent chapters.

xiv

BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE

Lillian Florence Hellman was born on June 20, 1905, in New
Orleans, Louisiana, to Max and Julia Newhouse Hellman. She died
on June 30, 1984. For most of her seventy-nine years, Hellman's
voice had been extraordinarily impressive as a moral force both
in her private and professional lives, off and on the stage.

Her family consisted largely of German immigrants who had
settled in the south; some members later moved to the north.
Hellman's father suffered a failed business venture in New
Orleans and moved the family to New York City, where he was
successful as a salesman. Hellman was shuttled between the two
cities from the time she was five until her mid-teens, attending
school in each location. She experienced these transitions as
upheavals, particularly when noting the differences between the
school systems and the abilities of their students. While in New
Orleans, Hellman often preferred to skip school, and, since she
was so far ahead of the other pupils, her teachers never missed
her. Instead, she would read for hours while lounging in the
immense tree in the yard of her aunts' boarding house, wondering
about her place in the larger scheme of things. She later
referred to this time in her tree as the "ill hour", when all
melancholy mysteries nonetheless contained an element of sweet

yearning as well as the first intimation that the road she would

XV

travel would not be an easy one to traverse.

Hellman favored her father's family over her mother's, for
the aunts, Hannah and Jenny, were generous, funny, and kind, and
they thought Hellman bright and witty despite her rather frequent
outbursts of temper and moral righteousness. Indeed, many such
outbursts emanated from the earliest of recognitions that social
injustices did exist, and that her mother's family had something
to do with their creation. Much of the Newhouse wealth was made
from the economic manipulations of poor blacks employed in the
family businesses, most of which focused on the cotton industry
and on real estate deals. Yet, although Hellman would rail
against these injustices and assume that which even she called
her "high-toned" and exaggerated moral posture, her aunts doted
upon her.

The characters of the boardinghouse served as models for
Hellman's earliest writings, contained in a sketchbook of sorts.
It was also in New Orleans that Hellman experienced many
"firsts": her first romance, the recognition that her adored
father had a taste for extra-marital affairs, and the initial
stirrings of her own sexual feelings. Many of the major turning
points important in the formation of Hellman's moral character
(more fully discussed in Chapter One) also occurred in the south.
The times spent in New Orleans were, by her own admission,
Hellman's best and worst of times. There she learned to sew, to
cook fabulous creole food, to speak the patois French of the
district, and to laugh. She learned by the examples of her aunts,

who were quietly good to the poor of the neighborhood, especially

xvi

in aiding single mothers with money if they had it to give. They
were kind to children, and were often in demand for their advice
to young women upon the occasions of their weddings. Through
these strong and remarkable women, Hellman came into a sense of
herself as a woman, as someone who could move with some measure
of comfort and confidence in whatever world she would come to
create for herself.

Certainly one of the strongest influences and the "first and
most certain" love of Hellman's life was her black nurse,
Sophronia. Hellman's parents contended that Saphronia was the
only one who was ever able to exercise any control over their
daughter, and they frequently regretted having to dismiss her
when they experienced financial difficulties. She was a tall,
light-tanned woman with a long, brooding face, who provided
Hellman with the secure anchor she needed as a child, with an
importance and an indispensability familiar to many southern
white children of the time and period. It was evident that
Hellman would have done nearly anything for her, partly out of a
desire to please her, and partly out of a very real need to earn
the approval and respect of one whose own standards were so
incorruptably high. Through her, Hellman acquired a sense of
worth and merit, and it was by Sophronia's standards that she so
often measured herself later in life. This relationship helped to
lay the foundation for Hellman's commitment to social justice, to
truthfulness, as well as for her moral and ethical code.
Moreover, this relationship embodied the positive qualities found

in closeness between women, as well as in the love between mentor

and student, teacher and friend. Indeed, Sophronia's guiding
voice continued to influence Hellman long after the farmer's
death.

After graduating from New York's Wadleigh High School,
Hellman enrolled at the Washington Square branch of New York
University primarily to be near her mother, who was ill (she had
intended to study at Gaucher). Although she left college in her
“junior year, she did enjoy the study of literature and
philosophy, reading such authors as Kant, Hegel, Marx and Engels.
She transferred to Columbia, where she spent most of her time
reading, or in fervent discussions with intellectuals, whose
comments piqued her own curiosity and interest in finding answers
to the puzzles of social injustice and economic disorder. But it
became clear that college was not for Hellman, and she left
Columbia first to travel extensively with her mother, then to
take a job reading playscripts for the publishing house of Horace
Liveright.

She attended the many parties held by and for the literati
of the day, and met writer Arthur Kober, whom she later married.
They traveled to Paris where Hellman wrote that which she
referred to as "lady-writer" stories for the £g£i§_gggg£, yet she
became dissatisfied with her role as wife, part-time student and
sight—seer. Eventually they returned to New York and moved on to
Hollywood; Kober wrote for the screen and Hellman read scripts
first for producer Herman Shumlin and later for Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer (MGM). Their marriage began to deteriorate, and in 1932

they agreed to an amicable divorce. By then Hellman had met and

xviii

fallen in love with mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. Their stormy
relationship was to continue over the following thirty-one years
despite frequent separations due to Hellman's inability to
withstand Hammett's indiscretions with other women and his early
alcoholism. The later years of their life together were serene
and pleasant, as they had come together again after repairing
most of what they had lost through strife and disagreement.
Hammett's success as a writer of "hard-boiled" dialogue and
realistic street fiction had a definite impact on Hellman as she
began a literary career of her own in the theater. He urged her
to cut excessive material, to revise constantly, to be critical
of implausible turns of events and motives behind characters'
actions. He is credited for suggesting Hellman consider the plot
line of a detective story for her first play, The Children's
HEEL: which Shumlin agreed to produce after he'd read it for the
first time. Moreover, Hammett was often at Hellman's side
throughout her writing career whenever she was writing something
new; his comments were often harshly critical, but were useful,

nonetheless.

The production of The Children's H22; in 1934 catapulted
Hellman to celebrity status overnight. Its theme of the effects
of the malicious lie gave the play its moral dimensions. Its
suggestion of lesbianism gave the play its controversial
character; it was banned in Chicago and Boston, and was only
privately performed in London. This play was followed in 1936 by
leg_£g,ggmg, a story of class struggle further illuminated

through the lives of key characters. The drama was a failure and

xix

closed after only six performances largely, Hellman admitted,
because she tried to say too much, to do too much, in a rather
limited and unfocused setting.

The plays that followed included The Little Tehee in 1939
which, together with Another ZELE eh ehe Forest (1947) chronicled
the effects of an aristocratic family's greed and avarice upon a
southern town during the expansion of northern industrialization.
EEEEE.2£.£E£.§E£EE (1941) dealt with a hero, Kurt Muller, and his
courage as he fought Fascism and its proponents as a member of
the underground Resistance. Hellman's disgust for the appeasement
agreements reached in the aftermath of World War II is detailed
in The Searching 332; (1944). Montserree was the first of the
Hellman adaptations and it dramatized one man's attempt to act
courageously and morally under the most difficult of
circumstances. This was followed by The Autumn Garden, Hellman's
Chekhovian drama about the wasted lives and dreams of the middle-
aged characters it represented, while The,heeh, a new rendition
of Anouilh's story of Joan of Arc, debuted in 1956. Voltaire's
Candide was made into an operetta with the help of Marc
Blitzstein (this musical was also recorded by the New York City
Opera in 1970), while 1213.$£.£EE.££ElEo a story of peoples'
attempts to manipulate each other, and Hellman's last original
play, was introduced during the 1960 theater season. One final
adaptation, h1_Mother, he Father £E§.§Eo based on the novel, he!
Meehl by Burt Blechman, was written in 1963.

In addition to the plays, which were collected into a single

volume in 1972 by Little, Brown, and Company, Hellman also had

written four volumes of memoirs, three of which have been
collected by Little and Brown in the book, Theee (1979). They
are: he Unfinished £2222.(1969)- Pentimento (1973), and Scoundrel
TThe (1976). The fourth book, helhe (1980), suggests that there
is a fine and fuzzy line of demarcation between memory and truth,
as it recounts Hellman's strange and sporadic dealings with the
elusive and eccentric Sarah Cameron. Hellman also edited and

the introduction to The th Knockover: Selected Stories 222.§22££
Novels 2T Dashiell Hammett (1966), which she acquired as part of
Hammett's estate after his death in 1961.

Hellman taught many seminars in writing and play-making at
various colleges and universities, lectured widely, and was given
many honors and awards for her contributions not only to the
literary world, but to the fabric and weave of the nation's moral
and political conscience as well. Her most famous and noted stand
was taken against the House Committee on Un-American Activities
(HUAC [sic]), whose investigations and blacklisting activities
during that which has come to be known as the "McCarthy era"
enraged Hellman and many others who were under its scrutiny.
Hellman was one of only a few who refused to co-operate, and hers
was the first voice of protest to be heard in the din and clamor
of those only too eager to testify against their friends and
associates.

At the time of her death, Hellman had suffered from
arthritis, emphysema, and cardiac problems for a number of years.

She also had lost most of her eyesight, a condition which vexed

xxi

her particularly in that it required that she write by the method
of dictation, and in that it restricted her great love of reading
to a limited number of good books recorded on tapes made for the
visually impaired. On Saturday, June 29, 1984, Hellman was taken
to a hospital on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where she died
of cardiac arrest the next day. She was buried on July 3 at
Abel's Hill Cemetery, which is also on the island. A memorial
service was held for her at a later date in New York City.
Hellman's life and work focused on the idea that the
appropriate exercise of ethics and courage were central to one's
existence. This dissertation seeks to examine those moral themes
most important to her work, while asserting that Hellman's
attempt to live "decently", as she called it, serves as a great

model for us all.

xxii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.....................................pp. 23-25
Chapter One......................................pp. 26-46
Hellman's Early Moral Development
Chapter Two......................................pp. 47-77
On Truth: The Children's flee; and Montserrat
Chapter Three....................................pp. 78-98
On Truth and Memory
Chapter Four.....................................pp. 99—122
On Courage: E飣2.2&.£££.32££2
Chapter Five.....................................pp. 123-158
Courage Applied: Hellman and the McCarthy Era
Chapter Six......................................pp. 159-182
Moral Failure: Inaction in The Autumn Garden and

Avarice in The Little EEEEE
Summary and Conclusion...........................pp. 183—190

selected BibliograthOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPO 191-214

INTRODUCTION

I've long been intrigued by Lillian Hellman's brand of
courage and moral strength, especially as they display themselves
in key episodes in the playwright's life as well as in many
climactic scenes from her plays. There exist, both in her life
and work, examples of the ways in which her moral standards,
challenging and difficult to maintain though they might have
been, influence and, in fact, dictate paths of direction for both
Hellman and her characters; these paths then lead to resolutions
of conflict that are important and absolute in their complex
finality. Yet these standards do not exist in an amorphous,
theoretical vacuum. They live and breathe through the author's
memoirs as well as on the stage. No one who has ever seen or read
The Children's gee; can escape an understanding of the harmful
effects of the malicious lie. Nor is it possible to avoid a
philosophical debate on the questions posed in E2£EE.2£.£E2.§E££S
or Montserrat. This dissertation seeks to examine the foundation,
expression, and deployment of morality, of courage, in Hellman's
personal and public lives.

Chapter One discusses the ways in which key or "turning
point" episodes affected the shaping of Hellman's moral character
as well as a brief overview of Hellman's beginnings, through

which we might perceive the roots of her early moral development.

Chapter Two continues with an examination of Hellman's views on
truthfulness and speaks of her desire to communicate with
veracity. The continuum model provides a method of examining the
many complex and diverse issues Hellman faced, both as a person
and as a writer, and allows for the co-existence of both negative
and positive entities. These elements can be seen also as points
along a continuum with respect to their positions relative to the
theories held by such philosophers as Aristotle, Kant, Rich and
Bok.

Chapter Three explores the elusive nature of truth as seen
in the memoirs while suggesting yet another continuum as a
critical model. End points represent extremes in this bi-polar
construct, and on one end I suggest that Hellman, at least early
on, was quite able to recount events, places, people, etc., with
amazing truthfulness. However, at the other end of the spectrum
lie points which suggest that, especially as Hellman advanced in
years and in diversity of experiences, the truth was not so easy
to ascertain, all things were tentative, and the truth was
slippery and often unattainable.

Chapter Four concerns itself with another component of
Hellman's moral composition: her courage and commitment to
political activism as seen through her character Kurt Muller in

Watch he the Rhine. Hellman's own courage is seen in application

 

in her appearance before HUAC in the 1950's, and is the subject
of Chapter Five.

Chapter Six centers upon the problems (and ensuing results)

of moral failure, through either the moral lassitude of the weak

and inactive characters of The Autumn Garden or through the greed
and avarice Openly displayed by the Hubbards in The Little Tehee.
The Summary and Conclusion attempts to pull some of these
points together while commenting upon the role of the author as
political ideologist, positing that Hellman was a morally
committed playwright whose vision and tenacity compels us all to
consider our own moral states. It is my hope to have integrated
Hellman's moral positions with her public and private lives
through this study of selected plays and memoirs. Although there
may not be clear-cut answers to some of the ethical dilemmas
posited herein, the study of such questions is nonetheless
fruitful, particularly as it allows us to further examine both

the life and works of one very remarkable thinker.

26

Chapter One: Hellman's Early Moral Development

What was the nature of Hellman's moral vision and how does
it present itself in her works? Certainly critics and scholars,
playgoers and readers alike have praised Hellman as she sought to
dramatize her own sense of that which is truthful, just, as well
as that which resulted through the lack of morality in those
plays that have evil as a central theme. This chapter attempts to
come to some kind of definition of Hellman's moral code, to
explore its dimensions, to show how it developed throughout her
early life; later chapters seek to apply its meaning to an
examination of her works especially as this moral code seems to
break into two complementary components: truth and courage.

The singular and most consistent theme in Hellman's life and
work is that of the extraordinary strength of her moral
foundation as it is revealed through moral courage and the many
forms that can take. Throughout her short stories, plays,
memoirs, and journalistic reports, there runs a strong commitment
to that which is ethical, to that seemingly amorphous quality
that allows a person to be her best, especially while under fire,
while at the same time allowing that person to acknowledge her
faults and insecurities. This moral strength seems even more
visible when reflected against the admission of weakness, for it

attains a realistic quality rather than an unbelievable, superior

27

tone. Hellman's is not a false moral courage, born of bravado or
foolhardiness; rather, it is the kind of ethical code that
requires self-knowledge, a sense of justice, all of which
inevitably lead the courageous into action. This moral courage
knows not the elitism of being based in theory alone, for within
the confines of mere ideology, courage dies. It is towards the
praxis of action that Hellman's moral code and hence, her
courage, sought to address social and political wrongs,
maliciousness, and even evil at many levels, both in her private
life as well as the professional realm of the writer.

What Te an ethical or moral code? How can we attempt to
define such a seemingly ambiguous notion? We can think of it as a
system of beliefs, mores, social behaviors, that are based on
some sort of philosophical system. We know that Hellman studied
Kant while in college, yet can only speculate that she may have
admired his theory of the Categorial Imperative, which simply-
states that the subject should hold the maxim that she should act
in such a way that her motive or base for acting would become the
standard accepted by others, a kind of universal. In other words,
it seems to be a recapitulation of the Golden Rule.1 One of
Kant's principles of morality suggests that it is less important
to ask, "...what is morally good and what is not?" than it is to
ask, "What is it that moves me to act in accordance with the laws
of morality?" Morality, to Kant, and the impulse that leads a
”moral" woman to action, lies in the heart, yet is shaped and
tempered by the use of reason and the obligation to duty, such as

the duty to be truthful.2 It is not at all clear or even likely

28

that Hellman's moral code is based on Kant's theory alone; it may
be an amalgamation of various theories, for she always professed
to be tied to no particular philosophical school of thought.3
Hellman's code of ethics developed at an early age, and
seemed to be tied rather closely with situations and incidents
that led her to outrage, for her sense of justice had been
violated. Indeed, the emergence of a notion of right and wrong,
and the decisions and actions a commitment to those ideals
demanded were key elements in Hellman's youth. The daughter of a
German-Jewish immigrant and a southern belle, Hellman spent half
her academic year in New York and the other half in New Orleans,
where she used to skip schooh regularly to ponder life in the
arms of one of the large trees in the yard of her aunts'
boardinghouse. She often referred to this time in the tree as her
"ill-hour", when all melancholy mysteries nonetheless contained
an element of sweet yearning as well as the first intimation that
the road Hellman was to travel would not be easy.‘
In the tree Hellman read and composed an early writer's
"sketchbook". It was from the tree that she witnessed her father
getting into a taxi with a woman other than her mother.5 Within
the family there were other struggles: the wealthy relations of
her mother's family, who lived in New York, made lofty
pronouncements about the likelihood that her parents' marriage
was doomed to failure.6 They'd argue over who was to inherit the
family jewels and money. Oftentimes displays of avarice and greed
would lead Hellman to outbursts of moral outrage, especially

since the family had made some of its fortune over the sorrow and

29

sufferings of blacks in the South.7 Hellman sometimes called her
reactions the results of her "high-toned" period during which she
was convinced that her moral code was obviously superior to that
of anyone else.8

"In the web of human experience who can say which threads
are strongest? For everyone there are turning point years."9 Many
such turning points occurred in New Orleans and were key to the
development of Hellman's moral character. For example, there was
the case of the watch and the lock of hair. A young boy had given
Hellman a lock of his hair to stop her tears after he had
informed her that he found her unworthy of conversion to
Catholicism. Hellman perceived the gift, and the shove into the
gutter which accompanied it, as a sign of affection and had
placed it into the back of a watch her father had given her to
celebrate her birthday. When the watch malfunctioned, Hellman's
father declared the jeweler incompetent, and demanded its
replacement. When the true source of the problem was revealed,
Max Hellman confronted his daughter brutally, in a heated
accusation in front of all the boarders. This led to Hellman's
first attempt to run away from home. During the nasty encounter,
Hellman said that she felt as if her head had "...gone somewhere
else", and she knew, for the first time, the rampage that could
be caused in her by anger. She wandered the streets of New
Orleans for two nights, with only $4.50 in a red purse. She was
accosted by a man from whom she was able to flee, and found
refuge in a boardinghouse in a black neighborhood where she

experienced her first menses, a notable turning point for many

30

women.

She claimed kinship with her beloved black nurse, Sophronia,
which gave her entry into the house, and it was Sophronia who was
summoned. She arrived with Hellman's father, who was standing at
the foot of her bed when Hellman awoke after a fitful night. He

asked her to get dressed.

"Thank-you, Papa, but I can't." He went
out of the room while Sophronia...repeated the
command.

"He humiliated me. He did. I won't..."

She said, "Get you gaing or I will never
see you whenever again."

Her father met her outside and they proceeded to a
restaurant where Hellman awaited her father's apology, which he

delivered reluctantly.

My father said, "Your mother and I have had
an awful time."

I said, "I'm sorry about that. But I don't
want to go home."

He said, angrily, "Yes, you do. But you
want me to apologize first. I do apologize, but
you should not have made me say it."

Hellman began automatically moving her lips in a self-
designed litany, in imitation of that which she had deemed to be
the holiest route to forgiveness: "God forgive me, Papa forgive
me, Mama forgive me, Sophronia, Jenny..." Her father said, "Where
do we begin your training as the first Jewish nun on Prytania
Street?" After laughing, Hellman decided that she liked her

father again and confided in him the change in her womanly

31

status. She also learned her power over her parents, to
understand the nature and force of her own standards, her

rebellious nature, the force of her anger, and was able to admit:

I found out something more useful and dangerous:
if you are willing to take the punishment, you
are halfway through the battle. That the issue
may be frivial, the battle ugly, is another
point. 1

This turning point discovery was an important one, as it was
to be useful in her daily life, in her relationships with other
people (such as the long and often difficult one in which she was

involved with Dashiell Hammett), and in living out and acting

upon her moral and political convictions. Hellman often said that
her anger was both useful and dangerous, while crediting its
deployment for the more interesting, demanding, and satisfying
moments in her life.

A similar acknowledgment of her power over her parents
occurred when Hellman, at age fourteen, was late for a curfew
following a date with a college student. She met a stern
reception, ran away, bummed around New York a while, then called
the student who brought her home, much to her dismay. Her frantic
mother asked, "Are you all right, my baby?" Hellman took
advantage of the moment by declaring that she had "heart
trouble."12 Hellman also once hocked an expensive ring which had
been given her by her Uncle Jake as a graduation present in order
to buy books. Fearing his reaction, she nonetheless decided to

tell him of her transaction. He stared at her for a long time,

the
all
ob‘
di:
te

in

in
va
He
e\

le

WE

32

then said, laughing all the while, "So you've got spirit after
all. Most of them are made of sugar water."13 It would seem
obvious that, even at a fairly young age, Hellman's ability to
display an independent character was coupled with a fierce
temper. She rarely succumbed to another's control, exhibiting
instead a strong sense of autonomy.

Probably the most significant and primary person to
influence Hellman's moral character was her nurse, Sophronia. She
was easily the "first and most certain" love of Hellman's life.
Hellman's parents contended that she was the only one who could
ever exercise any control over their child, and they regretted
letting her go when they experienced financial difficulties. She
was a tall woman, with light, tan skin and a long, brooding face
who provided Hellman the secure anchor she needed as a child,
with an importance and indispensability familiar to many southern
white children of the time and period.14 It was evident that
Hellman would have done nearly anything for her, partly out of a
desire to please her, and partly out of a very real need to earn
the approval and respect of one whose own standards were set so
incorruptably high. Through her, Hellman was able to acquire a
sense of worth and merit, and it was by Sophronia's own ethical
code that Hellman so often measured herself.15

One incident revealed the nature of the bond between the
two. After Sophronia had left the Hellman household, the two met
sporadically, for Sophronia had gone to work for another family,
a streetcar's ride away, whose members didn't like Hellman's

visits. Hence, their chances to be together were limited in both

33

frequency and duration. But in times of crisis, Hellman sought
her protection and wisdom. She continued to serve as Hellman's
rock of dependability. Sophronia's responses to questions were
usually brusque, severe and short, at times, but her comments
were always right and the mysteries facing Hellman seemed clearer
in her friend's presence.

One day, they had gone to the movies, and were returning
home by streetcar during the era when blacks were allowed to sit
only in the rear of the car. Hellman took a seat behind the
driver, pulling her companion down beside her despite the
latter's protestations. The conductor ordered them to move, but
Hellman refused, yelling "We won't. We won't move. This lady is
better than you are..." The car came to a halt; the doors opened.
The conductor took Hellman's arm and an old lady slapped her.
Hellman threw her bookbag at the conductor, whereupon Sophronia
grabbed her and pushed her out into the street. They walked
along, Hellman crying all the way, wondering aloud if she'd done
something wrong. Sophronia sang, "Right is wrong and wrong is
right/ And who can tell it all by sight?" Hellman vowed that she
wanted to live with Sophronia forever, that she never wanted to
be near white people again. Sophronia was angry, and responded by

saying:

I got something to tell you, missy. There are
too many niggers who like white people. Then
there are too many white people think they
like niggers. You just be careful.

She went on to say that she had a no-good son and a no-good.

34

daughter, which made the already miserable Hellman feel even
worse, for she feared that she was being lumped into the same
category. She believed herself to be a victim of Sophronia's
rejection when, in fact, Sophronia was showing love and affection
by telling her charge something truthful, important, and useful.
Hellman asked whether or not her nurse would be willing to see

her again. Saphronia replied:

"You're growing up, a few years away. Time's
approaching to straighten things out."

"You mean I'm no good, either?"

..."I mean you got to straighten things out
in your own head. Then maybe you goin' to be some
good and pleasure me. But if they keep on pilin'
in silly and gushin' out worse, you goin' to be
trouble, and you ain't goin' to pleasure me
and nobody else."

Sophronia's tone of contempt was indisguisable, causing
Hellman to shiver and experience a deep sadness that her

companion seemed to disapprove of her so strongly.

I said, "You mean I am no good and you don't
want to see me anymore. Well, I won't hang around
and bother you."

She slowly got to her feet. "You all I got,
baby, all I'm ggin' to have." Then she leaned down
and kissed me.

The impact of this relationship on Hellman's life was great; one
large lesson involving an understanding of the real meaning of
civil rights despite the lip service paid it by many so-called
liberals made an indelible impression upon Hellman's conscience

as a result of their talk. Sophronia's strength, her love and

35

affection for Hellman constituted a major turning point,
particularly as it helped to lay a foundation for Hellman's sense
of moral justice, of truthfulness, for her ethical code.

Love, its definitions, conditions and demands, would come to
play an important role in Hellman's adult life as well,
especially in her relationships with Arthur Kober and Dashiell
Hammett, and well as in her friendships with other women. Upon
graduation from high school Hellman worked, for a time, for a
publishing house, and there entered into what she termed
"loveless arrangements." She attended many parties and began a
string of casual affairs, yet noted the possible "cost" of such

intimacies:

...my generation did not often deal with the
idea of love--we were ashamed of the word, and
scornful of the misuse that had been made of
it--and I suppose that the cool currency of the
time carried me past the pain of finding
nastiness in what I had hoped would be a moving
adventure.

At these parties, Hellman met writer Arthur Kober, by whom

she became pregnant, and from whom she withheld the news of a
subsequent abortion. Certainly an abortion is a large moral
issue, requiring that a decision be made with at least some
regard for the importance of the question at hand: isn't it
immoral to kill an unborn baby? But Hellman gave us no insight as
to her reasoning process, informing us only that the abortion was
conducted in a small doctor's office without anesthesia. She

showed up for work the next day, weak and tired, yet fearful of

36

her mother's reaction should she stay at home. She invoked the
admiration of her colleagues whom she surprised by not revealing
the name of the baby's father, yet she decried being
"...everybody's pregnant pet."18 A later pregnancy, after her
marriage to Kober, ended in miscarriage.19

The relationship with Kober did not work out, and after
traveling and working in Europe and then Hollywood, they agreed
to a fairly amicable divorce. 20 While in Europe, Hellman
experienced another turning point in the formulation of her moral
and social conscience. She had decided to try her hand at being a
student, and considered registering at the university in Bonn,
Germany. The extreme anti-Semitism she found there both
frightened and angered her, and she returned to America. Even
though Hellman found it impossible to commit herself totally to
the principles and teachings of Judaism, she nonetheless was
appalled at what she had experienced so personally: the large-
scale hatred of one group of people by another.21

By 1930, Hellman had met Hammett, a private detective who
had become a mystery writer, whose works were doing quite well.
On the first night they met, they stayed up quite late,
discussing everything under the sun.22 As their relationship
evolved, Hellman found Hammett to be a drunk and incorrigible
womanizer, and she left him frequently. He had helped her
enormously in getting started as a playwright, with suggestions
from one writer to another about how to cut excessive dialogue,
how to make sure that a character's motivations, speech and

actions were feasible and firmly grounded, yet it is unclear

37

whether or not Hellman would have sunk without him. Certainly his
suggestions were worthwhile, but Hellman's own instincts were
usually right, and she was known to have written as many as
twenty drafts of plays, ever striving to get the scenes just
right. Indeed, it does seem to be the case that, while Hellman's
career skyrocketed, Hammett's declined.

Towards the end of their thirty-one years together, Hammett
remained sober, and they took true pleasure in one another,
enjoying intellectual forays into a wide diversity of topics.
However, their later relationship was largely a celibate one, for
Hellman had refused his drunken and demeaning sexual advances as
early as 1941, which ended the physical aspect of their love.23
Christine Doudna's interview with Hellman reveals some of

Hellman's feelings about her "dependency" on Hammett:

What was it like for you and Dashiell Hammett, as two writers, to
live together? Was there any sense of competition?

There was no competition whatsoever. He was proud of me and
I was proud of him. There were other kinds of trouble, but never
that. That's why I'm always bewildered by competitiveness between
people who live together. I don't think I could stand it.

There were no ego problems from the fact that your career was on
the rise while his was on the wane?

If there were, I never recognized them, and I don't believe
he did. He was very sharp with me about what he didn't like, and
terribly pleased when he liked something.

Nobody ever gave more aid to anybody than he gave to me, and
you can't do that if you feel competitive. You can start that
game, but it breaks down very quickly if you feel any anger or
competitiveness.

During that long period when he wasn't writing, did you ever try
to get him to write?

No. We didn't have that kind of relationship. He was quite a
forbidding man, Hammett. Writing was one of the things you didn't

38

talk to him about. I wish I had. I don't think it would have done
any good, but it seems now to have been cowardly of me not to.

Did you in some ways find Hammett's harshness appealing?

No. I found it awful and I found it sometimes admirable and
brave. If you mean I'm a masochist, I'm not. The harshness wasn't
ever about anything but my work. And there, if you ask for help
or opinions, you've got to take what's coming.

You said that he was very important to the writing of your plays,
but you also said there was a chance you made the dependency
greater than it was. Do you ever have moments of doubt that you
haven't got the nuances of that relationship quite right on
paper?

Of course. When you come to feel dependent on people it may
be that you exaggerate the dependency--it blinds you to what you
could have been without it.

Was that a question which haunted you in your relationship with
Hammett?

No, it didn't worry me at all. I was perfectly willing to
have the dependence. He said he never agreed with my formulation
of it. I've been told by other people that maybe I'd have been
okay without it. I don't know--I liked it.

I think between men and women there should be dependency, even
between friends. Dependency has very little to do with
independence& Independent natures aren't worried about
dependency.

Although Hellman did often seek Hammett's authorial advice,
more often than not, she served as her own best critic, ever
honing her own technique. It is also the case that there were
times when she threw out his suggestions altogether, preferring
to re-write and revise over and over again.

The nature of their political lives together also served as
a turning point in the development of the Hellman ethical code.
In early 1935, Hellman became involved in Hollywood politics by
joining her friend Dorothy Parker and others in their efforts to

organize a writers' union. Hammett had already been involved in

39

these activities, and encouraged Hellman's participation. As she
became more and more involved, Hellman's political inclinations
turned from the personal and close-at-hand, moving to the world
around her, which was beginning to feel the effects of fascism.
Hellman's public positions were known for their Communist-
sounding affiliations, yet she professed that she was too much
the head-strong individual to ever belong to a political party.
Indeed, both Hammett and Hellman were called before HUAC in the
1950's to testify as to their political leanings, and Hammett was
jailed for a time, having been found in contempt of court for
refusing to provide certain information. Hellman escaped
imprisonment, despite her challenge to HUAC's authority and her
refusal to comply with its demands (see the chapter herein on
"Hellman and the McCarthy Era"). In forming her moral beliefs,
Hellman realized that her commitment to justice and courage would
demand more of her than private or personal actions. She
conducted benefits for the relief of prisoners in Franco's Spain;
during one year she urged her friends to give her contributions
for ambulances instead of expensive birthday gifts. She traveled
to the Russian front and throughout Spain, all the while writing
articles and making radio broadcasts on behalf of those fighting
oppression.

It seems clear that Hellman and Hammett discussed these
issues together, and that Hellman had much admiration for the
single-mindedness and dedication of her companion. He was very
much committed to the principles of Marxism, and his influence on

Hellman, even though he was not able to convert her, remained a

40

source of stimulation and intellectual exercise.25 Such discourse
must have had an impact on Hellman's moral system, for she was
often affected by the plight of the underdog and sought, in her
plays, to describe his/her plight while writing other plays, such
as H2££E.2£.£E£.§E$£2o that illustrate the ability of one
committed person to make a difference. Hammett's commitment could
not be shaken; any attempt on Hellman's part to crack his belief
proved futile. She was in awe of his commitment, partly because
she was in awe of its magnitude, and partly because he was so
patient with her lack of similar conviction.She admired most
radicals of her time, calling them true and serious thinkers. She
was at once jealous, angry and respectful, for Hammett did not
waver or vascillate in his position.26

The acquisition and exercise of a person's morality has been
described by many philosophers from Socrates on to current
theorists. What many of them hold in common is that morality does
not consist of a series of acts; rather, it is a state of
character, not a passion or a faculty.27 This position posits
that people ought to practice moral virtues not only in special
circumstances, but as a rule, as a matter of principle.28 Most
philosophies agree that the end purpose of living a morally sound
life is the attainment of happiness (described as Heaven in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition), adding that people should conduct
themselves morally without constant consideration for their own
ends and desires in so doing.

But one cannot help but wonder at the particluar course

Hellman's moral development took. Certainly others have been

41

witnesses to the indignity and the horror of racism, yet have not
opted to respond in Hellman's fashion. Still others have been
proponents or witnesses of greed and avarice and yet have sought
protection from the charge of moral bankruptcy by claiming that
they were faced with an ideal opportunity to make a fortune. How
can we explain the particular moral choices Hellman made? It
seems insufficient to merely raise again the nature vs. nurture
debate, even though it is clear that heredity and environment
play their respective roles in the development of one's ethical
character.29 The influences of Hellman's parents, relatives,
peers, as well as the effect of the moral messages in the

hundreds of books she was known to have read all coalesced in

meaningful ways to form at least a part of her conscience. Her
fascination with the different denominations of religion, her
exposure in later life to other thinkers, writers, and artists
all acted as catalysts in the on-going and continuous process of
the refinement as well as the expansion of an ethical code.

To what extent does one's own sense of agency or autonomy
come to play in the formulation of moral characer? Certainly
Hellman had the strength and the wherewithal to disagree (and
vehemently so) with some of the activities and attitudes of her
mother's side of the family, for example, even at an early age.
In her adult years, independence of spirit led Hellman to take
remarkably unpopular stands both for and against many issues of
the day, which have served as lasting models of her courage and
stamina. Is it biology? Does such strength come in the genes? Or

environment?

42

Philosophers and scientists used to pose, with a fair degree
of regularity, a question that centered on knowing how much of
each entity, biology or environment, affected a person's
physical, moral, and intellectual development. These debates
concerned the amounts each entity contributed to the process.
Forty per cent here? Sixty per cent there? Lately, however, the
discussion has turned less to a quantitative analysis and more to
a qualitative examination of the £213 in which the two
interact.30 Even so, there are surely moments when the individual
must exert herself beyond the influences of her background, and
must act in accordance with the dictates of her own conscience,
which is, in the end, a unique creation. It can be said that
Hellman's moral conscience emanated as the result of several key
"turning points" in her life. Her exposure to the love of her
parents, aunts and beloved nurse, Sophronia, all had a large
impact upon Hellman's early moral development. Her experiences
with her first love, with her schoolmates, with racism, with
early independence, all contributed to a larger understanding of
the world and Hellman's perceptions of her own role within that
world. Certainly all situations involving injustice angered her,
and she often felt compelled to act against it, as in the case of
Sophronia and the street car driver. The early anger she felt
upon important occasions was one example of the kind of moral
fire that burned within her, and serves as an illustration of the
way in which a particular belief she might have held surfaced in
irrepressible expression.

Several critics have had much admiration for Hellman's moral

43

code. Richard Moody said, "...[Hellman] is a rigorous moralist.
This does not connote fanaticism because, to begin with, she is
rigorous with herself." He added that Hellman had an
"...unmistakable admiration for every kind of excellence: self-
discipline, loyalty, the determination never to injure
others...the unselfish pursuit of humanly valid ideas."31 It is
my suggestion that Hellman came to these qualities early on in
her life, through certain key episodes and turning points through
which she experienced an epiphany-like revelation or
understanding both of the way the world worked and of her ability
to act within the framework of her own circumstances. She
developed these admirable qualities as she grew and matured, and,
despite the complex and diverse nature of her moral code she held
to basic beliefs about the necessity for honesty and courage
throughout her often difficult and tumultuous life.

Hellman died on June 30, 1984, after having been admitted
to a hospital on Martha's Vineyard suffering from cardiac arrest
complicated by the illnesses emphysema and arthritis. Neighbors
said that, even up until the end, Hellman's mind remained alert.
Newsweek's David Anser summed it up most movingly when he

asserted:

The Hellman anger arose from her clear-eyed view
of social injustice and strong moral convictions,
and she remained true to her passion throughout
her rich and tumultuous life. Not for her the
modernist halftones of alienation and equivo-
cation. The fire within her lit up the cultur-
al landscape; its heat will be deeply missed.32

44

Indeed, whether she is remembered as an unfinished woman or
the playwright with the ability to move many and whole audiences,
Lillian Hellman, with the fiery temper and the unwavering sense
of ethics and morality, will be missed. But her contributions to
the theater, the world of literature, and to those of us who have

need and use of a guiding moral light will prove to be of endless

value. For these we remain grateful.

4S

END NOTES

1 Immanuel Kant, Lectures ee Ethics, Trans. Louis Infield,
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 36.

2 Ibid.

3 Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman in Three (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Co., 1979), p. 132.

4 Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 18.
Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 14.

QNOUI

Lillian Hellman, "Theater" in Three, p. 483.

9 Richard Moody, Lillian Hellman, Playwright, (New York:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), p. 11.

10 Lillian Hellman, he Unfinished Woman in Three, p. 37.
11 Ibid., pp. 37-39.
12 Margaret Case Harriman, "Miss Lily of New Orleans:

Lillian Hellman", in her Take Them he Tenderly: h Collection eh
Profiles, (New York: Knopf, 1945), p. 98.

 

13 Hellman, he_Unfinished Teeee_in Theee, p. 15.
1‘ Ibid., p. 24.

15 Hellman, "Helen" in Theee, pp. 259-261.

16 Ibid.

17 Hellman, he Unfinished Teeee in Theee, p. 42.
18 Ibid., pp. 48-51.

19 Ibid., p. 18.

20 Ibid., p. 75.

46

21 Ibid., p. 64.
22 Hellman, "Dashiell Hammett" in Three, pp. 278-279.

23 Diane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: h Life, (New York:
Random House, 1983), pp. 170-171.

24 Christine Doudna, "Interview With Lillian Hellman,"
Rolling Stone, 2-24-77, pp. 55-57.

25 Hellman, "Dashiell Hammett" in Three, p. 302.
26 Ibid., p. 284.

27 Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, Trans. Sir David
Ross, (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 35.

28 Joel Feinberg, Ed. Moral Concepts, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969), p. 117.

29 Lawrence Kohlberg, "The Development of Children's
Orientation Toward a Moral Order" in Vita Humana VI, (1963), pp.
11-13.

m

30 Anna Freud, Introduction he Technic he Child Analysis
(London: The Ayer Co., 1975), Introduction.

31 Moody, p. xii.

32 David Anser, "An Unmellowed Woman" in Newsweek, 7-9-84,
p. 73.

47

Chapter Two: On Truth

Hellman's early moral development seems to have had several
key components. One was her unerring sense of justice, involving
her anger when some principle held dearly was violated. Another
was her concern for the oppressed and the poor, concern against
racial discrimination and violence, as witnessed in the
previously discussed episode with Sophronia, who was asked to sit
in the rear of the streetcar. Yet another and rather important
component in the overall make-up of Hellman's moral disposition
is her desire to attain truth, to speak honestly, to avoid lies.
She exacted this commitment not only of her friends and
associates, but demanded it of herself as well.

This chapter attempts to delineate several ideas involving
truth, truthfulness, the ambiguity inherent within complex
situations, and the harm that can come when a regard for these is
faulty or non-existent. The ideas of key philosophers, ranging
from the ancients to contemporary theorists, will be examined,
including those of Kant, St. Augustine, Plato, etc., as well as
Sissela Bok and Adrienne Rich. In addition, I hope to examine
Hellman's own views on truth, as well as to try to place her
stance along the continuum suggested by the wide range of views
presented by the different theorists. The idea of truth is an

essential element in understanding Hellman's moral system, for it

48

illuminates an aspect of her thinking which centers on veracity
in communication. As a playwright, Hellman's job was, according
to critic Florence Von Wien, "...to see the truth and put it down
in dramatic form."1 It would be impossible to be a moral person
while condoning lying and deception. Moreover, many of the plays
and memoirs are heavily imbued with cause and effect relations
between lying and the disasters that befall either the victims of
the lie, as in The Children's 322;, or the liar himself, as in
Montserrat, where the hero's hesitancy to reveal information to
his oppressors concerning the whereabouts of rebel Simon Bolivar
during the Spanish occupation of Venezuela brings about the
deaths of innocent people. -

First, it might be useful to outline the basic types of
arguments that are rendered by the thinkers involved in this
study. There are those who believe that truth is an absolute,
that it is a complete moral principle which overrides and
supercedes any considerations for expediency or the subjective
concerns of the relativist. This position is a demanding one, for
° it states that there are no occasions upon which the telling of a
lie is necessary or even excusable. All lies harm both the teller
and the deceived. The ancients spoke about truth as somewhat of

an absolute, attainable by humans. Aristotle wrote:

For the man who loves truth, and is truthful where
nothing is at stake, will still be more truthful
when something is at stake; he will avoid falsehood
as something base, seeing that he avoided it even

for its own sake; and such a man is worthy of praise.2

Arist
happi
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attai

free
mann
obvi
disc

proc

rel
obe
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0f

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it

Pm
d1:
V11

49

Aristotle also believed that the general goal of mankind was
happiness, that ideal behavior assumed a mean between two
extremes, and that leading a virtuous life would help one to
attain these ends.

Plato also wrote about the ideal society, arguing that the
freedom of speech was an absolute necessity, for only when all
manner of ideas could be freely expressed, ranging from the
obviously false to the ridiculous to that which could be
discerned as truthful, would people involved in this dialectical
process be able to ascertain veracity.

Huby asserts, in her study of Plato's ideas, that the advent
of Christianity had much to do with conflicts between the
entities of reason and faith, arguing that Christians had a
difficult path to tread when attempting to combine Biblical
revelations with reason. She says, "...reason came to appear as
the enemy of faith and something not to be trusted."3 Indeed,
religious faith demanded belief in the unseen, as well as
obedience to a higher authority. There came, then, a group of
theologians and philosophers who sought to interpret God's idea
of truth to His [sic] servants.

In the case of St. Augustine, for example, his idea of
absoluteness had a religious and theological underpinning, since
it argued that God possesses all knowledge, that He has ordered
people to tell the truth, and that lying is in direct
disobedience with His command ("Thou shalt not bear false
witness") and is, therefore, a sin. In this context, people who

commit this sin are seen to be committing it against God rather

50

than against each other, and they are forgiven only in the
confessional.‘ Some aspects of this position are derived from the
Bible, particularly in the Book of Wisdom, 1:1, "A lying mouth
deals death to the soul."5 This tradition continues down through
the middle ages, and can be seen in the thinking of other
theologians, such as St. Thomas of Aquinas, who also said that
lying was a mortal sin.6

Many of these philosophers, realizing the severity of their
positions, sought to delineate "escape" mechanisms through which
some lies could be categorized as being less harmful or more
harmful than other lies. This system used such criteria as
considerations as to the intent of the liar, the degree of harm
the lie caused, and whether or not the lie was meant to achieve a
desired end that may have been, in itself, beneficial, as in the
example of a white lie that preserves someone's feelings. The
"mental reservation" school of thought posited that one could say
something aloud only to then qualify it, rendering it truthful,
through the addition of an internal reservation, as in the
example of someone saying, "No, I did not steal." He then
privately adds, "Yesterday," which allows his statement to appear
truthful. Many objections were raised to this method; notable
among them is the idea that the omission of pertinent facts can
serve as its own form of deception, and the responsibility for
the connivance remains with the deceiver. There grew an entire
body of philosophical literature that debated this question, in
all its convolutions and implications.

Then came Immanuel Kant, another absolutist, who stated

qu

WE

51

quite clearly, and harshly in the eyes of some, that all lies

were wrong, no matter their intent.

But a lie is a lie and is in itself intrinsically
base whether it be told with good or bad intent.
For formally a lie is always evil...there are no
lies which may not be the source of evil. A liar is
a coward; he is a man who has recourse to lying
because he is unable to help himself and gain his
ends by any other means. But a stout-hearted man
will love truth.7

Kant argued that even lies to preserve oneself or another are
still wrong, and gave as his example the classic illustration of
the murderer chasing a man. Someone else sees the man and knows
of his whereabouts; is she then obliged to tell the truth to the
murderer, thereby endangering the escapee's life? There exists a
body of thought which claims that truth is not owed to the
villain, that a lie told in the service of someone's life is not,
in fact, a lie under such circumstances. Kant and his fellow

absolutists make no such distinctions, arguing:

A lie may arise from mere frivolity or even

good nature; indeed, the speaker may intend

to achieve a really good end by it. But his way
of pursuing the end ig, by its mere form, a wrong
to his own person..."

It is one's duty to tell the truth, and this duty is part of
humankind's general goal of happiness. What, then, about
conflicting grounds of obligation such as the obligation to tell
the truth vs. the obligation to save another's life?

Sissela Bok adds an enormously important dimension to this

52

hTTe, In it, she raises the example of the captain of a ship
which is carrying refugees from Nazi Germany. The captain is
asked by a policeman on a patrolling vessel whether or not he has
any Jews on board. What should the captain's answer be, and what
is the nature of his dilemma? Yes, he does have a duty to tell
the truth, yet he has another duty to protect the lives of
innocent people (given, of course, that the sympathies of the one
who judges them to be innocent lie with anti-Nazi sentiment). Bok
suggests that one method of forming a resolution is to determine
that which might be the greater harm: to lie or to expose the
refugees. In helping create a theory that concerns itself with
moral choices people have to make in daily life rather than with
large and abstract attempts at defining truth, Bok's ideas are
useful in that they suggest there are occasions upon which lies
might be expedient, even necessary, although choosing to lie for
good reasons does not excuse one from assuming responsibility for
having done so.

Bok also suggests that lies do harm to the individual,
indeed, to collective society, whose workings rely on veracity in
communication, as in the case of a tornado warning or knowledge
of a poisoned well.10 Knowledge of this kind empowers he who has
it; to distort it or to withhold it from individuals places those
who need the necessary information in a position of impotence;
without it they cannot make good choices from a full range of
alternatives. Thus, the telling of truth affects not only the

individual but the entire society as well. Conversely, the

53

telling of lies also affects people, individually and
collectively. Kant said, ”By a lie a man throws away and, as it
were, annihilates his dignity as a man."11

We have seen some examples of absolutists on the one hand,
who say that all lies are wrong, to Bok's intimation that some
lies, although we are responsible for them, are excusable, even
necessary, in certain circumstances such as when saving the life
of another. Thus, two points along the truth continuum have been
established. At the extreme opposite end stands the belief, once
held by such philosophers as Pyrrho, that nothing can be known,
there is no surety, no certainty; therefore, attempts at telling
the truth are impossible, since one cannot know for sure that
that which is about to be said is truthful. Such men shunned
discourse of any nature and often lived as hermits.12 This
position is reiterated in some aspects of Existentialistic
thought, which claim that life is absurd, nothing is certain;
therefore, the purpose of each person's existence is to create
meaning, moment by moment, in the face of that final and absolute
entity: death.

Recent feminist philosophers have suggested that, for women,
lying can be seen as a necessary skill for survival in an
essentially corrupt (i.e., male) world. In order to circumvent
the power plays and false, even harmful information given to
them, women have developed strategies and methods of
communications within their own sub-structure that is reliable,
on which they can depend, while dealing with that which they

perceive to be the negative, necrophilic and patriarchal super-

54

structure that attempts to disempower them. Although such an
ideology can be beneficial, indeed necessary for the survival of
many women, there are dangers in such a course as well, which are

aptly pointed out by Adrienne Rich:

There is a danger run by all powerless people:
that we forget we are lying, or that lying
becomes a weapon we carry over into relation-
ships with people who do not have power over
us.

Rich goes on to speak of the importance of women speaking
honestly, especially to one another, in order to share and
redefine their experiences asfiwomen without the shroud of male
interference. Yet it is important to realize that intentional
lying, planned duplicity, may be a point along the truth
continuum that bears further study and investigation.

'Where do Hellman and her ideas of truth and truthfulness fit
in this continuum? First, it may be helpful to make the
distinction between truth and truthfulness, for I perceive them
to be related, yet different concepts. Some people think of "The
Truth" as a kind of overall principle, a moral absolute that
stands firm, never capitulating to revision or redefinition,
immune to the provisional and seemingly shaky groundwork of
situational ethicists and subjective philosophers. Yet not all
those who seek "the truth" are on a quest for no less than the
holy grail; many such seekers do not assume the smug self-

- righteous demeanor that we have come to detest. Many seekers of

the truth have at least the good intention of wanting that which

55

they believe will assist them on their shared goal: the
betterment and happiness of humankind. It is not clear, however,
that "the truth" is attainable in the first place, for it is an
ambiguous and amorphous idea, its dimensions unknown, its

usefulness only guessed at. On this topic Rich says:

In speaking of lies we come inevitably to the
subject of truth. There is nothing simple or
easy about this idea. There is no ”the truth"--
truth is not one thing or even a system. It is
an increasing complexity. The pattern of a
carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or
when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny
multiple threads unseen in the overall patzern,
the knots on the underside of the carpet.1

Hence, the truth is impossible to define, to capture as a
monolithic entity. Rather, it may be more useful to speak of
telling the truth, of honesty, to view life with the ability to
observe its reality and to analyze the conditions under which
people make moral choices, as was suggested by Bok.

Hellman's plays and her autobiographies concern themselves
with the ideas of truth and honesty. Probably her best-known
play, The Children's heee, focuses on the effects of a rather
large lie, on its perpetrator, its victims, and its supporters.
By "supporters" I mean those who believe the lie and advance its
causes, its maliciousness.

Hellman developed this play from a detective case that had
been written up in a magazine and brought to her attention by
Dashiell Hammett. Although she changed several of the original

details, the basic story-line was the same: a young girl brings

56

charges of lesbianism against the two women, Karen Wright and
Martha Dobie, who run her boarding school. Her grandmother, an
early benefactor of the school as well as a stately and solid
citizen, withdraws her granddaughter from the school, and
telephones other members of the community, successful in urging
them to do the same. The two women are shattered. One commits

suicide as the result of recognizing that she may, indeed, have

felt "that way" about her companion. The other loses her fiancee,

since he can never be sure of his intended's sexual identity. The

girl's grandmother is the only one who goes through any kind of
moral metamorphosis: after the lie is discovered, she tries to
apologize for her role in bringing about the demise of the school

and its administrators. Yet she is never completely free of the

responsibility she has had in believing the lie initially, nor is

she guiltless for her complicity in spreading the false charge.
The play opens in a room of the boarding school, where

several students are practicing sewing skills and the art of

elocution. It is perhaps ironic that one student is attempting to

recite Portia's speech on justice and mercy (from Shakespeare's
The Merchant eh Venice) and cannot get it right despite frequent
prompting. This might serve as a prediction that mercy and
justice will be lacking, if not absent altogether, from the
action of the drama itself.15 The events of the play center
around Mary Tilford, a troubled and manipulative child, and the
havoc she wreaks against her teachers. Mary enters with a faded
bouquet for Mrs. Mortar, the conductress of the class, who is

also Martha Dobie's aunt. Right away we are presented with an

57

example of her ability to lie when she says that she picked the
flowers while on a walk, despite Karen's insistence that it's the
same bunch of flowers she had thrown out only that morning. Mrs.
Mortar intimates that Mary has lied about her whereabouts in the
past, and Karen gets somewhat of an upper hand by indicating that
she is not about to be taken in by Mary's deception. Hellman
draws Karen as a sympathetic and compassionate creature, who
answers Mary's charges that she's always the one being picked on

and singled out for punishment by saying:

I don't think you're very happy here and I'd like
to find out why. ... Look, Mary, look at me. Let's
try to understand each other. If you feel that you
have to take a walk, or that you just can't come to
class, or that you'd like to go into the village by
yourself, come and tell me--I 11 try to understand.

...I've had feelings like that, too--everybody
has--and I won't be unreasonable about yours. But
this weg, this kind of lying, makes everything
wrong.

The idea that even little lies, or "white" lies can harm a
person's overall veracity is a tie to the absolutist's idea that
all lies are wrong. Bok also entertains the notion that lying
becomes pervasive, affects one's overall integrity, and is wrong.

Karen punishes Mary for her inability to turn to the truth
by removing a privilege and Mary threatens to retaliate. Her
initial action is to feign a heart attack, and Karen's fiancee,
Joe Cardin, a doctor and Mary's cousin, is called to the scene.
He examines her, finds her to be in fine shape, yet is aware of
her manipulative abilities, saying to Mary, "How's it feel to be

back from the grave?"17 She continues to feel herself the victim

58

of extraordinary persecution, and plans her escape by running
away from the school, but not before she has obtained some
information about a conversation two of her classmates have
overheard between Martha and Mrs. Mortar about Martha's jealousy
of Joe and Karen's intended marriage.

Martha is irritated that the pair plan to marry in the near
future. She is annoyed when Joe is in the school. She resents the
time that Karen spends with Joe, for it was time previously spent
with Martha. It is clear from the conversation between Martha and
her aunt that Mrs. Mortar is aware of her sensitivity to the
couple's engagement, to Martha's preference for Karen, and she
calls her niece's feelings "unnatural.” Two little girls, Peggy
and Evelyn, are eavesdropping at the door. One drops a book and
they are discovered. Martha sends them to their room, saying that
they will all talk about it later. Joe and Karen enter the room
and, upon learning of the eavesdropping, Karen states that the
girls will have to move their rooms around. She calls them in to
discuss their lack of decorum. They state that they are sorry,
that they didn't mean to cause any harm, while Karen considers
the possibility that none of the girls did things like that
before Mary's arrival. She concludes that Mary, in her dishonesty
and proclivity for deception, has had an adverse effect upon the
girls' behavior.

Mary and the eavesdroppers are left alone together, and she
threatens them with violence unless they tell her what transpired
between Martha and her aunt. The girls tell what they know for

fear of what will happen to them if they don't. They are,

59

perhaps, too young, too innocent, to understand that Mary intends
to store their revelations and that which they imply for future
use. They are so afraid of Mary that they never entertain the
notion of lying to protect Martha; neither do they comprehend the
nature of Mortar's accusations--somehow, Mary does.

The room re-arranging causes Mary to move in with a girl
named Rosalie, who has inadvertently kept a bracelet she secretly
"borrowed" from another girl. Mary knows that Rosalie still has
the bracelet, and uses that information to her best advantage,
intimating that Rosalie has committed theft, and that the
victim's mother will surely have Rosalie imprisoned when she
learns of the crime (through Mary, of course). Mary will force
Rosalie to lie for her when she fabricates the charge of
lesbianism by reminding her of the "stolen" bracelet.

In the meantime, Mary effects her escape (primarily by using
physical violence to get some money from one of the girls who has
saved a little by denying herself the small pleasures of candy, a
movie, etc., enjoyed by the other girls) and the ensuing scenes
occur in the home of Amelia Tilford, Mary's grandmother. Mary is
rude and abrasive to the maid, Agatha, who, along with Joe, is
more than aware of her scheming abilities. Initially, Mary does

not really have a definite game plan, saying,

"I'll think of something to tell her. I can
always do it better on the spur of the moment
...Grandma's very fond of me, on account my
father was her favorite son. I can manage her
all right.1

60

And manage her she does, at first by complaining that the
teachers will kill her if she goes back, that they have it in for
her and always single her out for ill-treatment. She tells her
grandmother how she fainted, how her heart hurt, and generally
plays upon her sympathies, but her grandmother, at least at the
outset, is not taken in by her whining. She even sees through the
manipulation, saying, "It's not nice to frighten people by
pretending to be sick when you aren't."19 She says that Mary
deserves being punished for leaving school without permission. As
the child perceives that her plan is not working, that she'll be
returned to school after supper, she grows more and more
hysterical and decides to bring out all her ammunition, which she
whispers in her grandmother's ear.

It is interesting to note that the lie is whispered rather
than spoken aloud in the play. This may be a "throw-back" to the
idea that such tapics as lesbianism weren't discussed outright,
yet a more dynamic possibility is that the lie may have been
perceived as such were it stated bluntly. Whispers indicate
intimacy, the kind of intimacy in which anything might be
revealed that is too personal, private, or shameful to speak
normally. Mary must assume some degree of bashfulness on the
topic; to appear knowledgeable and comfortable with it would
reveal her lack of innocence and destroy her credibility.
Moreover, the lack of eye-to-eye contact when whispering
preserves Mary's safety, since her grandmother cannot search her
eyes for veracity.

Grandmother Tilford trusts Mary so implicitly that she

61

cannot believe the child could fabricate anything as shocking as
that which she has revealed, and so believes her. Even though she
attempts a phone call to Karen, she does not reach her
immediately and feels a great sense of urgency in her mission,
which can't wait for confrontation or proof. She calls for her
nephew, Joe, who cannot come immediately, thereby adding to her
frustration in ascertaining the truthfulness of Mary's
assertions. Her decision to act comes of a desire to "protect"
the other children at the school, and she begins phoning the
other parents.

It would seem that, had the charge been one of physical

abuse or negligence, Mrs. Tilford would have acted differently,

would have investigated further. Because the charge is one of
homosexuality, Mrs. Tilford's reaction is a homophobic one, and,
in her panic, she overreacts, choosing instead to behave in
complicity with her fears rather than through the use of reason.
Her evaluation of Karen and Martha as being nice, kindly and
sensible women, worthy of trust and her financial backing
capitulates to the lie of a malicious and obnoxious child.

In any event, she does act, and the consequent harm is
irreparable. The dramatic turns of event include a confrontation
by Karen and Martha in Tilford's home; there the matron insists
that she is correct in her assumption, while the two women,
assisted by Joe, attempt to defend their innocence and demand to
know the cause of Tilford's accusation. Mary is brought before
the tribunal, and Joe offers her the chance to recant, being

quite generous in his ability to understand that sometimes people

say

62

say things they don't quite mean.

Look, everybody lies all the time. Sometimes
they have to, sometimes they don't. I've lied
for a lot of different reasons, but there was

seldom a time when, if I'd been given a second
chance, I wouldn't have taken back the lie and
told the truth. You're lucky if you ever get
that chance. I'm telling you this because I'm
about to ask you a question. Before you answer
the question, I want to tell you that if you've
l---, if you made a mistake, you must take this
chance and say so. Yga won't be punished for it.
Do you get all that?

Here, Hellman speaks in Joe's voice, stating her belief that the
truth is preferrable to lies, while recognizing that everybody
lies at one time or another, including Hellman. An interesting
component of this speech is the idea that one might have the
opportunity to revoke the lie, to replace it with the truth. That
the ability to do so comes infrequently, if at all, denotes the
importance of seizing the chance to do so.

Mary sticks to her story, beefing it up when it is
discovered that she doesn't really know what she's talking about
when she says that she heard "sounds" through a keyhole in the
door and saw the two women kissing each other.It turns out that
Karen's door does not have a keyhole, and that Martha shares a
room with her aunt at the other end of the building, out of
possible ear shot. Mary then implicates Rosalie, saying that she
was just trying to protect her friend, who is actually the one

"saw" and "heard" Karen and Martha. Rosalie, at first, is an

who
unwilling participant in Mary's little scheme. She is frightened

by the prospect of being brought before everyone, and it is to

63

Karen's credit that she attempts to calm the child. Rosalie says
that she doesn't know what Mary means, disclaiming all that has
been suggested. However, Mary then manages to work the bracelet
into the inquisition, and Rosalie acquiesces, throwing herself,
distraught, upon the sofa.21

In Act III, Karen and Martha are left to ponder their fates
in the cold and empty school. They are devastated by the trial
they have had to endure, as well as the public ridicule. Mrs.
Mortar was asked to return to the town to testify in their
behalf; her failure to comply was a key element in losing the
libel suit they brought against Mrs. Tilford since much of the
defense's case rested on Morter's statements. Ladies' groups
organized against them, and the grocery delivery boy stares and
giggles at them. They have had a hard time of it; indeed, it has
been harder, one could argue, than even a true charge of
lesbianism should have merited in 1934.

Joe arrives and he and Karen have a rather dramatic scene in
which she allows him to ask the very question the whole town has
been asking: is it true? They recognize that the entire debacle
overshadows their relationship; Joe suggests that they go away to
Vienna, where he had been a student, yet he doesn't really want
to go there and offers to do so out of a last-ditch hope that
they can make a go of it somewhere. He may be lying to himself,
and the ensuing break-up mitigates against further self-
deception. They realize that the situation will follow them
wherever they go, and their own self-doubts would lead to

eventual hatred of one another. Whether or not that is actually

true

leas

rel:

an

lea

to&

un
so
Vi

ma

64

true is somewhat debated by the pair, and Karen asks Joe to at
least go away for a day or so to think things over.

After he departs, and Martha has been informed of the
relationship's demise, she begins a form of self-examination in
an effort to discover the "truth." The events of the previous
weeks, although they emanated from and are rooted in lies, at
least have forced her to analyze her actions and motivations
towards Karen and Joe, and she is not wholly pleased with what
she sees. It is unfortunate that the moral dictates of the period
mandated such agony in Martha's slow discovery of her own true
feelings, and that those feelings were perceived as somehow
unnatural and corrupt. It is an indication of the way in which a
society can force someone to mask the truth in order to survive
within its boundaries. Yet Martha does not survive, for, after

making the following speech, she shoots herself off stage:

Martha: It's funny; it's all mixed up. There's
something in you, and you don't know it,
and you don't do anything about it. Suddenly
a child gets bored and lies--and there you are,
seeing it for the first time. I don't know. It
all seems to come back to me. In some way I've
ruined your life. I've ruined my own. I didn't
even know. There's a big difference between us
now, Karen. I feel all dirty and--I can't stay
with you anymore, darling.

Karen: All this isn't true. You've never said it;
we'll forget it by tomorrow--
Martha: Tomorrow? Karen, we would have had to

invent a new languageé as children do, without
words like tomorrow.

Karen has trouble coping with the possibility that Martha does

love her "in that way", and rejects the idea that it should be

deai
the

pas

Be
Ti
in
TJ'

d4

65

dealt with, hoping to delay facing up to it until "tomorrow" in
the hope that its problematic nature will be dissipated by the
passage of time.

Several critics have suggested that the play should have
ended with the suicide, which is seen but not heard.23 Instead,
Hellman opted to have a "conciliatory" scene, in which Mrs.
Tilford comes to apologize. It seems that the bracelet was found
in Rosalie's room, that the truth was established, and that
Tilford has been in agony ever since its discernment. Her walk,
demeanor, and voice have all changed. She says that she has
spoken with the judge, that there will be a public apology, an
explanation, and the damages paid to Karen in full. Karen's
understandably bitter response suggests that those actions will
never be enough to rectify the harm and the loss she's had to
endure. Yet after a time, she concedes that she might be able to
use Tilford's help--that there may be a future, after all. What
is particularly interesting in this scene is the fact that
Tilford realizes her guilt, her complicity in believing the lie,
will never abate, that it remains an integral part of her being.
She has assisted in the demise of one life and the compromise of
another, and there is no easy way out of such a dilemma. This
would coincide with both the absolutist and Bok's positions, in
that responsibility for lying and its consequences rest with the
liar. And although Tilford did not herself bring the lie in the
first place, she nonetheless advanced its destructiveness through
her willingness to repeat it to others.

We can consider the converse in the case of the hero in

66

Hellman's adaptation of Robles' play, Montserrat, in which the
protagonist refuses to talk at all, thereby causing the deaths of
several innocent victims while preserving the freedom of rebel
leader Simon Bolivar during the early nineteenth century
occupation of Venezuela by Spain's army. Montserrat, a member of
the army, seems to be a bit of a rebel himself in that he has
lost faith with the purposes of his presence, and has come to
admire Bolivar and his impact upon the people. His associates and
consequent captors realize that Montserrat knows of Bolivar's
whereabouts, and attempt to force him to reveal this information.
When he refuses, the soldiers bring in some peasants from the
street, who had been busily going about their daily routines when
captured. One by one they are executed as the result of
Montserrat's silence.

The moral dilemma for this man centers upon conflicting
grounds of moral obligation. On the one hand, telling the truth
would mean (and this presumes that the villains can be taken at
their word) the instant release of the prisoners at hand. On the
other, this revelation would mean certain death for Bolivar and
the ensuing and continued oppression of the subjects of Spain's
domination, who would continue to suffer various deprivations,
such as spoiled food, lack of medical care, little water, the
fact that the soldiers regularly rape the women, that freedom of
thought is disallowed, and that there exist inhumane working
conditions. Bolivar is seen as their liberator, and our
sympathies are with them.

In the opening scenes of the play, Bolivar's primary

67

predator, Izquierdo, enters, defeated, admitting that, for the
second time, he has failed to capture Bolivar, despite having
been close upon him in his ill-fated pursuit. Each time he fails,
Bolivar becomes ever more the hero and the Spanish army ever more
a group of bungling fools. Montserrat engages in a re-hash of his
objections to the Spanish presence with, of all people, a Roman
Catholic priest, who supports the oppression, believing Spain's
purpose to be a holy one. Montserrat's views, according to the
priest, border on heresy, for they support the insurgents as they
"...refuse to confess the Glory of God." Montserrat responds by
saying,

.—

They have not refused God. They have refused to
accept the glory of our army. I wanted to under-
stand--I came to you a year ago for help. I have
.asked you over and over again--does the prestige
of God demand slaughterhouses? Father, you don't
see what is happening: ride out with us--the
stink of burning bodies will change your mind.23

Izquierdo suspects that Montserrat has served as Bolivar's
informant, warning him of the approaching army and its intent to
kill him. His suspicion comes as the result of talking with two
men, one of whom is the stable hand who saddled up Montserrat's
horse the night before, the other an Indian found at the farm
where Bolivar was supposed to have been captured. The Indian says
that someone dressed in a Spanish army uniform carefully tied the
weak and ailing Bolivar to his saddle and rode off with him into
the dark. Montserrat makes no attempt at disguising his role in

Bolivar's escape, and even helps Izquierdo along with different

p0

Hc

TE

68

points as the latter recounts the prior evening's events.
Montserrat is being truthful, for he freely admits to his
responsibility in thwarting the goals of his superiors while
assisting the rebel leader. He freely acknowledges that his role
is one of insubordination. In doing so, he seems to be mocking
the ineptness of the army as well as making a strong statement
against its purpose; were it not for his sincerity and humility
in his subsequent conflicts of conscience, it would appear that
Montserrat attempts to provoke his colleagues with his seemingly
cavalier attitude.

Izquierdo formulates a plan whereby he orders that one of
the other soldiers brings in eix people from the village square.
Understandably, they are confused and frightened as to the
purpose of their presence in the palace of the Spanish general.
They speak of their obligations, a wife to return to, children
waiting for their supper, of the ways they have served the
general and his officers since their arrival, and so on, and we
recognize the desperation in their voices as they desire to
pacify their captors and return to the normalcy of their lives.
However, Izquierdo intends to use them to force Montserrat into
revealing Bolivar's location, saying that he intends to murder
them, one by one, until Montserrat breaks down. They are given
one hour with him, in which they try to convince him of their
need to be released and of his responsibility to come forward on
their behalf.

Montserrat's moral commitment is quietly and haltingly

expressed as some of the peOple try to present their views on the

 

f1

69

futility of such a commitment. Some suggest that six people can
have no impact, that the fight is over, that perhaps Bolivar is
not the man who will save them, that their lives are just as
important as his. Others seem to quietly support the idea of
revolution, but are weary from the reality of their own struggle
in the villages where Bolivar was not successful, and many died.
A few state that they have no political convictions whatsoever,
and merely wish to get home to their families, to enjoy the
little peace they have had since the Spanish occupation. In a
microcosmic world, Hellman presents the many views expressed in
society at large both for and against the political commitment to
change, whatever the price. And, although the price is great in
this play, Hellman asserts that the good Bolivar can accomplish
is worth the sacrifice, for in the deaths of the few will the
many be saved and their lives made worthwhile.

It is interesting to note that we come to know the
characters not only as "real" people who have families,
occupations, etc., but as people who have faults, foibles,
weaknesses and strengths of character that make them believable.
No one is wholly right or wrong; there are shadings of grey
areas, gradations that render these depictions realistic, for
people are not just one way or another. Rather, they are
amalgamations of good and evil, bad and good intentions, hope and
desperation. The struggle they all face seems truly a dialectical
process, for they argue back and forth among themselves, often in
defense of the revolution, often in defense of their right to

their pathetic groveling for mercy. Montserrat is tormented by a

7O

true desire to do that which is right, and, initially, he defends
Bolivar's actions and his support of them. Yet he is conflicted
about the fate of the six prisoners, and debates a course of
action that would save them as well.

Just as Montserrat considers an escape via cutting his
throat, Izquierdo enters, and it is obvious that he has been
listening to the proceedings. He prevents the possible suicide,
and takes the first few victims out to be executed. It is ironic
to note that the two men who lead the prisoners into the yard are
monks, and the role of the Catholic church in its complicity with
the barbarisms of the Spanish occupation is itself portrayed with
an eye to veracity. *

The only prisoners who seem to support the goals of the
revolution and who seem ready to defy the army officers are
Ricardo and Felisa. Izquierdo makes several sexual overtures to
Felisa. but he is rebuffed at every turn, despite the possibility

that she might save herself in capitulating to his will. He asks

of her:

Izquierdo: Dear child. Have you ever been with a man?

Felisa: No.

Izquierdo: Shall I teach you?

Felisa: It was not the way I dreamed of learning.

Izquierdo: I will teach you. Perhaps I would fall in love
for a few days. Would you like that?

Felisa: It would not matter to me.

Izquierdo: I think it would. Some way. What has
mattered to you? What have you wanted?

Felisa: More to eat. Less filth. And the death
of you and all like you.

Izquierdo prepares to take young Ricardo, and Montserrat

71

indicates that he is willing to stop the killings, to tell of
Bolivar's location. But Ricardo turns out to be courageous in
asking Montserrat not to speak, to say instead that he believes
in Bolivar, believes in the goals of his campaign against the
oppressors. Montserrat speaks of a letter Bolivar once wrote, in
which he thought the battle was lost, and in which he had asked
for refuge. This disappoints Ricardo, who wants badly to believe
that his hero would never have admitted defeat. Montserrat
responds by telling him the truth of Bolivar's despair and of his

resolve against it:

There is no man without a time of defeat and an
hour of turning back. Bolivar had his defeat,

he had his time of mourning, and passed through

it. They may catch him tonight and kill him.

But he will not turn back again. I know that as
surely as I know that I am willing to die for it.25

Ricardo accepts this faith, and agrees to be executed without the
mask, without facing the wall, and dies a martyr for the cause.
Felisa urges Montserrat not to talk and faces her death just as
bravely, urging the last one, Matilde, to pray for her children
and all the children that were to come. Hence, just as Montserrat
is at his breaking point, just as he prepares to speak out, he is
encouraged not to do so by the very people who had the most to
lose--their lives.

Izquierdo threatens to bring in another six people, and
Montserrat agrees to talk. Instead of telling the truth, however,
he chooses to lie not only about Bolivar's plans, but about the

number of men and guns traveling with him as well. He lies in

72

order to preserve Bolivar, to give him more time, as Bolivar has
informed him of his intention to ride to another town where he
will be joined by thousands of fellow revolutionaries. He lies in
the service of a good cause, and, although he recognizes that he
is lying, Montserrat does so knowing that the purpose of the lie
is greater than the guilt he bears.

When some members of the Spanish patrol return to the
General's palace to say that Bolivar has slipped through their
lines again, Montserrat is elated, and faces his subsequent
torture and death with a plea for God to come to him, to help him
in his hour of need. One of the monks who serves as executioner
falls to his knees, cries, and begs God to "...forgive them, for
they know not what they do..." the exact words of Christ upon the
cross.26 Initially, it seems unclear whether he is asking
forgiveness for the revolutionaries or for the Spanish army, but
I think we can believe that this monk has been transformed from a
man acting in complicity with the army to one who recognizes the
justness of Bolivar's (and, hence, Montserrat's) cause.

Much of the play centers upon God, the divine right of
kings, and the concepts of right and wrong, for the Spanish
soldiers argue that they do what they do in service of the King
who takes his authority from God. On the other hand, the rebel
insurgents rely on God to deliver them from the hands of their
oppressors, and it is stated that there are priests riding with
Bolivar. The lies that Montserrat tells are told in the service
of eventual good. It is as if he knows that they are lies, yet

hopes that God will forgive the lies since they exist for good

73

reason. He agrees that he is a traitor to the king, he admits
that he has stolen arms to give to the rebels, and yet we are
left with the sense that these things are minor offenses for they
further the cause of justice. Montserrat even seems willing to
pay for his offenses, not only because he knows he has acted in a
treasonous manner, but because lying and stealing are against
God's law. He also must make restitution for the lives of the
innocent villagers with his own. Hence, morally wrong acts, such
as lying, although oftentimes necessary and even desirable, can
be seen to be wrong nonetheless, and are punishable.

Upon Montserrat's death, the General, who has been virtually
in hiding throughout the entire ordeal, emerges from his room, as
does Father Coronil, the priest who advises Montserrat away form
his heretical bent. It's as if the cowards and true traitors of
God's laws of right and wrong could not bear to be witnesses to
the execution of one who was morally superior, and they appear
only after his death, in shame. Montserrat's lie is not the only
one; it can be seen that the attempts of the foreign government
to dictate all manner of behavior, from free thoughts to the
practice of art, from illegal and immoral abuse of relations with
the business community and so on, is itself a lie, for it
deceives the peasants into thinking that their own right to self-
determination is void. Such attempts to disempower the people
leads to the rise of such leaders as Bolivar.

Hence, in this play, Hellman asserts the position that some
lies, although intrinsically wrong, might be useful in the

service of a good cause. In her memoirs and other plays, Hellman

 

rei

as

30

{h

hi

it

74

reiterates this stance, suggesting that she is aware that truth,
as a solid and absolute entity, may not exist, yet she develops a
moral code that centers on truthfulness while realizing that
there may be valid occasions upon which the need for deception
might be valuable. Despite this seeming paradox, she always tried
for the truth, viewing it a as necessary component of an
ethically sound moral character, even if it was an essentially

elusive concept.

What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable.
I tried in these books to tell the truth. I did

not fool with facts. But, of couage, that is a
shallow definition of the truth.

And yet Hellman sometimes defined herself as one with a nature
"given...to absolutes." She surmised that the words "right" and
"wrong" were so "simple-minded as to be silly." But she knew of
no substitutes.28 In other words, Hellman believed in the idea
that the truth was worth attaining, but that it did have a rather
enigmatic and amorphous quality to it. Moreover, it changed as
she aged, so that such "filters" as a fading memory and the
desire to suppress bad or embarrassing moments could possibly
lead one to ignore or revise that which was actually truthful.
Convictions could change as one acquired wisdom or gained facts
previously unknown or unclear. She said of this phenomenon, "I
don't like to talk about convictions. I'm never sure I'm telling
the truth."29

In her most recent book, helhe, Hellman recognized even more

fully that the truth is elusive. The story focuses on Hellman's

 

relati
uishma
or has
SUDpO!
vhiCh
comni
truth
her I
her 1

and .

75

relationship with a woman named Sarah Cameron, yet the dates and
mishmash of recounted events seems non-linear, without foundation
or basis in fact. Many critics have reacted to this, both in
support of and against Hellman's method, a fuller discussion of
which occurs in the next chapter. In any event, Hellman remained
committed to the ideal of at least trying to say that which was
truthful. Her ability to succeed may be in doubt among some, but
her honesty in making the attempt cannot be doubted. Hellman, in
her commitment to truthfulness, remains a compelling moral force,

and serves as a model for us all.

76

END NOTES

1 Florence Von Wien, "Playwrights Who are Women,"
Independent Woman, 25, (January), 1946, pp. 12-14.

2 Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, Trans. Sir David
Ross (London: Oxford University Press, I97I), p. 7.

3 Pamela Huby Plato and Modern Morality (London:
Macmillan, 1972), pp: 55:56.

4 Augustine, "On Lying," Enchiridion (Lake Bluff,
Illinois: Regnery-Gateway, 1961), Chapter III.

5 The Book of Wisdom I:6-12, The Holy Bible (Chicago:
Catholic Bible Publishers, 1960), p. 671.

5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theolo ica, 2.2, question 110,
article 4.

7 Immanuel Kant, Lectures ee Ethics, Trans. Louis Infield
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 224-229.

3 ---------- The Doctrine eh Virtue: Part ll.2§ the
Metaphysics of Morals, Trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Harper

and Row, 19647, p. 93.

9 Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private

Life (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 43.

10 Ibid., p. 28.

11 Kant, Doctrine he Virtue, p. 93.

12 Diogenes Laertius, "Pyrrho" in Lives eh Emminent
Philoso hers, Trans. R.D. Hicks (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1925), pp. 475-519.

13 Adrienne Rich, 9e Lies, Secrets and Silences (New York:
Norton, 1979), p. 189.

14 Ibid., p. 187.

15 Lillian Hellman, The Children's Hour in Collected Plays
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1972), pp. 7-9.

NYI

 

z

16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

Ibid., pp. 10-11.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 31.
Ibid., p. 46.
Ibid., p. 50.
Ibid., p. 63.

Brooks Atkinson, "At The Theater: The Children's Hour."

12/2/34, p. J:23.

24
25
26
27
28
29
30

Hellman, Montserrat in Collected Theye, p. 417.
Ibid., p. 451.

Ibid., p. 453.

Ibid., p. 460.

Hellman, "On Reading Again" in Theee, p. 9.
Hellman, "Dashiell Hammett" in Theee, p. 304.

Hellman, Scoundrel Time in Three, p. 631.

78

Chapter Three: On Truth and Memory

In continuing this discussion on concepts of truth and
truthfulness, I would like to turn now to its application in the
memoirs, which are written in the autobiographical mode. Here, I
will examine those aspects of aging that might mitigate against
total recall, against accuracy. Hellman suggested that the
attempt to look over one's life and assemble all the pieces, all
the should-have-dones, all the "...piles and bundles and ribbons
and rags..." is a futile one at best, for there are things that
one has kept from oneself, inadvertently or with the intent to
suppress, things that need the distance of time to reconsider and
place in their proper perspective. Unfortunately, by the time the
distance is achieved, many of those items of seeming importance
have turned into blurred images, and only their forms can be
reconstructed.1 It is to Hellman's credit that, given these
constraints, she nonetheless attempted honesty, sought to tell
the truth, even though finding it involved great effort on her
part.

Since these works are written in the autobiographical style,
I thought it important first to examine the stylistic nature of
that medium, and to discuss some of the problems it poses for
critics and readers alike. It can be seen that some of the harsh

criticism Hellman received over this mode can be traced to a

79

misunderstanding of the style itself. Autobiography is
necessarily going to involve different forms and constructs than
the novel or non-fiction; since it seems to be a relatively new
field of endeavor with respect to scholastic study, it may be
beneficial to examine some of the work that has been done in the
area, particularly as it applies to the writings of Lillian
Hellman.

Then I wish to discuss the ways in which the
autobiographical mode might uniquely lend itself to a discussion
of the truth, for its very form involves self-examination, the
attempt to remember what was real and what was not, as well as
the desire to attain veracity‘in one's words, all of which were
commitments Hellman sought to fulfill. Her own comments on
truthfulness in her memoirs will follow, along with some
concluding remarks concerning the connection between these
comments and the preceding chapter on truth.

The body of criticism revolving around the concept of the
autobiographical technique is relatively new and, in many ways,
is still being shaped as it evolves into a discipline worthy of
respect and attention. Some of the key elements of this style
involve several dimensions. For example, an autobiographic story
may or may not be linear with respect to facts, date and time. It
might, instead, be written in a rather disjointed fashion, one in
which free associations and connections may be made between two
seemingly disparate concepts which, nonetheless, have some aspect
of commonality. Facts and dates are only a part of the truth,

parts that may comprise a larger, possibly intangible, whole. It

80

may assume the stylistic markings of the stream of consciousness
technique, in which random thoughts are recorded as they allow
the author to make juxtapositions between fact or fantasy,
between the actual events of the day and her thoughts and
evaluations regarding those events. Autobiography is necessarily
personal, subjective, for some of its most basic foundations lie
in those conscious and only semi-conscious regions of the brain
which control memory, perception, and intuition. As these
creative and image-laden ideas are recorded, they may assume a
form that does not coincide with traditional ideas of literature.
Hence, it would seem inappropriate to apply traditional forms of
criticism to the autobiographical mode.

And yet just such an effort is frequently attempted in some
of the reviews of Hellman's autobiographies. For example, Anatole
Broyard, writing for the HE!.12£E.I$EE§9 said of one memoir, "It
is anybody's guess why Hellman wrote heyhe. It isn't fiction, and
as a memoir it reads like a disjointed hangover that lasted forty
years."2 Why isn't it fiction, and why does he judge it to be so
poor an example of a memoir? Robert Towers, writing for the hee
12£5.1£2£§.§225 Review, had an equally scathing opinion, stating

"...a

that autobiography devoid of facts and truth becomes only
free-floating, phantasmagoric rendition of obscure episodes
loosely jointed..."; he adds that since "the facts" are missing,
Hellman falls short of actually pulling it off, asserting that
she must have known of certain dates and their veracity and

usefulness in anchoring her thoughts. He claims that, if she

didn't know them herself, they would have been easily verified

81

through other sources, other people, obituary notices, etc. In
short, Towers feels that heyhe is a failure because it is not
factual enough.3 It is interesting to note that rarely does a
critic write to say that a work is not full of enough fantasy or
that a work is not disjointed enough. Both these men are looking
for that which the book never promises to deliver: a narrow
definition of truth based on a linear plot line, supported by
chronological events which can be easily documented. These are
not Hellman's goals in creating heehe; the title alone suggests
that the book's contents are tentative, that truth is elusive and
not always linear, that memory fades, taking with it all
certainty, much veracity. ”

I would argue that the memoir, as a form, has received
insufficient examination, as well as the fact that traditional
patterns of conducting such an examination (and some feminists
would consider these to be male-oriented, a discussion of which
ensues) do little to further an understanding of the
possibilities of the style. It is true that Hellman's proclivity
for prefacing many sentences with, "I've forgotten" or "I don't
remember" or "I don't know" may be disconcerting, yet they point
to the very idea she tried her utmost to express: truth is
elusive, the sum total cannot be known, life is disjointed, and
impression often supersedes fact. Fact itself may be elusive; it
may be artificially constructed and laden with social convention.

Feminist thinkers have grappled with traditional definitions
of many things, from politics to the economy, from art to

literature. Their objections to these definitions center upon the

82

idea that males arrogantly assume that their experience is the
one held to be the universal hallmark of human existence. Male
ideology, its precepts and its predilection for dictating the
rules and norms for human behavior, is hardly normative, and much
of the effort of feminist thinking is directed at redefining the
world from women's perspectives, in an attempt to describe their
own experiences, particularly as they differ from the viewpoint
of men. With respect to a discussion of the autobiographical
mode, feminist critics have much to offer, for they contribute an
understanding of the disjointed, non-linear aspects of the style;
moreover, the dimension of creativity and the use of intuition,
the vivid and yet often amorphous nature of imagery, particularly
when subjectively viewed and portrayed, do not scare off feminist
critics, who are trying to develop useful critical tools in order
to address the autobiographical form. When traditional modes of
criticism are applied to autobiography, the results sound much
like the reviews of Broyard and Towers, who struggle to
understand the form because they use an inflexible model which
does not adapt itself to this kind of work.

What, then, are some appropriate models, and how might they
be applied to Hellman's writings? In the following paragraphs,
I'd like to present some ideas that might help us to better grasp
and appreciate the autobiographical form as one worthy of
critical study. In 1980, Estelle C. Jelinek edited a collection
of essays on criticism and the autobiographical mode. In her
introduction, she suggests that the discontinuous nature of

autobiography is an excellent and appropriate vehicle of

83

expression through which the nature of women's lives--full of
interruptions and reversals of focus--is creatively reflected. In
addition, she posits that the traditional and male-generated body
of critical tools is ineffective when applied to autobiography,
for such methods are based upon widely different social,
economic, and educational strata. She urges women to forge their
own expressive models, independent of past and archetypal forms.
This new body of literature has and will necessarily give rise to
newer and more flexible critical ideologies.‘
Annis Pratt took up the debate in 1981 when she stated,
"Since women are alienated from time and space, their plots take
on cyclical, rather than linear, form and their houses and
landscapes surreal properties."5 She discusses the fact that
women's works have not only merely chronicled history, but have
added to their stories those dimensions of hope and speculation
which enrich their contribution.6 Indeed, much knowledge has been
gained from the diaries or journals of pioneer women, for
example, but their words told of much more than a wagon journey
from the East to the West. Tales of daily survival, disease,
death, the birthing of new children to carry their hopes forward,
all served to render a more complete composite than a linear
travelogue could ever hope to accomplish. Yet to respond to these
works only subjectively might pose some problems for feminist
critics, whose male colleagues have viewed such activity with an
eye of mistrust and with the desire to condemn such tactics as

being inferior to their own.

Dorin Schumacher proposed that a feminist criticism based on

84

scientific and uniformly applicable models could be combined with
the artistic, intuitive and flexible approach in order to lend
"respectability" to the feminist critic's occupation.7 Schumacher
contends that it would be fascinating to read works of literature
in which the female experience was the normative one, while
recognizing that such creations are sparse if existent at all.8
If there were more opportunity for these works to be written,

published, and studied, women might have a greater number of
chances in which to see themselves truthfully depicted. In other
words, the male-dominated, white, and class-privileged literary
canon has kept women from recognizing themselves in print, or has
harmed women by suggesting that they live up to this or that
expectation, neither of which may have been realistic. We are all
too familiar with Mailer-esque depictions of women: the Earth
Mother, the Bitch, the Rose, and so on. As women decide to define
and create their own reality through the lives and experiences of
their characters as well as in their memoirs, so, too, might they
better voice and verify the truthfulness of those threads which
weave their actual existence as opposed to the false "reality"
men have created for them. Dashiell Hammett once said of
Hemingway, "Ernest has never been able to write a woman. He only
puts them in books to admire him."9 Women can and must write
ourselves, as mothers, as lovers, as thinkers, and workers, for
it is in sharing the details of our lives with each other that we
will be able to ascertain that which is truthful as seen against
the false literary canon which we have been told is real.

The masculinist critic has many respectable, time-honored

85

and traditional methods from which to choose his model:
Freudianism, Jung's theories, Christianity, and so on. The
feminist critic is up against a dearth of set ideologies and
patterns. Rather, much of what she does is reactive, which often
provokes the ridicule of the male establishment, especially if
she should ever be in error. Yet her ability to render texts
comprehensible through either pro-woman or gender bias-free
models would allow for a far richer and fuller understanding of
those universal questions which we all attempt to face, such as
the nature and purpose of life, questions concerning death, etc.
In fact, literature's primary purpose can be seen to be to
describe one person's experience in order to share it with
others, to seek out others who may have shared that experience,
to enlarge our vision of the world and of each other. The
autobiographical mode suits this purpose rather well,
particularly as its subjective nature allows for the sharing of
even that which is most personal, most private.

In such works as he Unfinished heeee, Pentimento, Scoundrel
Thee, and heehe, Hellman effectively shared herself, commenting
on the events and times of her life while noting the difficulty
with which she hoped to attain veracity. In these collections,
there are stories within stories, and the thread of one tale is
dropped on one page only to be picked up on another in order to
further the story's action. These excursions through her past
illuminate Hellman's character and its development, for in each
episode she faced an epiphany, a great learning experience, from

which she surfaced with some degree of greater wisdom. It is

86

interesting to note that, in the memoirs, we see Lillian Hellman
through her portraits of others. We see her in relation to them.
She doesn't really use the traditional diary setting, but,
rather, draws situations and circumstances through which her own
personality and character are revealed.10 Retracing memory is the.
operative pattern, and the main idea of an opening paragraph
often serves as a springboard to another idea, a whole new story,
which is, nonetheless, connected to the first. Certain events are
relayed out of their chronological order, such as the fact that
Hellman tells us of her cousin Bethe's death before she speaks of
their last visit together. It is not my intention here to analyze
each segment of the memoirs; such work has been most ably done by
June Underwood and Linda Wagner.11 Rather, I wish to state
briefly some main ideas about the autobiographical pattern and
then turn to Hellman's own statements about her attempts to
attain veracity while writing subjectively.

Certainly, the notion of pentimento, the artistic term
referring to the ways in which multiple layers of paint on canvas
begin, with age, to show through each other, is well-suited for
that which Hellman sought to recount: the varied layers of her
life and the ways in which they overlapped. Indeed, Underwood
states that, in writing Pentimento, Hellman's technique was to
"unpeel" rather than to build her narration.12 This method seems
to be a reversal of the usual way in which a story is told, yet
reconstructing events that are in the past through the use of
memory makes for fascinating reading. Hellman sifted through

mental "photographs,' some yellowed with age, others torn and

87

tattered, still others hidden from view, in order to make sense
of her experiences, of the things she had learned. In searching
the faces of those "photographs," Hellman often found new
insights, such as in a real photograph of Sophronia, in which
Hellman saw, for the first time and with some measure of
surprise, affection in her former nurse's face.13 She also was
frequently disappointed, either at what was or was not found; the
spectre of delusion reared its ugly head as often as did the joy
or sorrow caused by revelation.

I see Hellman's concept of truthfulness in memory as one
that lives and changes along another kind of continuum, much like

the one discussed in the previous chapter. At one end of this bi-

polar dimension exists the idea that her memory is accurate,
reliable, that there are facts, dates and times that are
chronologically absolute. This notion characterizes much of the
early work of he Unfinished Teeee, for example, the beginning
chapters of which detail her biographical background, complete
with names and places.

At the other end of the continuum, Hellman's ability to
recall events is fuzzy at best; in fact, her capability to know
her own motives for undertaking nearly all adventures, projects,
is suspect, not only to the reader, but to Hellman as well. In
discussing heehe, for example, which was written just five years
before Hellman's death, Wagner has stated that the work is a real
break from previous memoirs, suggesting that the real point of
the book is "...that happenings exist both in themselves and as

images which change according to the viewer."14 In other words,.

88

in Hellman's later work, not much is certain; the people who are
presented in the earlier works, their character traits and
personalities, and even their relationship to the author herself
later bear scrutiny in that their portrayals are often
incomplete, devoid of those very dates and facts that would
anchor them in reality. Moreover, Hellman's own development, the
evolution of both personal and authorial perspective, had a
dramatic impact upon her ability to recall the past, to write of
it with meaning, to strive for veracity. It is as if the memoirs
exist as a collage, the edges of which have begun to "bleed"
together, so as to create the impression that the rigid
boundaries of one piece, which serve as a definition of at least
a part of Hellman's self, have given way to another story,
another time, a different place. The final impression this
collage renders is one in which the colorful scraps and ribbons
join to form one work, one piece: the portrait of the artist.

In discerning the veracity of the works, of Hellman's desire
to attain truthfulness, the reader must use a different standard
than that provided by the use of facts and dates in order to
acknowledge and recognize two primary things: first, that Hellman
was looking not so much to verify things as to verify experience;
second, that her experience might be seen as meaningful at those
points where it might intersect with our own.

There exists another stop along the continuum, one that
seems to lie at about the mid-point, since it contains both the
qualities of total and accurate recall as well as the blur of

faded memory which exist as opposites in this scheme. Its

 

dist
sear
seem
her

that

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89

distinctions are important since they impinge upon Hellman's
search for veracity, at precisely that moment when doing so
seemed most futile. It is as if, at that point, Hellman placed
her own restrictions and qualifications upon her ability to know
that which was truthful, to differentiate that which had actually
happened from that which might be fictitious. The ability to
remember, the accuracy of recalling the past, surged or faltered,
moved forward or backward, progressed or regressed as a matter of
degree. Hellman wrote, "...time itself makes time fuzzy and
meshes truth with half truth."15 In speaking of her thirty-one
year relationship with Dashiell Hammett, Hellman contended that,
"...the memories skip about and make no pattern and I know only
certain of them are to be trusted."16 In the exercise of memory,
truth seems an illusion, tempered by the influence of the passing
of time, by the healing of old wounds, and by the softening of
judgment and ego.

The use of words like "however" and "maybe" suggest this
mood of uncertainty; yet it seems clear that Hellman attempted
truthfulness nonetheless, via her admission that she wasn't sure
of the facts, that there were events she didn't remember, things
she was not prepared to say. Some writers use the
autobiographical mode to intimate that the past can be recreated,
somehow hoping to solve its mysteries, lay to rest its doubts,
while verifying the self. Poirier said, of Hellman's memoirs,
"The act of writing can be said to dispel rather than create the
illusion that the past can ever repeat itself."17 Frequently, it

seemed as if Hellman was able to discern her true feelings about

90

something or someone only by writing about it, as if the act of
composition created some sense of permanence. Even so, Hellman
constantly reminds us that her depictions and portrayals may be
faulty, and that the attempt to re-create experience is fraught
with uncertainty: "It is all like that, yes and no."18

Some of the tentative quality of memory has to do with very
realistic and concrete factors, such as Hellman's advancing age,
her failing eyesight, and her long troubles with emphysema,
cardiac disease, and arthritis. The physical debilitations she
suffered tried her patience; with respect to eyesight, she had to
rely upon the "Listening Library", a service for the legally
blind in which books are recorded an tapes, which proved
frustrating for its lack of any selections that truly interested
her. Hellman mourned the loss of her hot temper, saying, "I know
now that I was often in an aimless uproar, but I am sad that some
of the good anger has been lost to age, and age loses to
energy."19 She was able to admit, with some sadness that she
could no longer be "...that woman who worked from seven in the
morning until two or three the next morning ...[who]...woke
rested and hungry for each new day."20

There were times when drinking some wine made her feel
"capable", but her new-found confidence was quickly dashed when
she found herself in distress while swimming, and was not able to
see the shore.21 Hence, the process of aging, with its propensity
for robbing one of health, proved to be a major factor in
Hellman's ability to conduct her life as she did in her youth.

Moreover, with age comes a growing inability to remember anything

91

with ease, and even Hellman was able to question the accuracy of
her statements, particularly when made from the "vantage" point
of old age.

Another entity affecting Hellman's ability to recall the
past truthfully had to do with the effects of change. A new
address, a change in her relationships, the effects of other
peoples' ability to remember things clearly, their proclivity for
dissemblance, all had an impact upon Hellman's ability to know
the truth about any given set of circumstances. She stated that,
when drinking, much seemed clear that actually wasn't, due to the
change in perspective.22 The loss of Hardscrabble farm, the many
ups and downs in her love affair with Hammett along with their
concomitant emotional charges, all colored or altered Hellman's
sense of reality. Indeed, as she grew, as she experienced changes
in her life, Hellman's sense of the past, of its meaning, of its
relationship to her present and future, were all shaped by events
which were caused by change. In writing of her relationship with

Hammett, with its difficult and tentative quality, she wrote:

...all those questions through all the thirty-one
on and off years, and the sometimes answers,

got muddled and life changed for both of us

and thg questions and answers became one in the
end... 3

Another, and, possibly, more interesting dimension in the
ability to express oneself truthfully, is the possibility that
Hellman deceived herself, supressing information that may have

been too painful or too private to aHmit to her readers. Bok

92

spoke of self-deception as a coping mechanism of the brain,

saying:

Each year we learn more about the complexity
of communication, and about the role of the

brain in sending and receiving messages. We

see the intricate capacities of each person

for denial, deflection, distortion and loss

of memory; but also fzr accuracy, regenera-

tion, and invention.2

Hellman suggested that she was an expert at blocking out the
good things in her life, until the bad times became the only
truth. What, we might ask, happened to the good things she
suppressed, and why did she suppress them? In her way of
thinking, then, success seemed an accident, emerging from some
other effort, not of her own doing, and she seemed absolved of
the responsibility as well as the joy of being its progenitor.25
Bok stated that we are beset with self-deception, by illusion of
every kind, through false statements rendered by others in an
attempt at flattery, by people who lie for gain of one kind or
another, etc. Yet she distinguishes between self-deception that
occurs as the result of factors out of our own control,as when
someone lies to us, versus the kind of self-deception that comes
when we refuse to recognize something that is truthful or that
actually exists. Yet, Bok argues, we tend to know when we mean to
be honest or dishonest, and our efforts to deceive ourselves are
as harmful as when we try to deceive others.26

Hellman's memoirs contain a kind of nagging self-doubt,

expressed by those words, "however", "maybe", and so on. Another

93

example of its presence is when Hellman asks, in mid-sentence,
"...or is that a lie?"27 She claimed that she had actually
forgotten much of that which had been important to her, through
aging, through a desire to forget. But she did also address the

issue of self-deception, saying,

It's no news that each of us has our own
reasons for pretending, denying, affirming
what was there and never there. And some-
times, of course, we have really forgotten.

In my case, I have often forgotten what was
important, what mattered to me most, what

made me take an action that changed my life.28

She added that, as she grew older, she realized how little she
knew about any of her relationships, even about herself, and that
it was "...a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or
time but yourself that kept things from you."29 In other words,
there were times in Hellman's life when she recognized the fact
that she herself was the primary agent against self-knowledge,
that she created her own brand of self-deception, and that the
mysteries that lay unrevealed therein continued to at least
interest, if not plague, her.

What is particularly fascinating is the fact that Hellman
continued to seek veracity, even in the face of an admitted
inability to be able to guarantee it to her readers. At least the
admission itself is some measure of her attempt at honesty, but
interesting contradictions seem to exist as tension points. On
one hand, Hellman asserted that not many of the events, people,

places, and times in her life can be remembered with much

94

certitude, yet in the early sections of Pentimento we feel sure
about her biographical background and her ability to recall those
times accurately. Moreover, in heyhe, for example, she stated
that some aspects of her illusory encounters with the seemingly
mythical Sarah Cameron were certain, yet she contended throughout
most of the book that nothing much can be fully known about any
relationship.30 Are these contentions fully contradictory? I
think that they might represent two different, yet related,
points along the truth continuum that, despite their differences,
reveal the extent to which surety and uncertainty co-exist in
Hellman's memoirs. Such entities, while seeming to negate or
cancel out each other, render'not so much a mish mash of
confusion as they serve to illuminate the richness and fullness
of the author's experience, complete in its endless assertions
and retractions, its changes of focus and interruptions, its
desire to seek out what was truthful and what was not. It's as if
Hellman bent over backwards to assure her readers that she would,
at the very least, try to let them know when she was certain of
something and when she was not. If the critic uses traditional
models of examination and analysis in order to attempt an
understanding of this woman and her medium, he will be frustrated
at best. The use of a flexible, more intuitive and non-linear
critical tool helps to expand the opportunities for understanding
Hellman's experience and, hence, our own.

Certainly Hellman was willing to take many risks in diving
into the void of autobiography, in which the self is laid bare,

exposed, vulnerable to our scrutiny. Yet the risks of exposing

95

herself to the reader are less dangerous than are the risks to
oneself, for the revelations found within could be more
traumatic, more unnerving, than the idea that someone might
disapprove. Perhaps Hellman best suggested this fear when she

said:

The piles and bundles and ribbons and rags turn
into years, and then the years are gone. There
is a light behind you certainly, but it is

not bright enough to illuminate all of what

you had hoped for. The light seems shadowed

or masked with an unknown fabric. So much of
what you had counted on as a solid wall of
convictions now seems on bad nights, or in
sickness, or just weakness, no longer made

of much that can be leaned against. It is

then that one can barely place oneself in time.
All that you would swear had been, can only be
found again if you have the energy to dig hard
enough, and that is hard on the feet and the
back, and sometimes you 85? frightened that
near the edge is nothing.

Here, Hellman suggested that the search for self could be
terrifying, for it might result in nothing, in no more wisdom or
self-knowledge than one had in the beginning. Much could be
negated in such an attempt, for that which had been held to be
true might be recognized as an illusion, created for the benefit
of ego or to hide something truthful that might also have been
painful. The convictions of which she spoke seem to exist as
fragmentary moments of a passing fervor, ideologies lost in time,
for which an effort at recovery is futile, at best. This position
represents one of the end points of the continuum, for it states
that everything is tentative, even those beliefs Hellman lived

by, which caused major upheavals in her life. This notion seems

96

hard for her readers to accept, particularly as they recall her
committed political fire during such times as the McCarthy era
and her stand before the HUAC [sic] committee. Yet it is not
difficult to recognize the effects of age, the looking back over
a long and varied life, with its disappointments, its trying
moments, and its failures, as being just one viewpoint along a
continuum which nonetheless supports other positions, seemingly
contradictory views, which are, in the end, all parts of the
whole, the diverse, Lillian Hellman.

Hellman, in the end, sought to live "decently". By this she
meant that she tried to avoid telling lies, hurting her
neighbors, and violating her own moral code. In telling us of her
experiences as truthfully as possible, Hellman simultaneously
commented on the effects of age as well as on those changes in
perception and memory which affected the outcome of an attempt to
tell the truth in the first place. The result of her efforts was
ably summed up by Adrienne Rich: "When a woman tells the truth,
she is creating the possibility for more truth around her."32 It
can be said that the purpose of autobiography is to reveal the
truth about oneself, and one by-product of such an effort might
be to lead others to discover the truth about themselves. In
creating these varied and diverse stories, Hellman not only has
shared herself with us, but asks us to share our own experiences

with each other as well.

97

END NOTES

1 Lillian Hellman, Maybe (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,
1980), p. 42.

2 Anatole Broyard, "Books of the Times", New York Times,
5/13/80, p. C:ZO.

3 Robert A. Towers, "Ma be: A Foray Into the Self", New
York Times Book Review, 6/1/8 , pp. 3, 36.

4 Estelle C. Jelinek, "Introduction" in her Women's

Autobio ra h and Essa s‘he Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana
niversity ress, I98 ;, pp. 18-19.

5 Annis Pratt, Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, I98I), p.II.

6 Ibid., p. 12.

7 Dorin Schumacher, "Subjectives: A Theory of the Critical

Process" in Josephine Donovan's Feminist Literary Criticism:
Explorations he Theory (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,
1975), pp. 29-30.

8 Ibid., p. 33.

9 Lillian Hellman, he Unfinished Woman in Three (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Co., 1979), p. 79.

10 Marcus K. Billson and Sidonie A. Smith, "Lillian Hellman
and the Strategy of the 'Other'" in Jelinek, pp. 163-179.

11 For a fuller discussion of the actual chronology, layout
and plan of the memoirs, see June 0. Underwood, "Experimental
Forms and Female Archetypes: Lillian Hellman's Pentimento",

Publications eh the Missouri Philological Association, 5, 1980,
pp. 49-53, and Linda W. Wagner, Lillian Hellman: Autobiography
and Truth", Southern Review, 19, (April), 1983, pp. 275-288.

12 Underwood, p. 49.

13 Hellman, "Helen" in Three, p. 261.

14 Wagner, p. 287.

15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

98

Hellman, he.Unfinished heeee in Theee, p. 51.
Hellman, "Dashiell Hammett" in Theee, p. 279.
Richard Poirier, "Introduction" in Theee, p. xiii.
Hellman, "Arthur W.A. Cowan" in Theee, p. 565.
Hellman, "On Reading Again"in Theee, p. 9.
Hellman, he Unfinished fleeee in Theee, p. 185.
Ibid., p. 99.

Ibid., p. 13.

Hellman, "Dashiell Hammett" in Theee, p. 276.

Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice Te_Public and Private

Life (New York: Random, 1978), p. 16.

 

25
26
27
28
29
3O
31

32
Norton,

Hellman, he Unfinished fleeee_in Theee, p. 211.
Bok, p. 8.

Hellman, "Helen" in Theee, p. 251.

Hellman, heyhe, p. 64.

Hellman, "Arthur W.A. Cowan" in Theee, p. 537.

Hellman, Maybe, p. 12.
Ibid., p. 42.

Adrienne Rich, Qe LiesI SecretsL and Silences (New York:

1979), p. 191.

99

Chapter Four: On Courage

What he courage? How can we attempt to define such a
seemingly ambiguous notion? The dictionary definition works as
well as any: "...the state or quality of mind or spirit that
enables one to face danger with self-possession, confidence and
resolution."1 There are many examples of courage both in
Hellman's life and in her work; it is my desire to discuss those
examples within a philosophical framework, while examining the
theories of several key thinkers such as Plato, Feinberg, Foot
and Wallace. But first, I wish to turn to Hellman's own comments
on courage, with an eye to the ways in which her perception of it
serves as one component of her overall moral character.

Hellman seemed to have exhibited courage in her life when it
was time to take no more, to stand up for her (or others')
rights.2 It had its roots in her youth, when she defended
Sophronia against the racist streetcar driver, or when she ran
away from home when thinking her rights had been violated. The
courage to be independent grew during her early twenties when she
began her college career, which led to working for various
publishing interests in New York City. Hellman had the courage to
live with Dashiell Hammett openly, long before it was acceptable
to do so. Her courage came alive during the Spanish Civil War,

when Hellman agreed to conduct a radio broadcast from Madrid

100

despite the danger of heavy shelling. It is an integral part of
the formation of Hellman's political consciousness, for only
after being involved with the war did she come to an
understanding that people were strong and noble in their
commitment to noble causes; the fact that these same people were
willing to put their lives on the line stirred Hellman's soul as
she witnessed their endeavors and grew to admire them.3 She
sought to emulate this courage, to become resolute against
falsity, political tyranny, and discrimination.

The possession of courage does not necessarily preclude the
co-existence of fear. Hellman mentioned several situations in
which she was called upon to act courageously, during which she
trembled with fear, or wrestled with herself to determine if what
she was doing was right or not. She often became violently ill or
nervous during such episodes, sometimes growing sleepy or
listless, while, at other times, panicking over minor situations
that did not require such intensity of reaction.4 In the end, she

made most of her major decisions instinctively:

...Decisions, particularly important ones, have
always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know
that I will have to make them by instinct,

and thinking things out is only what other
people tell me I should do.5

Her decisions have often led the public to admire her, both for
the ferocity of various stands she has taken, and for her
willingness to see her decisions through to the end. She stayed

with her plan, regardless of fear for herself or for others. For

101

example, during the HUAC debacle (discussed in the next chapter),
she was faced with making a great decision, affecting her future
as well as that of Dashiell Hammett. Although she received
conflicting advice as to how she should conduct herself, she
decided on a course of action and held to it, saying to herself,
"...just make sure you come out unashamed. That will be enough."6
It can be said that her behavior at the hearing affected the
outcomes for other witnesses in that it gave them the courage to
be uncooperative with the committee; some observers contend that
Hellman's stand led to the beginning of the committee's loss of
power.

Yet Hellman was disarmingly modest about her actions and the
beliefs behind them. For example, she said that she went to the
broadcast in Madrid not so much out of any sense of duty or
urgency, but to get out of the apartment where she had had an
unpleasant conversation with Hemingway, and because the station
could not guarantee time on another night.7 With respect to the
events of the McCarthy era, Hellman said that she didn't think
she was acting out of any bravado or desire to be rebellious; she
thought only that she was exercising her right to speak or to act
against that which she found to be wrong or dangerous, referring
to the repressive political climate which cost people their jobs
and, in some cases, their lives.8

Additionally, there were times when Hellman did not have the
courage to undertake certain activities, such as during her trips
to the Spanish and Russian fronts, respectively. In both

instances, she was potentially in danger of and witness to the

102

shooting and bombing of troops and innocent villagers. She was
also invited by military leaders to accompany the troops into
areas of heavier fighting. She declined these opportunities,
claiming that she had courage enough to resist the foolish act of
bravado. In other words, she might have gone were it not for the
fact that she understood herself very well, and was afraid not
for her life but for her nature.9 An illustration of this point
becomes clear in an episode from eehhe. Hellman was asked to
carry money to the Nazi resisters for the purpose of freeing
imprisoned dissidents. She was to carry a large sum of money
through Europe, past dangerous check-points and through areas of
great political turmoil. Julia sent a messenger to make these

arrangements with Hellman, and warned her, through a note:

"...don't push yourself. If you can't, you
can't. No dishonor."

"Julia has said that I must remind you
that you are afraid of being afraid, and so
will do what sometimes you cannot do, and
that could be dangerous to you and to us."10

Yet Hellman believed enough in the cause at hand to go ahead and
carry the money to her beloved friend, whose own courage she
admired and hoped to emulate.

Hence, we see in Hellman not so much of the kind of courage
which is foolhardy, ever-present, ever-ready to go into battle no
matter the cause, but one of a reasoned nature, tempered by self-
knowledge and not exclusive of fear. It is not the kind of
courage that announces itself, or is self-congratulatory, and

Hellman often down-plays her role in certain activities that

103

clearly involved her participation, if not her creation. In fact,
in writing of the war in Spain as in Russia, Hellman focused not
upon the great military battles and strategies, but, rather, on
the peasants, their concerns, their frailties and their
strengths. The woman to whom Hellman gave her shoes and their
instantaneous bonding through sisterhood as well as the story of
the little Russian boy who ate a piece of candle as his meal
everyday during the siege of Leningrad serve as better
illustrations and examples of the problems war-torn people faced
than descriptions of military bases and bombed-out buildings.
Hellman's courage is revealed through little dramas, in the side
trips to the little towns, in“her visits to hospitals. Yet in
every episode of this nature and description, we feel that her
encounters with the victims of war expand Hellman's moral
horizons rather than demand of her the usual "foreign visitor"
gratuities, for it is in the peoples' presence and through their
stories that Hellman's political consciousness evolved.

After having left Spain, for example, Hellman read widely of
.political theorists such as Marx and Lenin, and had the courage
to turn to radical thought as the result of her experience,
searching for some answers to her many questions.11 And, while
she may not have found the solutions she was seeking, she became
even more concerned with the plight of the oppressed and she took
on a commitment to defend their rights that was to last
throughout her lifetime. Indeed, the trips to Russia and Spain
were but catalysts, fragmentary stimulants within the mind that

had already recognized and understood injustice and its effects

104

upon the innocent. She said, "...sometimes it is the plainest
experience that speeds the wheels that have already begun to
move."12

There is, however, a self-conscious quality to these
passages, as if the very act of speaking of one's courage or
achievements somehow diminished them. It is as if she wished to
say that such things were private, that actions speak louder than
words which must, in the end, be viewed with suspicion. Much of
what Hellman had to say about her courage in activism is somewhat
tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating, as if to soften or deflect the
intensity of our admiration and respect.

.—

I am, in fact, bewildered by all injustice,
at first certain that it cannot be, then
shocked into rigidity, then obsessed, and
finally as certain as a Grand Inquisitor
that God wishes me to move ahead, correct
and holy.13

Yet our attention is only momentarily displaced, if at all, for,
despite her disclaimers to the contrary, Hellman's courage
enabled her to undertake risky and often difficult projects for
those people who needed her support. She said that, faced with
danger, most people become themselves. In other words, when
called upon to act or react in situations of extreme importance,
people will summon those deepest parts of themselves that
actually constitute their essences, and they will choose whether
or not to respond in keeping with their most basic beliefs.
Oftentimes, the ability to act courageously involves a cost, as

when Hellman was blacklisted for her stand against HUAC and lost

105

a source of income for over ten years.

Another example of Hellman's idea of courage, its costs and
its admirable qualities, can be seen in the hero of her play,
heeeh ee £22.32ifl2: Kurt Muller, who is an anti-Nazi about to
return to the front with money to release anti-Nazi prisoners (if
this sounds familiar, Hellman did say that this story and
Muller's character were based upon the events portrayed in
gehhe). The hero believes in and has a deep commitment to a
certain political ideology and is willing to risk his life as
well as those of his wife and children in order to see it
through. As the play opens, the Fanny Farrelly family is
preparing to receive one of its members, Sara, who has not been
home in twenty years, for she left to marry Muller in Germany.
The couple and their three children, Joshua, Babette, and Bodo,
arrive at the spacious and grand dwelling in the countryside
surrounding Washington, D.C., in part to have a vacation, and so
as to allow Herr Muller a bit of a rest before he continues his
. work. They are weary and shabbily attired; they have had sparse
meals at irregular intervals and possess the watchful demeanor of
people who have had to live largely in hiding.

By contrast, the home is tastefully furnished, large,
gracious in its warmth and comfort. The children are surprised to
learn that the front door is not locked, that they may simply
walk in. Sara, upon first entering the house, stands and looks
about, taking in the half-forgotten familiarity of her childhood
and its surroundings; her husband enjoys her reunion with the

room and its memories while the children marvel at its

106

provisions. There are balconies and gardens, and bathroom
fixtures that stand solidly upon the floor. Throughout the play,
the children will serve as one of the main indicators of the
level of depravity they have all had to endure--one child, for
example, would like an egg for breakfast if such a thing is not
too rare or expensive. Another reveals that they have been in
hiding during their stay in Europe. In any event, they are "home"
now, and the grand dame of the place, Fanny herself, is most
happy to meet them and welcome home her daughter.

They proceed to breakfast whereupon they discover that the
Farrellys have other guests, the displaced Roumanian Count Teck
de Brancovis and his American-born wife (and the daughter of one
of Fanny's friends), Marthe, who, unhappy in her marriage, has
begun a romantic alliance with Sara's brother, David. The main
conflict of the play centers upon the fact that Teck suspects
Muller's role in the German resistance, initially through an
attempt to-place the source of origin of Muller's accent, and,
later, through a secret examination of a shabby but locked
briefcase Muller is carrying, whose contents reveal a gun as well
as twenty-three thousand dollars. The children reveal that their
father was an engineer, that he is good also with the radio, and
Teck learns that Muller had to leave Germany in 1933. He begins
to put it all together, but seeks to verify his suspicions with
the members of the German embassy, with whom he plays poker,
without revealing to them the reason for his interest. Teck is a
member of the diplomatic aristocracy who has been somewhat

displaced by the turns of event in Nazi Germany and Europe,

107

generally, and finds himself broke and homeless. His main
motivation for plotting against Muller is to blackmail him into
giving him ten thousand dollars in exchange for a promise to
withhold Muller's identity from the German officials who are
looking for him. Teck plans to use the money to "buy" a visa and
return to Europe. Even though Teck has not stated his full
intentions at the time of the initial blackmail threat, Muller
stays one step ahead of him by figuring out that Teck wants more
than just the money, and will probably still turn him in after he
leaves the Farrelly house. Muller has no choice but to kill Teck,
for the villain's plan endangers more than just the life of one
man; the entire work of the résistance movement, along with the
lives of its leaders and key fighters are jeopardized, as well.
Everyone in the household is affected by Teck's threat
against Muller and by his subsequent murder at Muller's hands.
Fanny and David, whose lives had consisted of comfort and a
marked lack of understanding of and reaction to the situation in
Europe, are "shaken out of the magnolias" as they decide to help
Muller get away by providing him with the lead time he needs to
cross the border into Mexico.14 They had developed a kind of
revulsion for their Roumanian guest, and the change in their
attitude towards him could easily be expanded to a hatred for all
like him who played their respective parts in the demise of the
"good" life in Europe, for which Muller and Sara mourn and which
they hope to reconstruct. Marthe is freed of a tyrannical and
unpleasant husband, who tried to control his wife by threatening

and frightening her. She and David are free to be with one

108

another, yet she wisely decides to move out of the house for a
time despite Fanny's suggestion that she stay.

The most deeply affected are the Mullers themselves, of
course. Although Sara has had to endure separation from her
husband in the past, she fears that this time it will be a
permanent arrangement, for Muller learns through a telephone call
that he must go back to Germany alone to try to secure the
freedom of three of the leaders of the underground resistance
movement who have been captured. She tries to prepare and comfort
the children for the difficult time that they must then face. No
small part of her job will be to explain to them the reason for

Teck's murder, part of which is provided by Muller himself:

Shame on us. Thousands of years and we
cannot yet make a world...

I sit here. I listen to him...I pray I
will not have to touch him. Then I know I
will have to. I know that if I do not, it
is only that I pamper myself, and risk the
lives of others...Do I now pretend sorrow?
Do I now pretend it is not I who act thus?
No. I do it. I have done it. I will do it

again. I have a great hate for the violent.
They are the sigk of the world. Maybe I am
sick now, too.

Muller takes responsibility for what he does. He is ashamed of
himself, even though he does not exhibit the false bravado of one
who kills for the glory of it, not even for a good cause. He is
morally upset by the fact that he has committed such an act, yet
he knows, and the others agree, that he has had no other choice,
that one man had to die for the good of others. Nonetheless,

Muller will not be absolved of the responsibility for the murder,

109

and he carries the guilt of the act with him.

Then we see the reactions of Sara, who remains composed as
she telephones reservations for Muller to fly to Mexico; it is
clear that she has acted in the same manner on his behalf in the
past. She uses a pseudonym instead of his real name, which can be
construed to be a form of deception for the greater good, a
concept discussed in the previous chapter. Hellman has us believe
that Sara knows she is lying, that she must do it, and that the
outcome is for a good purpose despite the falsity of the act
itself. The greater hardship she faces is being without Muller,

whom she loves as intensely then as when they first married.

...

He's going away tonight and I don't think
he's ever coming back anymore. Never,
never, never. I don't like to be alone at
night. I guess everybody in the world's
got a time they don't like. Me, it's right
before I go to sleep. And now it's going
to be for always.

And it is clear that Muller feels the same way about Sara.

"Men who wish to live have the best chance
to live. I wish to live. I wish to live
with you." (She comes toward him.)
"For twenty years. It is as much for
me today--" (Takes his arms.) Just once,
and for all my life. (He pulls her toward
him.) Come back for me, darling. If you
can."1

She must also explain the situation to the children, who
have gone upstairs to bed. The baby is crying, Babette is trying

to soothe him, and Joshua helps his father to dispose of Teck's

110

body and to pack. He offers to join his father at the front if he
should be long in returning to them and exhibits great
cooperation and courage with his composure. He has clearly had to
deal with difficult situations before in their past. The leave-
taking scene between Kurt and his children is not only heart-
rending, it is the vehicle through which Hellman presents her
world view, and through which she exonerates Muller's action
against Teck with the expressed hope that the combined actions of
brave, courageous, and committed people will have some impact

upon an essentially corrupt world gone astray.

The world is out of shape when there are
hungry [people]. And until it gets in
shape, men will steal and lie and--and--
kill. But for whatever reason it is done,
and whoever does it--you understand me--
it is all bad. But perhaps you will live
to see the day when it will not have to
be. All over the world there are men who
are fighting for that day. Think of that.
It will make you happy. In every town and
every village and every mud hut in the
world, there is a man who might fight to
make a good world. And now good-bye. Wait
for me. I shall try to come back for you.

18

Muller exhibits the characteristics of courage that seem
important to Hellman herself. He has decided a course of action
and is committed to it, whatever the price, even though it may
mean death. He has broken hands, from being tortured by previous
captors, his face is full of bullet scars, he maintains several
aliases and has been known to cross the German border many times,
living as he does within and just outside of its parameters. His

cause is anti-Nazism, and his loyalty to his fellow resistance

111

workers is admirable. Hellman felt this kind of admiration for
those who fought in the Spanish Civil War as well as for those
who resisted Hitler and who railed against the appeasement
agreements. It was also her feeling that people who did that kind
of work, who braved those kinds of dangers, who laid their lives
on the line, were worthy of the highest respect, for their‘
courage enabled them to embrace the praxis of activism while
others remained arm-chair idealists.

Yet, like Hellman, Muller is reticent about his
accomplishments, not out of a desire for secrecy (although that
certainly comes into play in his conversations with Teck) but,
rather, out of a reluctance to glorify himself or to appear to be
engaged in boasting. When discussing one important raid of the
house of some Nazis, Muller says that it is not so much that his
men are remarkable, but that the Nazis are so ill-prepared to
withstand their successful attempt.19 When Teck suggests that
Muller might one day abandon his ideals Muller replies, "Is that
what I have? I do not like the word. It gives me the picture of a
small, pale man at a seaside resort."20 And when Fanny says that
his work is noble, he says, "It is not noble. It is the way I
must live. Good or bad, it is what I am."21 He dislikes polite
political conversations or speculation as to the outcome of his
efforts, preferring instead the work itself, however dangerous,
to idle speculation. Certainly Hellman also held the belief that
actions spoke louder than words, and that there was an immense
difference between those who acted upon their beliefs and those

who said they did.

112

Courage, then, is seen in the entire Muller family. Sara has
the courage to say goodbye to her husband yet another time,
possibly for good, as well as the courage to explain to the
children their father's actions, while they have the courage to
trust that he will return to them. The children seem to be as
little adults, for they have at least some understanding of the
world and what is wrong with it. Bodo, for example, the youngest
child, speaks of Alfonso of Spain in derogatory terms saying that
he grows "...fat on the poor people."22 Later, he says that he
knows it is neither natural or right to shoot "upon" people.23
Still later, when asserting that he is fluent in many languages,
Bodo is accused of boasting. He responds: "There is never a need
of boasting. If we are to fight for the good of all men, it is to
be accepted that we must be among the most advanced."24 When Sara
and her mother threaten to become angry with each other, Bodo
corrects their obviously bad politics by stating, "You and mama
must not get angry. Anger is protest. And so you must direction
it to the preper channels and the harness it for the good of
other men. That is correct, Papa?"25 This discourse is much more
than the simple repetition of an overheard phrase. The children
know (much more fully and directly than would American children
of the time) the actual circumstances of living in EurOpe in the
late 1930's and early 1940's, and have had to sacrifice much in
order to survive in the midst of political chaos and turmoil. Yet
‘they are happy children, who love their parents, and feel loved
by them. The children seem also to understand that their father's

frequent absences are necessary, that they are for a large and

113

important cause, and their own demonstration of courage in the
face of his frequent departures is at once admirable and worthy
of praise.

Clearly Muller himself is the primary representative of
Hellman's idea of a courageous person in this play. She reveals
that he fought in Spain, that he did dangerous, life-threatening
work for several years, that he has been hurt badly in so doing,
and that he has had to sacrifice much on behalf of the anti-
Fascist cause. His family has had to suffer major discomforts,
yet its members seem quite happy and affectionate with one
another, unified in their understanding of and support for
Muller's work, hopeful that the day of freedom will be close at
hand. The fact that Muller has had to commit murder exemplifies
Hellman's assertion that being committed to something larger than
oneself often exacts a price, often is a path strewn with
difficult decisions and morally complex issues. Nonetheless,
Muller's choice is definite, clear-cut in its recognition that to
act otherwise would be in violation of his basic moral code.
Hellman uses this character to tell us that, first of all, this
kind of commitment is needed in the world against the foes of
justice, against the evil perpetuated by those who hold that the
exercise of corruption and violence are honorable and profitable
occupations. Secondly, she posits, through this play as well as
her own example, that the price one pays along the way may be
high, yet is worthwhile if one is truly committed.

Hellman once said, "...fear infects and corrupts what it

touches."26 In her life and in her works, Hellman's moral stance

114

was one in which she sought to do what was right, to act
decently, to do what she could against injustice. Although the
demonstration of courage did not necessarily preclude the
existence of an accompanying fear, Hellman's statement suggests
that to refuse to act morally, for whatever reason, constitutes
an abnegation of one's moral duty and, in fact, adds to the
corruption with which we are surrounded. Muller, for example,
overcomes his fear of his family's discomfort, his own physical
and mental torture, believing as he does that Nazism-Fascism has
to be stopped, no matter the cost. Most of us choose either a
course of inaction or one of half-hearted lip service to a given
cause (thereby adding to the climate of corruption) for much
lesser reasons, and we read of Muller's (and, hence, Hellman's)
commitment with a sense of shame coupled with the desire to act
courageously in the future. When speaking of how we generally act
when under pressure, Hellman said, "It's all been decided so long
. ago, when you are very young, all mixed up with your childhood's
definition of pride or dignity."27 Clearly she understood that
our sense of courage and strength is developed early on, through
facing situations that require of us some response that might
involve the use of courage. Hellman often acted courageously,
against forces of oppression, either by writing of them, and,
hence, bringing their repugnance more fully under public
scrutiny, or by taking direct action, such as when she purchased
a fleet of ambulances for the medics in the Spanish Civil War.
It is the courageous response that typifies much of

Hellman's work as well as her life, as it comprises one important

115

aspect of her overall moral character. I'd like to turn now to
that which some philosophers have written about courage, and
summarize the ways in which such ideas are especially pertinent
to Hellman's own position. Plato, for example, had much to say
about the "Idea of Good" and the "Ideal Life", suggesting that
the use of courage was a major component in that one might need
to act courageously in order to act virtuously. In other words,
if one sought to attain good in a particular situation, such as
stopping a theft or a murder, she might have to act bravely
(again, even though the circumstances might involve more than a
little fear and danger to oneself) in order to act virtuously. In
this sense, the display of courage can be seen as a very specific
response to a particular event, but Plato added that there was
also the need for courage as a moral precept, on a higher, more
philosophical level. He said that courage, when used against a
brute force, such as an oppressor, or against anything that was
unworthy or repugnant, and when moderated by reason and wisdom,
rallies on behalf of and in support of the idea of good and its
existence in the ideal life. Courage, as an abstract concept, can
be readily translated into action even as it exists in the form
of one's character, even as it possesses a spiritual nature.28 To
act courageously, then, is to transform a belief, a commitment,
into real behavior that has an impact upon and against the source
of challenge, whatever it may be. Hellman spoke against liars and
deceivers, against political brutality, and against racism. Her
actions on behalf of those entities verified her moral commitment

in that actions themselves can be seen to be the agents of one's

116

conscience, acting on behalf of the moral position that lives in
the psyche.

This idea is further discussed in the work of James D.
Wallace, who believes that, although it may be more useful to
look at specific character traits as such, notions like
truthfulness and courage lie within a larger ideological
domain.29 He attempts a definition of courage, saying that it is
the exercise of action in the face of fear.30 A11 courage comes
as the result of some other motive, such as the need for self-
preservation, generosity toward another, or in the interest of
promoting honesty, for example. It does not exist as a motive in
and of itself, but rather exiéts in service to a larger goal or
plan.31 With respect to Hellman's life and work, Wallace's idea
that "...one can also regard courage as the positive ability to
cope rationally with fears and to face dangers..." as a fitting
description of the way in which Hellman's brand of courage is
often affected by fear: it exists not as an absolute wall of
bravado and singleness of purpose, but rather is affected and
tempered by the mitigating powers of fear and reason.32
Nonetheless, her courage stands as a strong response to that
which she abhorred: injustice and corruption of every kind.

Philosophically and realistically, there might seem to be
some concern for personal safety when choosing a courageous
course of action, such as a worry for personal safety or for the

comfort of others, as in the case of Herr Muller in Watch _e the

 

Rhine. Some might argue, as does Sara's brother, David, that

there might be others who can do Muller's work who do not have

117

children, who wouldn't risk so much in pursuing a dangerous and
unpredictable occupation. Joel Feinberg discusses the ideas of
prudence vs. courage, suggesting that to act prudently is to play
it safe, to make small gains at little or no risk. Hellman seemed
to cry out against those who might act half-heartedly, or not at
all, out of concern for themselves, or out of fear for the
consequences, political, physical, emotional, etc., that almost
certainly must come when taking such risks. Feinberg reiterates
Hellman's position when he speaks against the exercise of

caution, saying

...some good things one cannot get in this way.
To get them at all, one has to gamble, taking
the risk of not getting them even so, or of
coming to harm in the process. If one values
them enough, one will do better by oneself

to throw prudence to the winds, to play for
high stakes, knowing 5311 well the risk and

the price of failure.

Muller knows full well the price of failure, which extends not
only to the people he might be able to free, but to those who
share his beliefs as well, for they are all in the fight
together; the weakest link in the chain exists in the form of he
who would act prudently, saving his own life, before he would act
to save others for a much larger cause. Feinberg adds, "...that
someone ought to stick to his vocation when his heart is in it
enough to make it worth risking security or health or life itself
is not a precept of prudence, but of courage."34 Certainly
Muller's courageous actions constitute this kind of commitment,

and, as Hellman's character, he can be seen to represent her

118

beliefs as they command our respect.

Philippa Foot embarked upon a discussion of courage when she
raised several issues pertaining to fear as a force which
hindered one's ability to act courageously. She asked who was the
more courageous: the one who had to overcome many fears to act
bravely, or the one who was relatively fearless?35 Is it ever
easy for one to act courageously? Is one any the less courageous
for her lack of difficulty? It would seem that fear can be
immobilizing, that it can obstruct the exercise of courageous
action. Certainly, when we have overcome great odds in order to
be successful at any given achievement do we not perceive
ourselves to have come through a greater struggle than if we had
acted with ease? More seems to be at stake when we have gone out
on a limb, when we have risked much, particularly if the gain or
the hoped-for reward is tentatively offered. For example, Muller
acted without certainty that his role in the underground
resistance would bring about any real reformation in European
politics. Yet he did act, seemingly in harmony with Thomas of
Aquinas' idea that although the passions "...may make us shirk a
course of action by reason, through fear of dangers or
hardships...a person needs to be steadfast and not run away from
what is right; and for this courage is named."36

Perhaps it is useless to ask: Who is the more courageous?
Perhaps, instead, it is better to ascertain that which could be
called courageous for each individual. What might be a courageous
act for me, requiring great sacrifice or suppression of fear,

might come to another with ease, and so perhaps the act itself

119

cannot be depicted as courageous or not. Each person must
consider her risks, her costs, her abilities to meet challenges
and her commitment to those ideals that might require a brave
action. Foot posits, "A moral [person] has moral ends and cannot
be indifferent to matters such as suffering and injustice."37
While this may be true, the nature of each person's response to
that very same suffering and injustice depends greatly upon her
sense of agency: to what extent eee she act, overcoming what
odds, and at what cost? Courage and its definition must
necessarily exist as yet another set of tensions, replete with
those points that represent different positions and levels of
commitment to any given situation or idea.

Hellman's courage and its expression can be seen as points
along this continuum. Just as she seemed to exhibit great courage
in bucking HUAC's demands, so did she decline, out of fear, an
invitation to go with the Russian troops into Warsaw.
Additionally, Hellman risked her life in order to deliver a
broadcast over the radio in Madrid, as well as to carry money to
the anti-Nazis. Certainly these actions came as the result of a
very deep commitment to worthy causes, yet there were also times
when Hellman's fear of being afraid kept her from being involved
in dangerous activities, such as going to the Spanish front.
Thus, we can see that there were times when she acted bravely,
albeit not wholly without fear, and times when fear and self-
knowledge combined to prevent her from endangering herself.
Hellman also admitted that there were times when she panicked

over nothing, and yet became listless when true danger was at

120

hand.

Ultimately, she lived as a person committed to admirable
ideals who nonetheless recognized her limits and acted in
accordance with them. And it was within the confines of her own
personal restrictions that perhaps Hellman shone the brightest,
for in admitting to faults and fears, she endeared herself to her
public as one who could be honest and courageous despite human
shortcomings. This position suggests that we can also be
committed, can also act courageously, and that we do not have to
be Superhumans in order to do so; we can falter, we can even be
fearful. Yet Hellman exhorts us to take up our work nonetheless,
to do the best we can within the limits of ourselves, while
remaining faithful to those ideals that require, at times,

courageous actions.

1
2

3

4
5
6
7

8
9
10
11
12
13

14
Little,

15
16
17
18
19
20
21

121

END NOTES

American Herita e Dictionar , Second Edition, (Boston:
1982), p. 333.

Houghton-Miflin,

Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman in Three (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Co., 1979), p. 204.

Ibid., pp. 128-129.

Hellman,
Ibid., p.
Hellman,
Hellman,
Hellman,
Hellman,
Hellman,
Hellman,
Hellman,
Hellman,

Hellman,

Brown, and Co., 197

"Julia" in Theee, p. 436.

408.

Scoundrel Thee in Theee, p. 668.
‘he Unfinished heeee in Theee, p. 112.
Scoundrel Thee in Theee, p. 615.
he Unfinished heeee in Theee, p. 177.
"Julia" in Theee, pp. 405-406.
he_Unfinished Teeee in Theee, pp. 132-133.
Scoundrel Thee in Theee, p. 614.

"Theater" in Theee, p. 486.

Watch he the Rhine in Collected Plays (Boston:
2).

p. 264.

 

Ibid., pp. 260-2610

Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.

Ibid., p.

260.
264.
263.
250.
234.

250.

122

22 Ibid., p. 215.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., p. 218.

25 Ibid., p. 219.

26 Hellman, "Theater" in Theee, p. 500.

27 Hellman, Scoundrel Thee in Theee, p. 664.

28 Rupert Clendon Lodge, Plato's Theory eh Ethics: The
Moral Criterion and the Highest Good (Portway, England: Cedric
Chivers, Etd., 1966), p. 17.

29 James D. Wallace, Virtues and Vices (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1978), p. .

30 Ibid., p. 65.
31 Ibid., pp. 76-77.
32 Ibid., p. 77.

33 Joel Feinberg, Editor, Moral Concepts (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969), p. 114.

34 Ibid., p. 115.

35 Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays he
Moral Philoso h (Berkeley: The University of California Press,
, p. I2.

36 St.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, 2ae; Question
61, a.3. .

37 Foot, p. 166.

123

Chapter Five: Public Courage: Hellman and the McCarthy Era

On May 21, 1952, Lillian Hellman testified before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC [sic]), saying that she
would be pleased to answer any questions concerning herself but
that she refused to name names; she would not suggest that anyone
she knew either was or had been a member of the Communist party.
Unfortunately, the committee members refused to accept Hellman's
attempt at honor, and, eventually, they forced her to plead the
Fifth Amendment throughout the latter part of her testimony. This
chapter examines the nature of that which has come to be called
the "McCarthy era" and strives to demonstrate its very great
effect on American public life as well as on Ms. Hellman. What
was the character of this dark and gloomy period in our nation's
history? What were its origins? What political and sociological
movements did it embrace and why was it so complete in its
devastation of individual lives? Who was this senator from
Wisconsin and what forces precipitated his enormous rise to
power? These factors will be discussed in an attempt to depict
Hellman's involvement in and objection to a time of, as she would
say, scoundrels. Moreover, Hellman's inner courage and its public
expression are of utmost interest and importance in understanding
her role as one of the few people of the time who maintained any

semblance of ethical and moral conduct.

124

Initially, the HUAC committee was formed in the late 1930's,
with Martin Dies as its head, to investigate claims that certain
elements within the Hollywood motion-picture industry were
involved in leftist activities which might be of concern to the
guardians of national security. Our nation would soon become
involved in World War II; our experience in the first World War
had made us suspicious of certain leaders, political ideologies,
and international events, particularly those of a revolutionary
nature. Actors and actresses, writers and producers were asked to
attest to their loyalty to the nation and its causes, and were
required to make public statements about their patriotic
allegiance. In appearances before these so-called "investigative"
bodies, film industry employees, from executives to script
runners, were forced to endure a nasty barrage of questions,
pressures, and allegations as well as insinuations regarding
their character, dignity, and honesty. Many such "witnesses" were
made to "co-operate"--to reveal their affiliations with political
groups, however innocent or suspect, as well as the names of
friends and acquaintances who also may have been involved with
left-wing "fronts". Many of these names were falsely offered in
the hope of ensuring one's ability to remain gainfully employed
in an industry-related career. In a number of cases, the name-
giving was crushingly accurate; such stars as John Garfield,
Phillip Loeb, Canada Lee, J. Edward Bromberg, and Mady Christians
all died, either by the act of suicide or the inability to make a
living via the blacklist as a result of their appearances before

HUAC or after having been named by a "friend". Many "fellow-

125

travelers" were called before the committee throughout the
1930's, 1940's, and 1950's.

By the time Hellman came to testify, there had been
significant turns of event which enhanced the nation's seemingly
general fear of Communist aliens and their political propaganda.
For example, the McCormack Act had been passed in 1938, which
required that agents of foreign governments register their names
and occupations at the Department of Justice; the Smith Act of
1940 mandated the registration of ehh aliens. These two bodies of
legislation served to heighten anti-Communist feelings, as did
the widespread deployment of Truman's loyalty oath program. In
addition, one section of the 4950 Internal Security Act required
all Communists to register as such, while the Hatch Act of 1951
restricted the political activities of federal employees (this
was later extended to include state and local personnel).

The "Red Scare" mentality was not solely the creation of
those living in the 1950's. Rather, anti-Communist sympathies
were noted in a variety of movements and time periods within our
country's history. Robert Griffith, writing in The Spectre
anthology, suggested that a red scare which had occurred during
the years 1919-1921 served as a model precursor to the McCarthy
era; he also posited that, during the earlier scare, there were a
number of handy myths, beliefs, attitudes and stereotypes about
Communists that could be conveniently revived at any later time.1
In the 1930's there was a notable increase in radical activity
from the members of the left, especially as people reacted to the

unstable economic conditions that led to the horrors of the Great

126

Depression. Many felt that the greater number of subsequent
suicides, bankruptcies, etc., was the direct result of Capitalist
policies, and looked to the Communist party for solutions.

It is clear that McCarthy was not so much a creator of the
period as he may have been its product, despite his role in
advancing anti-Communist sentiment. The political, sociological,
and cultural factors that led to McCarthy's rise began long
before his arrival in the nation's legislature. Thus, when he
announced, on February 9, 1950, at a meeting of the Republican

Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia:

I have here in my-hand a list of 205...a list of
names that were made known to the Secretary of State
as being members of the Communist Party and who
nevertheless are still working and shaping policy

in the State Department

it came as no big surprise to much of the nation, although such a
dramatic announcement certainly excited public outrage,
particularly when it focused upon "questionable" employees of
trusted government agencies.

Anti-Soviet feelings ran high prior to WWI and, although
Russia was an American ally during the war itself, suspicions as
to its motives never quite subsided completely. Part of this was
due to the Hitler-Stalin Pact, an agreement which led even die-
hard supporters of the Communist movement to abandon the ranks of
party membership. Further mistrust of our friendship with Russia
occurred over the appeasement agreements, through which much of

western Europe was re-arranged to Hitler's satisfaction.

127

Given these political developments, it is easy to see that
the time was ripe for intense mistrust of anything that sounded
even remotely anti-American. Enter the American Legion, the
Chamber of Commerce, the Daughters of the American Revolution,
and a variety of religious groups, such as the Catholic Church's
Knights of Columbus or the Catholic Veterans (to name only a few
of the many powerful political interest groups which effectively
lobbied in Washington, D.C.) and the stage was complete.
Americans became truly rabid in their rejection of anyone who
seemed subversive, particularly during the Eisenhower years,
which many historians characterize as the age of consensus, when
all citizens attempted to emulate each other, and when the "good
life" was exemplified by such inventions as modern kitchen
gadgetry. Keeping up with the Joneses was the national pastime.
Hence, no one could express a unique or individual sentiment or
behavior without provoking suspicion. The name of the game was
conformity, and everyone sought its protection. The Truman and
Eisenhower years saw a decline in the nature and the volume of
leftist activities, as these were eclipsed by the politics of
middle-to-right conservatism. Indeed, the primary difference
between the so-called liberals and the rightists of the day
expressed itself in terms of style and technique rather than
actual content or purpose.

Hence, it would seem that this national out-pouring of anti-
Communist feeling, which exhibited itself through legislation as
well as through the media and in the minds of citizens, was

fairly unanimous. Yet some scholars suggest that the period

128

during which the fear of Communism was supposed to have been at
its highest was, in fact, non-existent. Anti-Communist feelings
may have always run high, and were not necessarily at any kind of
peak during the McCarthy's terms in office. Eventually, national
concerns against McCarthy were stronger than a fear of leftists.
One survey showed that, in 1930, most people felt negatively
about a Communist's human and legal rights, but the same sampling
showed that, by 1953, less than one per cent of those who
responded felt any concern about Communism at all. Less than
eight per cent of these were involved in thinking about world
affairs. This refutes the validity of the red scare theory, and
collaborates the idea that the fifties was a time of domestic
complacency or, at the very least, self-absorbency.

Samuel Stouffer conducted this study in 1954, which resulted
in his book, Communism, Conformity, eee_Qhehh‘hiberties, in which
his data supports the notion that the "...picture of the average
American with the jitters, trembling lest he find a Red under his
bed, is certainly nonsense." Moreover, Stouffer states that there
is a positive correlation between popular attitudes of the public
and those of influential figures, while suggesting that such
attitudes are created from the top down ( from the President, his
administration, the Congress, etc., to the public at large).3 His
work goes on to suggest that a prevailing national fear of
Communism just didn't exist.

Robert Griffith stated that "...Joe McCarthy...was adopting
a political issue already sanctioned by much of the nation's

leadership."4 Thus, it would seem that the credit attributed to

129

McCarthy as a creator of the era is wrongly placed. It also seems
that the public itself was less concerned with these issues than
were those who sought political power. Certain politicians wanted
America (and its enemies) to believe that the anti-Communist
scene was an inherent one rather than one through which ambitious
men came to power (Richard Nixon was one such opportunist).

"McCarthy was the product of anti-Communist politics, not its

progenitor."5

If this is true, and if it can be argued that the general
populace became less and less concerned with Communism
nationally, how did such an era of hysteria occur? And what was
the nature of the abuses it engendered through the formation of
such agencies as HUAC?

Michael Rogin, in The Intellectuals eeeDMcCarthy: The
Radical Spectre, supports Griffith's argument that the McCarthy
era rose out of the direct actions and inactions of the members
of certain elitist groups. For example, the Americans for
Democratic Action was a group formed in 1947. It supported
Truman's presidential bid in 1948. Yet its efforts were greatly
diminished by the activities of powerful groups on the right
(such as the D.A.R., the K. of C., etc.,).6 The well-known
sociologist, Talcott Parsons, suggested that McCarthyism grew out
of the various political and social dilemmas facing Americans--
the Cold War, domestic security, and so on.7 Yet the data
substantiates the notion that the entire era was predominantly a
product of the political system and its leaders.

Consequently, the historical and socio-political

130

perspectives which attempt to describe the rise of McCarthyism do
so in a variety of fashions, using a vast array of methodologies,
data sources, and observations. Needless to say, the theories
don't always agree with one another. What remains central,
however, is that the McCarthy era itself certainly did exist, and
created much that was harmful, both to the nation as well as
individual citizens, through its longevity and public support and
due to its malicious nature. There is much remorse in the public
and in the current literature on the part of those participants
who have recognized their error and folly in persecuting so many
who were innocent; the remorse is accompanied often by stirring
admonition lest it happen again.

The most powerful and visible agency of the era was the HUAC
committee itself. Led by such notables as Martin Dies, J. Parnell
Thomas, and John S. Wood, HUAC served as the perfect medium
through which Congressional conservatives could set their
respective record "straight" over the fact that they were not
"soft" on Communism or its infiltration into the United States.
The following is an illustration of the actual number of
hearings, some of which lasted for months at a time, held during

those sessions of Congress that coincided with HUAC's prime

years.
DATES CONGRESSIONAL NUMBER OF
SESSION HEARINGS
1946-47 79 4
1947-49 80 22
1949-51 81 24
1951-53 82 34

1953-55 83 51

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It may be helpful to note that the period from 1945-49 can be
characterized as a time when the investigation's focus was the
Hollywood film industry, and its hearings were conducted on the
west coast before moving to Washington, D.C. This, however, does
not imply that, beyond the time frame specified, such focus was
discontinued. Rather, the investigation of motion pictures and
related subdivisions prevailed into the forties and fifties, but
it was accompanied by other hearings and probes (1949-55) which
centered on other issues, such as a growing concern over national
security issues, including espionage, subversion, and the
suspicion that the formulation of our own foreign policy was
Communist-tainted from within-the State and related Departments.
From 1941-49, Senator Jack B. Tenney of the California state
legislature was asked by officials in the federal government to
head a mini-Huac to make initial inquiries into the existence and
nature of leftist movements within the film business. Named the
Tenney Commission, this committee called many witnesses who
endured the questioning only to be called again later before the
national HUAC. The main reason for investigating the media in the
first place (and the term media is here used to include various
aspects of the radio, movie, television and theater industries)
had to do with the fear that these products were the prime
vehicles for the transmission of Communist propaganda or that
they publicized (to other nations) certain military secrets,
thereby compromising our national security. HUAC believed that
films, in particular, contained subtle yet subversive messages

demonstrating the shortcomings of the American system while

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advocating the viability of the Communist model. Moreover,
evidence was gathered which indicated that the Communist party
had made a large and concerted effort to recruit new members in
the entertainment field, thinking that it could further extend
its influence in the nation, thereby gaining a firmer foothold in
American intellectual and political life. The film industry, its
employees and its products, all came under attack. Hollywood and
the greater Los Angeles area became a prime target for HUAC
investigations.

In an article entitled "The Politics of Culture: Hollywood
and the Cold War," Les K. Adler renders a remarkable and thorough
description of the investigation itself. He also notes that
McCarthy made several incendiary remarks concerning the nature of
Communist operations. In a speech given in 1947, McCarthy said
that the Communist Party (CP) should be outlawed as it was "...an
iceberg in the shipping lane with the most dangerous part
underwater and invisible."8 McCarthy went on to say that
Communists were against human rights, that they had no human
souls, and were, therefore, dangerous, vicious, and anti-
American.

Certainly the members of the motion picture industry were
aware of the sentiments expressed by McCarthy and others like
him. But the studio moguls had no idea they'd come under such
close scrutiny as that afforded by Tenney and HUAC. Nor could
they predict the degree to which they'd capitulate to HUAC's
demands which, at least initially, appeared ludicrous. However,

the industry eventually bowed to internal and external pressure

133

as the result of the fact that its writers, directors, producers,
technical personnel, actors and actresses were being investigated
for turning out "subversive" material. The members of this medium
were also shaken by the possible validity of long-standing claims
which suggested that labor disputes within the unions were
Communist-inspired. Suppositions such as these led to the belief
that Hollywood was a hot-bed of Communist activity.

The film industry was somewhat victimized by the over-
inflated testimony of former Communists who stated that the
network of party members within public life generally was very
large, powerful, and that it threatened every individual and
constitution within the repubiic. Eric Johnston, a former
president of the Chamber of Commerce, announced, during his
testimony before the Tenney commission and in his role as
president of the Motion Picture Association, that all Communists
were foreign agents, and asked the U.S. Congress to prevent them
from holding positions of leadership in labor unions. This
assertion and its accompanying plea were repeated before HUAC on
March 27, 1947, when he called for "...a pitiless spotlight of
publicity on all Communists."9 Hence, Spotlight was the name
coined for a periodical whose purpose was to alert sensible
Americans to Communist activity within the United States.

On May 9, barely two months later, Representative J. Parnell
Thomas and his HUAC committee arrived in Hollywood to start their
own investigation. Actor Adolphe Menjou, a board member of the
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals

(formed in 1944 partly as a means for the self-preservation of

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frightened people within the industry) told the committee that
Hollywood was one of the main centers of Communist activity and
that a number of films had been influenced by the "reds." This
idea, however, was rebutted by Emmett Lavery, head of the Screen
Writers Guild, who claimed that, although some writers,
producers, etc., had Communist sympathies, it was clear that the
production process itself would never allow Communist propaganda,
however covert, to get past the patriotism and close scrutiny of
such people as Louis B. Mayer and Sam Katz (of Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer [MGM]). He further informed the committee that his writers
were chiefly aligned with the liberal center, and that he himself
did not fear Communist activity within the Guild.

Nevertheless, the Tenney and Thomas committees believed that
any tolerance of suspected Communist activity within the industry
whatsoever meant that a) the entire membership of that industry
was affected, and b) that any subsequent films would undoubtedly
carry subversive messages, calling for the violent destruction of
the American government. Moreover, this committee began to
portray suspected Communists and their allies as the ultimate
enemy, as mindless dupes who served as "...light-minded window
dressers for the most tyrannical political system in the world."

Initially, opposition to the investigation and its
allegations formed around the First Amendment's guarantee of
freedom of speech and association, and it was led by producers
William Wyler and John Huston and writer Phillip Dunne. Their
ideas were endorsed by such notables as Danny Kaye, Humphrey

Bogart, Sterling Hayden, Gregory Peck, and Billy Wilder. Those

 

 

135

suspects who came under the committee's fire and who were the
most hostile and un-cooperative came to be known as the
"Hollywood Ten." The following is a list of their names and

occupations within the industry.

NAMES OCCUPATIONS
Adrian Scott Producer
Edward Dmytryk Director
Herbert Biberman Writer/Director
Lester Cole Writer

Ring Lardner, Jr. Writer
Dalton Trumbo Writer

John Howard Lawson Writer
Albert Maltz Writer
Alvah Bessie Writer
Samuel Ornitz Writer

All ten were cited for contempt of Congress for their refusal to
testify cooperatively. They were also jailed and blacklisted.
There were several others who followed this course of action. For
many, careers were completely destroyed.

Initially, the studios were quick to defend their employees
and their products, and frequently rendered heated testimony on
both coasts to both committees. They soon realized, however,
that, despite their ardor, their protestations did nothing to
alleviate the suspicions they encountered. Moreover, there were
several employees who testified that they thought or sensed that
they were being paid to be a part of something not quite
patriotic--they "admitted" to having fears that their positions
and responsibilities may have been used to further the Communist
cause. If the officials of a well-known studio were called to

testify, it quickly became public knowledge. This publicity

136

resulted in the fact that more and more films were being picketed
by angry Americans and in the fact that even the most successful
studios were experiencing financial difficulty. One by one, the
studio heads realized their plight, and held an industry-wide
conference at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City in 1947. As the
result of this meeting, they issued a joint statement which
outlined their hiring policy, stating that no one would be hired
in any capacity if she or he was suspected of having any
Communist affiliations whatsoever. It added that any suspected
Communist employees would be fired; they would not be re-hired
until they had cleared themselves (before a special committee set
up for that purpose). The policy applied to the industry and all
its affiliates. Dore Schary, who had voted against the policy,
was chosen to deliver the statement despite his well-known and
vehement objections concerning the investigation and its
validity.

Blacklisting, then, was the industry's way of answering
HUAC's charges. The fact that such a practice was endorsed by the
film industry surprised and angered many, especially those who

recalled with pride their own resistance to the investigation.

With the advent of what appeared to be an admission of guilt, the
studios turned to the rapid production and promotion of films
with strident anti-red messages, several of which were ridiculous
in their portrayal of what were perceived to be typical
Communists.

Dorothy B. Jones' magnificent study of this flurry of

activity and the interesting commodities it produced is contained

137

within John Cogley's book, Report ee Blacklisting. She examined
such elements as a film's content, whether or not assigned
credits had been altered to protect the studios, and, finally,
the film's financial status. Her report suggests that the studios
produced several films which were expected to net a loss at the
box office, yet the desire for the respect of the committee and
the American public outweighed the need for capital gain.
Communists were portrayed according to the mythic stereotypes
created by a fallacious understanding of them as a people. For
example, Communists were shown as being either boring, top-level
bureaucrats sitting behind massive desks, or as Mafia-style
gangsters who made fast get-a-ways in shiny cars with slinky
women, usually named "Natasha." These films were frequently made
at the "B"-level, and were heavy, pedantic, and depressing. The
basic premise of nearly all these films had Americans believing
that every Communist would choose democracy if he or she but had
the chance via exposure to the great ideals of the West.
Capitalistic individuality would surely be preferred over the
weight of collectivism. Additionally, Communist women were drawn
as being very masculine, mannish in nature and behavioral traits,
a model which suggested that love and romance were available only
in the "free" world. Hence, these films gave visual life to the
inaccurate images already present in many Americans' minds.10
Jones verifies several of her assertions by noting that
there was a marked decline in the production of films dealing
with serious or politically charged topics during this period

known as the studios' "recovery." Instead, Hollywood's film

138

industry leadership was concerned with escapist films, or with
movies dealing with anti-Communist themes, rather than with any
film that might discuss the evils of poverty or racial

discrimination. The following represents this decline.

PERCENTAGE OF FILMS DEALING WITH SERIOUS SOCIAL ISSUES

YEARS PERCENTAGE
1945-1947 282 and rising
1948-1949 ‘ 182
1950-1952 11% (rise in escapist,

fantasy films)
1953 9%

During the six years between 1948 and 1954, Hollywood
produced more than forty anti-Communist movies. Some of the most

notable are listed below.

STUDIO FILM YEAR RELEASED
Columbia Walk a Crooked Mile 1948
Republic The Red Menace 1949
Eagle-Lion Guilty of Treason 1949
RKO The Woman on Pier 13 1949
MGM I Was a Communist 1950
Warner Brothers I Was a Communist 1951
For the FBI

The stereotype of the enemy suggested by these titles left no
room for ambiguity.11

In addition, such notable public officials as Harry S.
Truman, John Foster Dulles, and J. Edgar Hoover gave speeches
which reiterated the message contained in these films, and which

served to reinforce, in the American mind, the idea that all

139

Communists were a menace to the national way of life. This
general consensus of the evil imposed by such a menace was to
influence Hollywood for a number of years to come. Today it is
still somewhat difficult to find an American-made film which
depicts either Soviets or the idea of socialism in a realistic
fashion. Only since China has begun to "capitalize" and modernize
(translation: Westernize) has the U.S. expressed any positive
attitudes toward it, and those may be based upon the perceived
opportunity to further its own economic interests.

It is ironic to note that the highly overt theme of anti-
Communism faded from the screen simultaneously with the timing of
McCarthy's political demise and his loss of public respect. The
practice of blacklisting continued into the fifties and early
sixties, but it also seemed to decline with the thaw, however
superficial or temporary, in Cold War politics. Nonetheless, the
entire experience cannot and should not be forgotten, for many
lives and livelihoods were lost or at least affected deeply by
the witch-hunting that occurred during HUAC's prime years of
existence and power.

Lillian Hellman was one victim/survivor of the McCarthy era,
as is evident in her moving memoir, Scoundrel Thee. Throughout
this rendition of Hellman's outrage against the powers that
brought her before the committee as well as against those
"liberals" and intellectuals who aided and abetted its success,
Hellman utilized a terse writing style to its best advantage. Her
language is direct, its impact forceful, as her readers come to

an understanding of the shock and anger she endured as well as of

140

the very great financial loss she suffered as the result of being
blacklisted after her appearance before HUAC. Writer Martin
Berkeley testified that Hellman had attended a meeting of the CP
at his home in California; Hellman was consequently subpoenaed.
Despite a public statement issued by Ring Lardner, Jr., in which
he stated, with some risk to himself, that he had been at the
meeting and had not seen Hellman there, the committee insisted
that Hellman's history of radical politics made her an ideal
suspect for prosecution. She had actually been named a Communist
in Vincent Hartnett's publication, hee Channels, which served as
the earliest blacklist in written form of the members of the
motion-picture industry.12 HUAC's members knew of Hellman's
affiliation with Hammett, who himself had appeared before HUAC
and been imprisoned in 1951 for his refusal to name the
contributors to a bail fund for suspected Communists. Moreover,
it was public knowledge that Hellman had traveled extensively in
Russia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Cuba, particularly during times
of political upheaval, and that she had been involved in the
Spanish Civil War on behalf of the "rebels."

Hellman's early interest in and approval of the "experiment"
in Russia as well as her domestic campaigns for human rights
added to the fact that she engendered suspicion in the minds of
those eager to prosecute her. Additionally, Hellman co-sponsored
a meeting called the "Cultural and Scientific Conference for
World Peace" at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in
March of 1949. This meeting was picketed by those who believed it

to be a "front" for Communist-inspired activity, and who objected

141

to the presence of certain notable Russians such as Dmitri
Shostakovich.

Thus, she received her subpoena, and prepared for her
defense by first contacting attorney Joseph Rauh, who served as
her counsel during that to which she has referred as the most
unpleasant time of her life. Rauh also defended several other
witnesses, Arthur Miller among them, who claimed that resisting
the committee members was easier after Hellman's own testimony.
Rauh had been recommended by Abe Fortes, who suggested that
perhaps the time was right for someone to assume a moral stance
of objection to the committee, its purpose, and its tactics.
Together, Rauh and his client-prepared her defense. Prior to
Hellman's actual appearance, she sent the committee a letter
which stated that she was willing to testify as to her own
activities and beliefs, but that she would not provide the
committee with the names of any others who may have been
suspected of having Communist affiliations. The following is the

text of the letter.

Honorable John S. Wood May 19, 1952
Chairman

House Committee on Un-American Activities

Room 226 Old House Office Building

Washington 25, D.C.

Dear Mr. Wood:

As you know, I am under subpoena to appear
before your committee on May 21, 1952.

I am most willing to answer all questions
about myself. I have nothing to hide from your
Committee and there is nothing in my life of
which I am ashamed. I have been advised by counsel
that under the Fifth Amendment I have a
constitutional privilege to decline to answer any
questions about my political opinions, activities,

142

and associations, on the grounds of self-
incrimination. I do not wish to claim this privi-
lege. I am ready and willing to testify before
the representatives of our Government as to my
own opinions and my own actions, regardless of
any risks or consequences to myself.

But I am advised by counsel that if I
answer the Committee's questions about myself,

I must also answer questions about other people
and that if I refuse to do so, I can be cited

for contempt. My counsel tells me that if I

agree to answer questions about myself, I will
have waived my rights under the Fifth Amendment
and could be forced legally to answer questions
about others. This is very difficult for a layman
to understand. But there is one principle that

I do understand: I am not willing, now or in the
future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in

my past association with them, were completely
innocent of any talk or action that was disloyal
or subversive. I do not like disloyalty or sub-
version in any form and if I had ever seen any I
would have considered it my duty to have reported
it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent
people whom I knew many years ago in order to save
myself is, to me, inhuman and dishonorable. I cannot
and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's
fashions, even though I long ago came to the con-
clusion that I was not a political person and
could have no comfortable position in any political
group.

I was raised in an old-fashioned American
tradition and there were certain homely things
that were taught to me: to try to tell the truth,
not to bear false witness, not to harm my neigh-
bor, to be loyal to my country, and so on. In
general, I respected these ideals of Christian
honor and did as well with them as I knew how. It
is my belief that you will agree with these simple
rules of human decency and will not expect me to
violate the good American tradition from which they
spring. I would, therefore, like to come before you
and speak of myself.

I am prepared to waive the privilege against
self-incrimination and tell you anything you wish
to know about my views or actions if you and your
Committee will refrain from asking me to name other
people. If the Committee is unwilling to give me this
assurance, I will be forced to plead the Fifth
Amendment at the hearing.

A reply to this letter would be appreciated.

Sincerely yours,

143

Lillian Hellman13

Hellman's request was refused by the committee one day
later. On the day of her appearance, Hellman arrived at Rauh's
office early in the morning, despite the fact that she was not
scheduled until 11:00 a.m., and after several days of
sleeplessness, nervousness, and attempts at avoiding both the
advice of others and the desire to panic. Rauh upset Hellman to
the point of nausea by notifying her of the fact that another
attorney in Fortas' well-respected practice, Thurman Arnold, had
stated that Rauh was sending her straight to prison with the line
of defense he'd prepared for her. Arnold's advice was that they
should notify the committee that they had changed their minds
about the letter, and were sorry for having sent it. Hellman
objected, stating that whatever happened to her as the result of
her letter was bound to be better than changing course in mid-
stream. Hence, she entered the hearing room full of a kind of
nervous courage, asking of herself only that she emerge without
feeling ashamed of herself.

They arrived a bit early, since Rauh wanted Hellman to get
used to the room. He advised her in several areas prior to the
entrance of the committee members, saying that she could watch
the clock and be assured that the committee would break for lunch
at about 12:30, while adding that, if she needed to stall, or if
things became too unbearable, she could take a break in the

ladies' room. The press corps filed in, joining some older women

who seemed to represent some club or organization.

144

The hearing began with some basic questions regarding
Hellman's full name, date and place of birth, and the examiner
proceeded by discussing her professional record. The line of
inquiry soon focused on the year 1937, and centered on Hellman's
activities in Hollywood. She thought they were interested in her
journey to Spain, but writer Martin Berkeley's testimony, naming
Hellman as having been present at a meeting of the Communist
Party which was held at his home, was read into the record.
Hellman was asked whether or not Berkeley's statements were true.
She responded by saying that she would like to refer to the
letter she had sent the committee a few days earlier. For the
purpose of clarification, John S. Wood, the chairman of the
committee, made it possible for the letter to be read into the
record. This may have been a major tactical error on his part,
for it allowed a rather gleeful Rauh the chance to pass out
mimeographed copies of the letter to the members of the press.

This action irritated the committee, which continued its
questioning with renewed vigor and malice, while insisting that
Hellman was not to be in the business of advising the committee
on its method of operation. Hellman's right hand developed a
nervous tick, and she could feel perspiration on her face and
arms. She began to panic, and wanted to ask for the bathroom
intermission, but noticed that only sixteen minutes had passed on
the clock; she decided that she had better try to endure a little
more in the event that the truly bad time was yet to come.
Barraged by questions, Hellman felt, at times, that she couldn't

quite follow the line of reasoning, yet she experienced moments

145

when she knew that to refuse to answer questions about party
membership would constitute an admission of guilt. Just as she
felt that she could stand it no longer, Hellman heard a voice
from the press galley say, clearly, "Thank God somebody finally
had the guts to do it." The committee reacted by warning that if
such an outburst reoccurred, the entire press corps would be
ejected from the room. The same voice answered, "You do that,
sir."14 Hellman was quite grateful for the strength and salvation
of those comments.

Evidently the committee realized that it had backed itself
into a corner, for Hellman was dismissed without further ado and
was excused from any future appearances. She seemed paralyzed,
rooted to her chair, and rose only in reaction to Rauh's loud
whispering in her ear. He wanted her to get up and walk out as
quickly as possible, saying nothing to anyone, and he told her
that she should shake her head to any and all questions. His
assistant would accompany her; if anyone came near her she was to
keep moving.

They reunited at a restaurant afterwards, and Hellman asked
what had happened, since she didn't understand the hearing's
brevity. Rauh later suggested that perhaps the reading of the
letter led to Hellman's release, for the committee was unable to
prosecute her under any of its three plans. One tack would have

been to try to smear Hellman as a "Fifth Amendment Communist."
That didn't work, because she was willing to talk about herself.
Another line of attack would have been to force Hellman to name

names, which she wouldn't do (many critics of this period have

146

suggested that the committee continued to badger witnesses for
names already in its possession). The final thrust would have
been to prosecute for contempt, which was impossible since,
during the testimony, Hellman had, eventually, been forced to
invoke the protection of the Fifth Amendment. The members of HUAC
had sense enough to see that they were in a bad spot, and that
the continuation of the hearing would only lead to public
embarrassment as well as lend fuel to the growing fire of
opposition to HUAC's tyranny.

Hellman was sick for the next several days, while friends
and members of the media either called or wrote letters to say
that they admired her and supported her position. Others did not
call, perhaps out of the conviction that association with Hellman
was a liability to their own well-being. Despite some public
support, Hellman was upset with herself for not having told the
committee that its members were cowards who were quite guilty of
a larger kind of evil. In fact, she wrote several drafts of the
speeches she would have liked to have made, which were full of
anger and bitterness over HUAC's treatment of her. These speeches
also indicated her very great disgust for those liberals,
intellectuals, former friends, etc., who were so complacent in
their acquiesence to HUAC's domination.

Thereafter, Hellman's life changed in many ways. For one
thing, she traded her belief in liberalism for "decency." By this
concept, Hellman referred to the ideals and practices of a moral
code based on personal sentiment and experience, whose principles

centered on a desire for the truth, a desire for justice, an

147

avoidance of harming one's neighbors, and so on. Her life also
changed materially, and severely at that. At one point, she
assumed a fictitious name and worked behind the counter at Macy's
once the money she and Hammett had was gone. It was clear that
her beloved Hardscrabble Farm had to be sold, particularly since
blacklisting and IRS liens against all future earnings affected
any chance for income. The sale of the farm caused great hardship
and sorrow, as is evidenced in Hellman's writings. One day, while
she was packing to leave, a herd of deer suddenly walked into the
yard. She had been clearing land for a deer park at the time of
her hearing, and their appearance seemed a fitting and cheering
farewell and raised the hope that Hellman's life was not without
purpose and meaning as well as the positive pull of future
possibilities.

Despite Hellman's ability to find comfort in less luxurious
lodgings, and her eventual return to the writer's world, the loss
of Hardscrabble and the entire HUAC debacle were experiences from
which she never quite recovered. Hellman stated that her shock
and anger came not so much from McCarthy and the evil he promoted
but from the fact that so few of her friends and acquaintances
raised their voices in protest or came to her assistance.

Moreover, Hellman emphasized that HUAC's abuses were
symptomatic of a generation's way of thinking, and that they
merely foreshadowed such national disgraces as Richard Nixon and
his obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. She further
admonished the "good children of the sixties" for their current

purposelessness and lack of instrumentality in effecting social

148

change in spite of their earlier power as members of the liberal
left. She suggested that a McCarthy-like era could happen again,
particularly if we, as a nation, did not pay attention to the
lessons available to us from our not-so-distant past.15

It is this same point which is reiterated through the work
of Victor Navasky, especially in his book, Naming heeee, In an
interview, Navasky made reference to the fact that, during his
preparations for the book during the seven years prior to its
release, his colleagues could not understand his intense belief
in the possibility that such an era could return, could be re-
created. Since the book's recent publication, the same colleagues
have noted the rise in the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, the
Moral Majority, and the election and re-election of Ronald Reagan
(to name only a few movements on the right). His friends have
since praised Navasky for his great foresight. Despite a
seemingly greater plurality of political views and the stronger
and more diversified base of the left as well as various human
rights movements, it is the case that a new and negative mood has
entered the nation through a renewed interest in the ideals of
the political conservative. Our nation now seems to be
championing an escalation of arms accumulation, as well as
demonstrating a penchant for interfering with other countries'
affairs. A focus on the capitalist economy coincides with the
administration's desire to reduce the departments of education
and human services while civil rights legislation takes a back
seat to lengthy senate confirmation hearings (some of the

candidates for cabinet posts seem to have shady backgrounds).

149

Navasky asserts that this situation creates a national mentality
very much like that of the Eisenhower years, when HUAC was at its
prime. Navasky's colleagues agree that his views and assessments
are, at the very least, timely, if not accurate.16

Navasky, a graduate of the Yale Law School, has many fine
journalistic and editorial credits to his name. As a previous
editor of The_hee_Teeh_Theee and a 1971 nominee for the National
Book Award (for Kennedy Justice), Navasky has also been the
editor of The Nation. Clearly, his legal and journalistic
training have combined to make his study of the McCarthy are
excellent, fascinating, and well-researched. The book also deals
with the collective psychology of the many witnesses who appeared
before HUAC and agreed to name names, while focusing on the
consequences of their acts. Navasky suggests that, through the
state's adoption of the Informer Principle, the witness became,
for a time, not a stoolie or a fink, but a kind of national hero,
the embodiment of all things American, the loyal patriot. He also
examines the very crucial fact that the committee exceeded its
legal bounds by conducting the hearings in the first place. He
states that HUAC knew the names of Communist Party members before
the West Coast hearings ever began, and adds that the informers
were as victimized by the entire debacle as were the resistors
who were prosecuted, jailed and/or blacklisted. The following few
paragraphs summarize the essence of Navasky's argument.

Although there seems to be a wealth of information about
HUAC in its prime, about the McCarthy era in general, none of

Navasky's predecessors ever questioned HUAC's legality. Certainly

150

the committee could exercise its power to hold hearings, to
subpoena, to make recommendations as to the passage of
legislation, among regular duties. However, Navasky argues that
the committee abused its power during the red scare by
inappropriately harassing its witnesses, using undue political
pressure against them both personally and professionally, as well
as through the use of the blacklist, all of which caused great
harm. During the Hiss and Rosenberg trials, suspected subversives
could, at least, make use of constitutional protections via
standard courtroom regulations and procedures. There had to be
formal indictments followed by substantial evidence of the proof
of guilt. There was a jury, and witnesses could "enjoy" the
process of cross-examination, whereby the other side could at
least be known, made public, read into the record. None of these

rights were available to HUAC witnesses. Navasky states:

Congress...cannot charge people with crimes; the
Constitution, in the Bill of Attainder clause,
specifically prohibits legislative incursion into
this area. Yet witnesses before Congressional '
committees have far fewer rights than defendants
in criminal trials.1

It was often the case that the testimonies of friendly witnesses
were gathered by HUAC officials behind closed doors during
executive sessions, which were nothing more than rehearsals for
public harassment and humiliation. By law, executive sessions
should be utilized only when the testimony might defame or
incriminate another person (the committee certainly didn't have.

any scruples over this issue) or when the information gathered

151

might endanger national security or the public interest. The fact
that these witnesses went on to make grand public appearances in
the Washington hearings is itself an example of HUAC's abuse of
the executive session privilege.

Moreover, the politics of the closed session often involved
the making of deals between prosecutors and defense attorneys;
clients' rights were often eclipsed as a result of the final
agreement. Congress itself has recognized two reasons, and only
two, through which a witness could legally be subpoenaed: to
inform itself as to the need for legislation, and to engage in
its watch-dog function over the executive branch. The
investigations into the Hollywood motion-picture industry fell
into neither of these categories.

It is evident that the committee already possessed the names
of the members of the CP, particularly on the West Coast, largely
through the efforts of special investigators, several of whom
were already members of the Los Angeles police force, such as
William Ward Kimple, whose wife was also encouraged to join the
force and conduct surveillance upon the CP long before HUAC's
prime years. They regularly turned in names to their superiors,

especially between 1928 and 1955. Navasky states:

The testimony of the Kimples...combined with in-
telligence from the FBI and countless other
government sources in the business of trading
information...meant that the last thing the
committee needed to do its job was to

accumulate more names. '

Navasky called the HUAC hearings the "degradation

152

ceremonies", and portrays informers as sometimes sympathetic
characters who often were, nonetheless, their own worst enemies.
Many witnesses were friendly to the committee out of a desire to
protect their families; many "reformed" CP members attempted to
demonstrate, for the sake of their own careers, their full break
from the party through an admission that their previous
involvement was an error in judgment. Naming names seemed to be a
way to further ensure that the committee, along with the rest of
America, would note the depth of their contrition, which, the
penitent hoped, would "buy" a return to a somewhat normal
lifestyle, free of the guilt of association and all its attendant
suspicions and persecutions. Navasky states that many of these
witnesses were no more than victims of their own lack of courage,
since they suffered from the effects of blacklisting anyway.
"Ironically, it was the informer who was degraded, because [he]
represented a threat not only to the person he named, but to the
community."19
Some witnesses tried to use the "I didn't hurt anyone"
excuse by insisting that they hadn't named anyone new. Navasky
counters with the statement that there were a few new names
rendered through several testimonies. Others suggested that "they
got what they deserved", meaning that however bad HUAC was, the
CP was worse, and deserved the negative publicity. Some named
names out of a rapidly and conveniently formed higher
consciousness, claiming the need to "eradicate communism from the
face of the earth." Others felt a need for revenge, having broken

with the party over ideological differences. Still others claimed

153

that they weren't responsible for their actions, finding
themselves caught in the bind of conflicting and compelling
forces which left only one alternative: inform. This abnegation
of personal moral responsibility was a consequence of a desperate
need for work, yet Navasky has proven that most of HUAC's
resisters did return to some level of productivity with their
integrity intact. Navasky clearly prefers the position of the

unfriendly witness:

Morality, we are told, is a voice of conscience
from within, in harmony with a voice of authority
from without. We have seen what happens when a
citizen delegates his conscience to the state.20

And, although friendly witnesses may have had reasons for what
they did, Navasky remains committed to the idea that there were
moral and ethical challenges involved which the cooperator failed
to meet.

At one point in time, over 500 writers, actors and
actresses, producers, etc., were blacklisted from the film,
radio, and television industries. Although this number may
represent a fraction of the total number of people employed in
this field, it nonetheless represents the immeasurable loss of
excellent talent. From what literature, film, drama, music and
art might the nation have benefited had it not been for the
blacklist? The censoring powers of a national paranoia was at its
height in the McCarthy era. The evils imposed by this era can
also be seen as a sequence of broken trusts, stemming from the

abuses of power, and spreading to the loss of trust among

154

friends, colleagues, and business associates as well as between
the government and the people it purports to represent.

The McCarthy years and the ensuing blacklist took ten years
from Lillian Hellman, according to her estimate, at least with
respect to her ability to create drama. It took another twenty-
five years for her to be able to write about the experience
through the publication of Scoundrel Thee. She had tried twice
beforehand to write a memoir of the period but found that she
harbored too much anger to make clear sense of what she was
trying to say. When she was able to complete writing about this
chapter of her life, Hellman took the advice of an editor who
suggested that such an explosive and dynamic work demanded its
own cover, rather than a slot within a collection of memoirs.

Hence, the book came into existence in its own right, and in
it we learn that the roots of Hellman's rebellious and often
contrary nature started when she was but a child, and grew over
the course of many years whenever she came to a moral crossroads
or decision. She recognized early on that her family's wealth had
to do with the sufferings of poor blacks, and that anti-Semitism
existed in the world when she tried to enroll in a university in
Bonn. She also spoke of her nurse and long-time friend,
Sophronia, who instilled in her "...anger, an uncomfortable,
dangerous, and often useful gift."21 With respect to her own
inability to be fully involved with the ideals of a political
party, Hellman nonetheless has said that she had often admired
radicals for the serious, committed people they seemed to be.

Despite this inability to be a "team" player, Hellman forged

155

her own sense of ethics, never guessing that she would be

punished for doing so:

...when I disagreed I was exercising my inherited
rights, and certainly there could be no punishment
for doing what I had been taught to do by teachers,
books, and American history. It was not only my
right, it was my duty to act or speak against

what I thought wrong or dangerous.

Clearly the persecution Hellman experienced along with the
resultant losses of Hardscrabble and income served as punishment
enough for that which was, in actuality, a moral stance of non-
cooperation and non-compliance with malicious governmental
agencies and its representatives, as well as with the prevailing
political persuasions of the day.

Hellman was more than a survivor of the McCarthy era; she
was a victor in the sense that her stance gave courage to others
for the purpose of emulation. Moreover, she succeeded in
transcending the experience, at least to the degree that she
recognized the danger of succumbing to the moral devastation and
disaster suffered by cooperative witnesses. Hellman was able to
synthesize and integrate the period she referred to as one of
"black comedy" with the rest of her life, saying, "...that was
then, and there is now, and the years between then and now...are
one."23

Yet, upon re-reading Scoundrel Time for its inclusion in a
collection of memoirs, Hellman added a post-script in the form of

some notes at the end of the chapter. She characterized her

156

position and tone in the selection as being too restrained, too
civilized, and added that she still felt angry, angrier than she
hoped she would ever be again. The hoped-for goals of calm and
tolerance for the McCarthy period itself, and for the people
involved, from compliant "radicals" to the members of the various
investigative agencies, were useless: the rage remained, and was

needed.

I tried to avoid, when I wrote this book, what is
called a moral stand. I'd like to take that stand
now. I never want to live again to watch people
turn into liars and cowards and others into
frightened, silent collaborators. And to hell
zifithhe fancy reasons they gave for what they

1 . -

Hellman's position is admirable, for it demonstrates a level
of moral courage and tenacity with great strength, as well as a
willingness to take on the risks inherent within such a position.
We can only hope to learn the lesson supplied, and to hold to our
own definitions of courage, especially in times of trouble and
challenge. Hellman's rendition of her experiences during the
McCarthy era exists as a living exhortation towards the
formulation and preservation of an active moral conscience, and

serves to encourage us all.

157

END NOTES

1 Robert Griffin and Athan Theoharis, Eds., The §pectre:
Ori inal Essays ee the Origins eh the Cold War and the Effects eh

 

c art yism New York: New Viewpoints Press, 1964), p. xi.
2 Joseph R. McCarthy, in a speech delivered before the

Republican Women's Club, Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9,
1950.

3 Samuel Stouffer, Communism Conformity, and Civil
Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955), p. 87.

4 Griffith and Theoharis, p. xi.

 

—

5 Ibid.

6 Michael Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarth : The
Radical Spectre (Cambridge: The Massachusetts Institute of
TecHnoIogy Press, 1967), pp. 248-260

7 Talcott Parsons, Ed. American Sociolo : Pers ectives
Problems; Methods (New York: Basic Books, 1968;, pp. 530-331.

8 Les K. Adler, "The Politics of Culture: Hollywood and the
Cold War" in The Spectre anthology.

9 Eric Johnston, in a speech before HUAC, March 27, 1947.

10 Dorothy B. Jones, "Communism and the Movies: A Study of
Film Content", in John Cogley's Report ee Blacklistin : Teheee‘TL

The Movies (New York: The Fund for the Republic, Inc., 1956), pp.
196-304.

11 Ibid.
12 Vincent Hartnett and American Business Consultants, Inc.
"Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and

Television" (New York: Counterattack, 1950), pamphlet.

13 Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time in Three (Boston: Little,
Brown, and Co., 1979), pp. 500-725.

14 Ibid., p. 675.

15 Ibid., p. 719.

158

15 Victor S. Navasky, "Recalling Hollywood at the Height of
the Cold War", The Christian Science Monitor, January 27, 1981,
pp. 18-21.

17 ---------- Naming Names (New York, Viking Press, 1980),
pp. iX-X.

18 Ibid., p. 317.
19 Ibid., p. xii.
20 Ibid.

21 Hellman, p. 612.
22 Ibid., p. 615.
23 Ibid., p. 721.

24 Ibid., p. 726.

159

Chapter Six: Moral Failure:

Inaction in The Autumn Garden and Avarice in The Little Foxes

In previous chapters such entities as truth and courage have
been discussed as essential components of Hellman's moral
character. Largely, those discussions have centered upon an
examination of the more admirable attributes Hellman displayed,
both in her life and in her work. The search for truthfulness and
veracity in communicating her—dramas as well as the lessons of
Hellman's autobiographies live as examples of continued and
sustained efforts through which her own sense of a morally
virtuous and ethical code contributed an added dimension to her
writing.

This chapter addresses two plays that deal with moral
failure, which can be seen through the characters in The_heeeee
Garden and The Little Eeeee. The first of these two plays centers
upon a group of characters whose lives have not mounted to much
of anything, suggesting that those who at least recognize their
plight are somewhat better off than those who wander aimlessly
down the path of lassitude and moral inactivity, but only if they
then choose to change their lives, to do something about their
sad state of affairs. These conditions are depicted largely in
the primary characters, Constance Tuckerman, Ned Crossman, and

Ben Griggs, but others throughout the play exist in a kind of

160

limbo in which they have allowed their convictions, their ability
to act, to be weathered away by indecision, the love of
convention, and the intense desire to avoid self-examination at
all costs.

In the second play, the greed and avarice demonstrated by
Regina Hubbard and her brothers strikes the reader/playgoer as
most repugnant, and exemplify the kind of moral failure that
occurs when one person's desire for money, power and status
overrides his or her ability to act virtuously. Regina even
allows her husband to die rather than help him with the very
medicine that would save his life. Yet Hellman meant this play to
demonstrate that there are other Reginas in the world; she had
meant not to draw her as such an evil figure, but to encourage us
to recognize our own symptoms of moral failure through our own
displays of greed and avarice.

Again I wish to use the theme of the continuum along which
to place the moral ideas of these plays. Hellman was quite
committed to action as the only appropriate response to a morally
challenging situation, as we have seen in the examples of
Montserrat and Herr Muller. To fail to act when one is clearly
called upon to do so constitutes a kind of moral failure of its
own, for the person turns his back not only upon the chance to
change any given situation, but oftentimes refuses to acknowledge
its importance in the first place as well as the idea that he has
the power to change it. It is as if this person lives with
blinders on, either refusing to admit that there are problems in

the world or within his own moral code which require action,

161

which demand a response, or ignoring anything that lies outside
the perimeters of his own narrow schemata. At one end of the
"moral praxis" continuum, then, lies a point which denotes the
inactivity of the morally insensitive, the morally lazy, morally
blind, or the arrogant, who choose not to act out of a kind of
torpor or out of a belief that they are above any need for the
examination of a possibly faulty conscience. Then there are the
people who would rather not be "shaken out of the magnolias" such
as the members of the Farrelly family; they would seek the
comfort of their isolationism to any committed interaction and
involvement with others, with their communities, and so on. The
characters in The Autumn Garden represent this sort of end point,
for in their wasted lives are found the roots and the seeds of
moral lassitude and, hence, moral failure.

At the same end of the moral failure spectrum (yet different
in the degree or the intensity of their representation of evil)
lie the greedy and money-hungry of the world, embodied in the
form of the Hubbards in The Little Eeeee, who seek fame and
fortune on the backs of those they dominate. Oppressive and vain,
they consider their wants and needs to be of much greater
importance than any one else's sorrows or suffering. Hence, their
methods are unscrupulous, their goals dishonorable, their victims
people who remain disempowered and poor despite a new source of
income for the sleepy southern town in which they all live, which
undergoes a kind of transformation as the result of the influx of
northern money for the purposes of industrialization. The

capitalist investors seek to move their textile production

162

facility closer to the source of cotton: the South. And in so
doing, they bring their brand of oppression and domination, which
can be seen to be the larger and community-wide results of their
own personal forms of avarice and greed. The Hubbards hope to
gain great riches through this mesalliance, and the queen bee of
the entire operation is Regina, whose attempts at courting money
are no less vicious than her desire to control those within her
reach.

We have, then, two plays which both center upon the theme of
moral failure, whether it be through the open exercise of evil or
through a lack of action, an inability to direct one's life with
any worthwhile goals in view.-In each drama, there are characters
who are outright demoniac, characters whose private designs
create the aura of immorality that pervades each play. In The
Autumn Garden, each and every character seems affected by an
inability to act. The location of their gathering is a somewhat
faded and dilapidated summer vacation inn, owned by Constance
Tuckerman, which is visited yearly by some regulars, and which,
for the first time in twenty years, will be the site of a reunion
of sorts between Constance and her former beau, Nick Denery, who
uses his charms and wiles to meddle in the affairs of every
guest.

Initially, all the visitors speak of how wonderful it is to
be reunited again, but it is not long before the entire pleasant
.facade breaks down in the face of confessions and confrontations,
all of which force the individuals involved to take a long hard

look at themselves in their state of moral confusion and

163

misdirection. Constance is having a hard time making ends meet,
and her situation is complicated by the fact that she has taken
on the care of a niece, Sophie, who is a foreigner and who would
rather return to her homeland, despite its aura of political and
economic turmoil. Constance is deluded in thinking that she has
done the niece a great service by removing her from a seemingly
unpleasant situation; this delusion spills over into her
expectations about seeing Nick again as well as into her
fantasies as to Crossman's feelings for her. Evidently he once
did care for her, as did Denery, but both use her as an excuse
for the fact that neither of them has conducted his life in a
morally worthwhile and meaningful fashion. The shattering of
Constance's delusions comprises much of the play's action.

Other guests face some illusion-shattering as well. There is
the Ellis family, composed of grandma, mother, and son. Mrs.
Ellis is a pretty sharp character. She speaks the truth and sees
failure in her daughter and her grandson. She is not taken in by
Denery and his tactics, she has great sympathy and understanding
for her grandson and his plans to marry Sophie, despite the fact
that he seems to be rather taken with a poet named Payson (who,
after all, wants Frederick only for his money). Mrs. Ellis
controls the purse strings, and rigs it so that Frederick will
not be able to keep his travel arrangements with Payson by
withdrawing his financial allotment. She quite rightly feels that
she is helping her grandson by not allowing him to squander
himself on such a parasitic leech, but it is clear that she is

manipulative in her own way, and that that mahipulation can be

164

seen to be unseemly, but at least she is quite clear about what
she is doing and why she is doing it. This is a refreshing change
from the other characters, including her daughter, Carrie, who
seeks to control everything Frederick does, including his travel
and marriage plans. If one good thing comes of Mrs. Ellis' denial
of funds, it is that it leads Frederick to face the fact that,
penniless, Payson no longer wants his company. Frederick
undergoes an examination of conscience which allows him to see
that he has been duped, but which, unfortunately, does not allow
him to rise above his mother's control, and he remains one of the
characters unable to make decisions for himself, unable to stand
on his own with some sense of—autonomy. As such, he lets Sophie
slip through his hands, for he has not the courage to resist his
mother's demands that she take him away for a while. Hence, the
Ellises remain, generally speaking, without moral resolve,
incapable of changing the torpor that dominates and characterizes
their condition.

Then there are Rose and Ben Griggs. Rose is a sort of silly
woman who giggles a great deal, and who manipulates her husband.
He wishes to have a divorce, recognizing the many years he has
wasted in Rose's and the military's service; he hopes to be able
just to be by himself, to read for a while, to do what he
pleases. He wants to spend his final days doing everything,
anything that might matter to him, that might alleviate the sense
of purposelessness that typifies his existence. Yet, just as his
hopes seem about to be fulfilled, Rose informs him that she has a

heart condition, and asks him to stay with her just for a year.

165

He acquiesces, partly out of a real sense of caring for her, and
partly out of his fear that others will find him despicable for
any refusal he might render. One of the major speeches of the
play (awkwardly written by Hellman and later re-written by
Hammett) and the one which best sums up the play's main theme

demonstrates his understanding of his condition:

So at any given moment you're only the sum of
your life up to then. There are no big moments
you can reach unless you've had a pile of
smaller moments to stand on. That big hour of
decision, the turning point in your life, the
someday you've counted on when you'd suddenly
wipe out your past mistakes, do the work you'd
never done, think the way you'd never thought,
have what you'd never had--it just doesn't

come suddenly. You've trained yourself for it
while you waited--or you've let it all run past
you and fritteied yourself away. I've frittered
myself away...

Yet he is somewhat grateful that he won't have to be out on his
own, which he expresses by saying that perhaps he is actually
relieved that this condition prevents him from leaving: "I am not
any too sure I didn't partly welcome the medical opinion that
made it easier for me to give up...I don't like Rose...I'll live
to like her less.2

Crossman is in similar straits, for he has intentionally
wasted his life. As the result of a long-unrequited love for
Constance and its immobilizing effects on Crossman's ability to
proceed with a meaningful life, he goes through the motions of a
routine filled with banality, wandering aimlessly from bar to

bar, returning to his sleeping room long enough to get a few

166

hour's rest before going to work. He has held dearly to his
fantasy that his life may have had meaning if only Constance had
returned his affections. He has effectively built his life upon
false hope, which is yet another form of self-deception.
Constance furthers this fantasy by being secretly pleased when
Denery suggests that Crossman has been pining away for her
through all the years, yet the accuracy of her delusion must be
challenged by the fact that Crossman actually loves her no
longer. He merely allows the fact that she did not return his
sentiment to serve as a barrier that separated him from reality.
He prefers to believe that he would have amounted to something if
only Constance had not stood in his way, and states this to her,

saying,

All these years I told myself that if you'd
loved me everything would have been different.
I'd have had a good life, been worth something
to myself...I not only wasted myself, I want-
ed it that way...

I've kept myself busy looking into other
people's hearts so I wouldn't have to look
into my own. If I made you think I was still in
love, I'm sorry. Sorry I fooled you and sorry
I fooled myself. And I've never liked liags--
least of all those who lie to themselves.

In holding to his false dream and its impossible hope, the years
pass, and Crossman finds himself in middle-age, evaluating the
time he has lived, recognizing that he has used his fantasy about
Constance as a means to an end: the avoidance of agency, of self-
actualization, of autonomy. He has prevented himself from living

with meaning and purpose; his only salvation is in recognizing

167

his condition. Yet this, too, is a limited form of epiphany, for
theory devoid of action remains an incomplete response to such
insight, and the play ends before we know just what Crossman's
next move will be.

Constance is also shattered by the recognition that she has
spent too many years mourning the loss of Denery twenty years.
before. He is an artist, and returns with his chic yet
compassionate wife, ostensibly to enjoy the fellowship of the
reunion, but more accurately to try to make some money in
painting a companion portrait of Constance to show side-by-side
with the one he painted when they were twenty years younger. He
displays all manner of charm and elan, only to reveal himself as
a manipulative and scheming meddler whose actions nonetheless
serve as catalysts through which others might recognize their
failings. Yet he, too, admits to his own faults, partly through
the fact that his wife, Nina, confronts him with them, and partly
through the admission that he has used people in the past to
further his own ends. Through the course of the play, Constance
recognizes that she has looked forward to his return with too
much anticipation, that he has proven himself a scoundrel, and
that she was at fault for not wanting to recognize his short-
comings, particularly as they affected her and her niece, in
whose bed he sleeps after drinking too much champagne. This
causes a great scandal in the small and gossipy town; the
neiShbor's reactions force Constance to close the house. Denery
leaves without ever saying good-bye (while imposing upon his wife

to clean up his detestable leavings), and Constance realizes that

168

she has been lying to herself all those years. 4 The
disappointment she has suffered at the hands of Denery is
compounded by the recognition that Crossman no longer loves her,
and she is left saddened and dismayed by the level of deception
(most of which she caused herself) that existed in her life. At
the play's end, she invites Crossman to a movie, indicating that
perhaps their lives will go on anyhow, that they are people who
can still enjoy one another's company, yet Crossman's statement
that he will not be returning to the resort in subsequent years
renders the suggestion that he is fed up with the charade and no
longer wishes to participate in the continued battle of self-
deception. Going to the movies will not restore relationships
that were based upon faulty premises in the first place, and the
drama ends with a sense of the dwindling, the diminution, of
valuable human resources: the characters' own dignity and sense
of worth.

Hence, the play's main characters each undergo a kind of
self-analysis, through which they recognize their state of
immobilization through a recognition of the mistakes and
illusions with which their lives are imbued. The only character
who has a plan of action, a course to follow is Sophie, who
realizes that Frederick will not marry her, and who wishes to
return to Europe despite an uncertain future there. At least she
intends to he something. The others, shaken from their delusions,
do not give the impression that their lives will change in any
definite or observable way; we feel especially sorry for Griggs,

who commits himself to a woman he intensely dislikes, and,

169

although we might fault him for his indecision and lack of
action, we nonetheless acknowledge his desire to help another in
trouble. He is clearly trapped, even though much of the trap is
of his own making.

As critic Kimball King has suggested, most of the characters
in this play suffer from a Chekhovian paralysis of will, which
limits their ability to conduct themselves with certitude, with
purpose.5 Crossman can be seen to be the "...engaging but
faithless modern man who reflects the shallowness and instability
of the times."6 Indeed, none of the play's characters seems to
understand or be involved with larger issues, such as political
commitments, or moral casuistical questions. Instead, they are
each caught up in the amazingly trivial and meaningless details
of their own lives, concerned only with the ways in which they
might intersect with the lives of others, and even then only long
enough to ascertain whether or not that junction will be of any
benefit or use to them, as in the case of the Denerys. Constance
lives for Nick's return; Griggs hopes to divorce Rose, Crossman
would like only to get through the day. Each person exists in a
kind of dream-like realm in which someone else's presence,
activity, or lack of involvement creates either false hope or
disillusionment which is, nonetheless, devoid of resolution
through action.

In The Little Teeee, we meet yet another cast of characters
who seem interested in each other only to the extent that one
might benefit from such association, and primarily in order to

gain wealth or power through such union. This is achieved here

170

through nasty manipulation and the display of avarice and greed.
Blackmail is rampant throughout this drama, and seems to serve as
one of Hellman's preferred methods for depicting personal power
plays. One critic has said that, in this play, the baseness of
human nature is at hand in all its glory, while adding that most
of Hellman's plays deal with some level of moral failure which
often becomes more evident as it is seen in contrast to someone
who is morally good, as is the case between Teck and Muller in
EEEEE.2§.£EE.§E££E-7 Here we have Oscar and Ben Hubbard, two
merchants out to make it big, to strike it rich, egged on by
their money-hungry and society-page conscious sister, Regina. She
is married to banker Horace Giddens, who is away in the north in
a hospital, seeking treatment for a bad heart. Regina and her
brothers scheme with a Mr. Marshall of Chicago, who wishes to
bring his textile mill to their southern town, in order to
maximize profits through savings on transportation, the free
water he has been promised, and cheaper labor through the
willingness of poor blacks and mountain whites to work for next
to nothing. Marshall represents the heavy hand of capitalism at
its best, for his goal is to increase his profits as the result
of his oppressive policies towards the laborers. The Hubbards are
fully aware of his tactics and the impact they will have on the
community, for their own father made his fortune by lending goods
and money to blacks at highly inflated interest rates, and by
selling salt at exorbitant prices to the Union soldiers during
the Civil War.8 They are merchants, who represent the desire of

the middle class to be fully respected members of the upper

171

echelon through an increase in their financial worth. They think
that the acquisition of wealth will make them more readily
acceptable to those they wish to impress, and whose respect they
desire.

They each have families. Oscar Hubbard is married to Birdie,
a fading beauty who represents the decline of the more genteel
aspects of the Old South, particularly as she longs for the
restoration of her beloved childhood home, Lionnet, a plantation
on which the blacks were loved and treated "well", and upon which
no one ever lost his temper, as her father had claimed. Later in
the play we learn that she drinks privately, and in great
amounts. She does this partly-in order to console herself as to
her loss of stature and grace after the transference of Lionnet
to Oscar Hubbard, whom she has married. His brother, Ben, wanted
its cotton, and Oscar remained pleasant long enough to give the
semblance of a suitor, and Birdie was, initially, pleased with
him and his attentions. But we learn that it is a marriage which
has as its base financial considerations, and, as such, Birdie's
pleasure is short-lived, particularly as she observes traits in
Oscar that are less than genteel: he is cruel. He shoots game for
the sheer joy of killing, and brings down so many birds,
squirrels, and rabbits that the poor blacks have no game for
themselves. They would give anything for a piece of meat, yet
Oscar has terrorized them by threatening to harm them if they
should be caught hunting in the area. He wants all of the game
for himself, but he doesn't use any of it, and we see the display

of his greed, particularly as measured against the very real

172

needs of those people for whom Oscar has no compassion. He is
also cruel to Birdie; he slaps her hard during the play's action
when she oversteps her "bounds", and, upon other occasions, he is
controlling and domineering. She is fairly afraid of him, and can
only reveal her true feelings when she is rather drunk.10 She
warns her niece, Alexandra, by saying that, if she is not
careful, the family members will manipulate her, too, and the
warning comes none too soon. Oscar tries to negotiate Alexandra's
marriage with his reprobate son, Leo, hoping that such a union
will secure his son's financial future. This dealing in people's
lives is yet another example of the depths to which the Hubbards
are willing to stoop, and we are sympathetic to Birdie's plight.
Oscar's brother Ben is a bit brighter than his siblings, yet
his desire for money at any level, at any cost, finds him in
several negotiations, ever eager to strike a bargain, a
compromise, provided that the end result produces an increase in
his assets. He is eager to keep everybody happy and tries to go
along with every new deal that is struck. He is pragmatic in his
approach, and his desire to see the construction of the new mill
dictates his reasoning and his responses. He even agrees to
Oscar's plans for Leo and Alexandra, for it is in his best
interest to keep Oscar content with the arrangement, through
which Regina's larger share (which she has been able to demand
because Horace's money is so badly needed) is made from Oscar's
reduced allotment of the family riches. Even Regina, who has
nothing but disgust for Leo (who can discuss only his ladies in

Mobile and his fast horses), puts off confronting the actual

173

marriage arrangements until a later time in an effort to soothe
Oscar's anxieties. As such, she joins Ben in his efforts to allay
fears and contain dissent.

Regina and Horace's daughter, Alexandra, is close to her
father but wary of her mother, for, though she is young and
somewhat naive, she has nevertheless been an observer of the
decline in her father's condition as well as a witness to her
parents' domestic squabbles and is able to envision a cause-and-
effect relation. She misses her father while he is away, and
rejoices when she is asked to go and bring him home. The reason
for his return? The scheming Hubbards need his money to invest in
their share of the proposed mill, and they wish to bring Horace
home not out of concern that he should recouperate among loved
ones, as Regina suggests, but rather to gain access to his money.
Thus Alexandra is dispatched to Baltimore to accompany her father
upon his trip.

He is seriously ill; Regina knows this and yet risks his
health in requesting that he travel because of her greed and her
desire to be accepted into society as a woman of great riches and
good breeding. Her calculations are base enough to include
deception, for she has Alexandra deliver the message that she
wants her husband to return to her, that she has missed him. We
find out later in the play that Horace had been very much in love
with Regina at the time of their marriage, but that she
envisioned their union only as a means to an end: her secured
financial future. When she discovered that Horace was not going

to conduct his life in the pursuit of riches at any cost, as did

174

her father, she realized that he could not provide the kind of
life-style to which she aspired, and she turned from him, both in
personal feeling and with respect to the marriage-bed with its
attendant responsibilities and delights. She also lied to Horace,
in that she stated that she had seen a physician who had
determined that she was not well; therefore, Horace was not to
approach her sexually any longer. When he acquiesced, she turned
from him further, disgusted at a man who could not see through
her devices. She informs him during the play's last few scenes
that she had lied to him then, and the horror that he
experiences, both at her deception and her manipulation of him is
compounded by the painful recognition that she never did love
him. This realization leads to Horace's heart attack, and the
death-scene ensues. He reaches for the medicine bottle which is
placed on a nearby table, but the bottle drops and the medicine
spills out. Regina stands by, watching his misery, refusing to
call the servant, Addie, to get the spare bottle. Horace
collapses and Regina waits a fair amount of time before she
suddenly calls for help, but, of course, it is too late.11

Regina allows Horace to become unconscious and then to die
for he has really fixed her financial future, and she doesn't
like the deal. Horace had refused to invest in the cotton mill,
for he detested the kind of subsequent suffering it would cause,
and he despised the kind of greed that was so clearly evident in

his wife and her family.

I'm sick of you, sick of this house, sick of
my life here. I'm sick of your brothers and

175

their dirty tricks to make a dime. Why should
I give you the money? To pound the bones of
this town to make dividends for you to spend?
You wreck the town, you and your brothers,
pee wreck the town and live on it. Not me.
Maybe it's easy for the dying to be honest.
But it's not my fault I'm dying. I'll do no
more harm now. I've done enough. I'll die
my own way. And I'll do it without making

the world any worse. I leave that to you.12

Horace has come to a moral realization that all Regina is,

all that she stands for, is rooted in greed. He refuses to be a
part of that arrangement, and will have nothing to do with her
plans. However, Leo has made it known to his father and uncle
that Horace possess some bonds that are negotiable as cash, and
that, although Horace keeps them in a safety deposit box at his
bank, Leo has access to the keys. The Hubbards make plans for Leo
to steal the bonds, and Oscar travels to Chicago to finalize the
deal with Marshall. Horace discovers the theft, but decides to
say that he has loaned the money, thereby fixing it so that
Regina's financial future will be nothing, for he changes his
will, bequeathing to her only the missing bonds. She is furious,
of course, and then unleashes her fury through the ugly, nasty
scene that leads to Horace's death. Yet despite the sense we may
have that her hands are tied, it is a temporary illusion, for
Regina's greed is the kind that prevails even in times of
disappointment and through major set-backs; we can believe that
she and all those like her will continue in their attempts to
gain access to money and power through the sufferings of others.
It is interesting to note that Hellman makes many of her

moral observations through the eyes (and, therefore, speeches) of

176

the servants, as if to say that the disempowered and the
oppressed can recognize the oppression for what it is and can
speak of it clearly and simply. Addie recognizes the kind of
greed that exists before her eyes, for it is has affected her and

her people throughout history.

Yeah, they got might well-off cheating
niggers. Well, there are people who eat

the earth and eat all the people on it like
in the Bible with the locusts. And other
people who stand around and watch them eat
it. Sometimes I think it ain't right to
stand and watch them do it.13

She sees very clearly the nature of the greed that constitutes
this kind of moral failure. There is the misconception that money
brings happiness in the first place, and the love of power with
its concommitant devices and abuses of others is seen to be the
source of evil in the characters who embrace these destructive
desires. Addie speaks these words in the presence of Birdie,
Alexandra, and Horace, for they make her feel as one of them: she
eee talk this way in their presence for they have made it clear
that she is a valued member of the household. She surely would

not address Regina or Oscar in this fashion. Hence, Hellman
arranges it so that those who share in an appreciation of each
other and in a recognition of the evil around them can also
discuss a means of leaving, thereby saving themselves through a
presumably good and morally upright life elsewhere. Horace
instructs Addie to take Alexandra away from the horrors of life

among such corrupt people. And, indeed, his daughter questions

177

her mother about the reasons behind her father's collapse,
implying that she suspects foul play. Her mother challenges
Alexandra's ability and independence in leaving her, but she is
firm, resolute, indicating that she will make trouble for her
mother if she is stopped. When she is invited to sleep in her
mother's room, presumably to receive some calming and consolation
after all that has befallen her, Alexandra responds, "Are you
afraid, Mama?"15 We have hOpe for Alexandra, believing as we
might in her promise that she will be fighting elsewhere, just as
hard as her uncle Ben and those of his ilk will be fighting in
their own greedy fashion, for a better and more morally
conscionable way of life. —

Yet Hellman would have us remain alert, aware of the great
numbers of those in the world who emulate the Hubbard mentality,

as is represented in Ben's speech:

The century's turning, the world is open.
Open for people like you and me. Ready for
us, waiting for us. After all this is just
the beginning. There are hundreds of Hubbards
sitting in rooms like this throughout the
country. All their names aren't Hubbard, but
they are all Hubbards and they will own this
country someday. We'll get along.

Indeed they will. Unless, as Hellman exhorts, there are those who
might fight against them, those who might consider their ways and
values to be corrupt, those who would stand against evil,
corruption and greed, the Hubbards of the world will not only
come to power, they will prevail and dominate. Hellman saw the

nature of this kind of greed, its destructive power, its

178

embodiment of moral failure and collapse. She saw the suffering
of others as its end result, and she cried out against its
existence. Hence, this play represents Hellman's vision of evil,
and includes her admonishment against capitulation to the moral
failure inherent within the Hubbard mentality, replete with its
lack of compassion and virtuous conduct. We are invited to
sympathize with those who envision a better mode of life, the
Addies and Alexandras and Horaces of the world, who, even with
the victims like Birdie (who nonetheless can recognize the evil
even if they do not have the power to overcome its negative
effects) seek to address the nature of evil, its perpetrators,
and who try to create better alternatives.

Others agree that Hellman's play is a powerful treatise,
steeped as it is in displays of evil and avarice. Ruth McKenney,

writing in New Masses in 1939 said:

The sight isn't pretty. On the contrary. It

is completely devastating. The Little Foxes

is played to audiences who feel sick in the pits
of their stomachs, watching the rich make their
money. But if the birth of a fortune is not
pleasant, it is exceedingly instructive. Miss
Hellman suggests that the way to riches is
paved with a little impolite thievery at the
expense of one's nearest and dearest, buttered
up with a slight touch of knavery, cheating
Negroes, playing on race hate, paying sure-
fire starvation wages, and government corrup-
tion.

 

Yet Hellman may not have meant for the Hubbards to be so
one-sidedly evil. In fact, in an interview with Richard Stern,

she stated that she was surprised that Regina was perceived so

179

one-dimensionally; she had intended for us to see ourselves as
often acting out of our own greed, to be aware of it and its
negative implications. She added that, "PeOple who have lived
very full lives will suddenly get fake morals about what they see
on stage." She also had meant to create a Birdie who was
pathetic, a lost drunk, rather than someone who so completely
evokes our sympathy.18 Yet we do feel that Birdie is treated
badly, even as she seems out of touch in her mourning for a lost
and dying South, and we have a sense of sorrow that, to some
extend, her misfortune is of her own doing. Katherine Lederer
posits that Hellman intended that the Hubbards be seen as both
sinister and comic; we might laugh at their sparring and the
shifts in the power base at any given moment, yet to describe
their antics as humorous asks that we see evil as a funny
entity.19 I do not believe Hellman was asking this reaction of us
as much as she was suggesting that we have a kind of empathy for
those forces that might influence our own behavior, to recognize
that evil exists among all people, that it is a commonly
occurring phenomenon, that we all must deal with it in one way or
another, particularly as it might affect our own moral spectrum
with respect to the formations of our own ethical code. Even
though we need to be aware of the existence of evil in our own
lives, it is quite clear that the kind of avarice and greed found
in The Little Teeee is an unacceptable level of moral failure,
and Hellman's position in reaction to this kind of evil is quite
clear.

Hence, these two plays represent different yet similar kinds

180

of moral failure, existing as they do as points in close
proximity at the end of the moral spectrum, along the continuum
we might describe as being one that deals with moral issues and
the lack of an appropriate moral resolution. The torpor and moral
lassitude that characterize The Autumn Garden and the rampant
evil in The Little Teeee_combine to embody Hellman's own
recognition of the existence of evil, its impact on people's
lives and upon their responses to moral and ethical dilemmas. As
such, they serve to illuminate the problems of those who might be
confronted with their own lack of morality, regardless of its
kind or degree. Hellman's very strong commitment to her own moral
and political convictions are-not obscured by the events and
character portrayals revealed within the plays; rather, we are
reminded again of her stance with respect to moral inactivity and
greed, and once again must admire her dedication to her position,

even if we agree or disagree with its basic assumptions.

181

END NOTES

1 Lillian Hellman, The Autumn Garden, Collected Plays
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1972), pp. 541-542.

2 Ibid., p. 542.

3 Ibid., pp. 544-545.

4 Ibid., p. 545.

5 Kimball King, "Lillian Hellman", pp. 269-271 in
Twentieth Centur American Literature (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1980), p. 270.

6 Garff B. Wilson, Ed. Three Hundred Years of American
Drama and Theater: From "Ye Bare and Ye Cub" to "HaIr" (EngIewood

Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 459.
7 Ibid., p. 419.

8 For a fuller dramatization of this story, see "Another
Part of the Forest" in Collected Plays, pp. 325-404.

9 Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes, Collected Plays, pp.
188-1890

10 Ibid., p. 183.
11 Ibid., pp. 188-189.
12 Ibid., pp. 176-177.
13 Ibid., p. 182.
14 Ibid., pp. 183-184.
15 Ibid., pp. 199-200.
16 Ibid., p. 197.

17 Ruth McKenney, "Birth of a Fortune", New Masses, 2-28-
39, p. 47. "““'

 

18 Richard G. Stern, "Lillian Hellman on Her Plays",
contaCt, 3, 1959’ pp. 118-1190

182

19 Katherine Lederer, "The Foxes Were Waiting for Horace,
Not Lefty: The Use of Irony in Lillian Hellman's The Little
Foxes West VirOinia University Philological Papers, 8-26-80
pp. 931104. in ’

183

Summary and Conclusion

Throughout this work I have attempted to illustrate points
of interest with respect to Lillian Hellman's moral vision and
its deployment in her works along that which I have called a
continuum. This imaginary line suggests the existence of those
seemingly opposite and paradoxical themes which, at times, serve
as diametrically opposed and dichotomous representations of the
various ways Hellman responded to moral issues, both in her
personal life and in her dramatic creations. For example, at one
end of the spectrum lie the points having to do with a "good" or
morally virtuous approach to life's questions: these points
include such ideas as Hellman's efforts to be truthful, even when
such attempts were somewhat paradoxical in nature, for Hellman's
views about her ability to be truthful changed, often as the
result of the aging process. One did the best one could despite
any remaining inner desire to attain a moral absolute. Many of
Hellman's moral stances can be viewed along the length of a
continuum: the use of her anger when addressing situations that
appeared to be unjust; the causes for which she campaigned by
raising funds and speaking publicly: her courage in challenging
and threatening circumstances; and her many admirable actions all
combine to render Hellman a fascinating study in moral strength,

in commitment to activism, and in courage. Moreover, her love of

184

justice, her virtuous disposition, her attempts at decency are
revealed throughout her plays via those characterizations that
emerged from the well-spring of Hellman's own ethical code. As
such, these dramas, peopled with the villainous as well as the
conscientious, exist not only as excellent works of art, but as
plays which contain a certain element of didacticism through
which Hellman's audiences might better understand their own moral
positions in the world.

Yet I do not mean to say that Hellman's virtuousness was
devoid of struggle or conflict, nor do I wish to imply that she
never experienced times of moral crisis. Indeed, Hellman did
struggle, both within herself-and with outside forces, such as
with the demands of an often unscrupulous Dashiell Hammett, with
the HUAC committee, with literary and dramatic critics, all of
whom attempted to press Hellman to conform, to change, to meet
their ideas of what she should be. She resisted these efforts,
remaining, in the end, "nobody's girl." Yet she regretted the

many battles she endured, especially those that seemed useless,
as in the case of the many times, in their early relationship,
when she capitulated to Hammett's demands. Her stubbornness and
commitment prevailed, and their later relationship proved to be
rewarding and stable. It is to Hellman's credit that she remained
faithful to her ideas of what a relationship should be; her
insistence on fidelity and decency resulted in happiness, at
least during their last years together. Certainly these struggles
had an impact upon Hellman's evolving moral consciousness,

especially as she sought to discover her own identity, her needs,

185

her sense of herself as a thinker, a woman, lover, and creator.
Chapter One dealt, in part, with Hellman's early moral
development, focusing as it did on several key or "turning point"
episodes to further delineate the development of her moral code.
Hellman's moral "landscape" incorporated the many-faceted nature
of a multi-dimensional personality, replete with complexity, and
merged even seemingly disparate elements into a comprehensive
whole. Hellman's moral code allowed for the co-existence of
positive and negative factors, which, after all, is the best
example of her ability to integrate all aspects of her experience
as a woman and a writer, no matter how diverse those aspects
might have been. ~

In discussing the continuum theme, especially with respect
to Hellman's moral vision, it can be said that there exist
several sub-continuae, which have their own places within the
larger whole. For example, Chapters Two and Three discuss a
"truth" continuum, which guarantees certainty on the one hand,
while suggesting that truth is elusive and slippery on the other.
Through a discussion of the play The Children's H22; I hope to
have demonstrated the nature of the malicious lie and its effect
upon its victims, and upon those who told it, believed it and
advanced its cause. In an examination of the drama Montserrat I
suggest that the protagonist is aware that his lie is still an
example of wrong-doing, despite the righteousness of the end for
which the lie is employed. Hellman attempted to write with
veracity, despite her sometimes painful acknowledgment that such

an effort did not always result in the desired product, but at

186

least she tried to indicate that she was uncertain by using such
phrases as "I don't remember" or "I'm not sure." Most of Maybe
(and, indeed, the title alone suggests this) posits that nothing
can be certain, that facts, dates, names and places are but
illusory and intangible in the end, in the mish mash of all the
years and the tangled threads of the carpets that become our
lives. Even the ability to know ourselves changes with each
passing day, and the commitment to any moral cause such as that
exhibited in Montserrat's conflict seemed, in Hellman's later
years, to be "no longer made of much that can be leaned against."
Hence, this "truth" continuum contains both the elements of
surety and uncertainty, while—allowing for the co-existence of
these seemingly disparate entities.

With respect to Chapters Four and Five, there is another
sub-continuum. This one attempts to discuss Hellman's moral
courage, primarily through her character Kurt Muller in Egggh g;
Egg’flglgg and through her own struggle with HUAC in the McCarthy
era. Muller is an example of a hero who is not heroic in the
traditional model, for he recognizes that his beliefs exact a

price, paid for in the form of his family's happy yet shabby

existence in hiding, in the form of injuries to himself and the
constant danger he faces, and in the form of the acceptance of
the moral responsibility he has in having to murder Teck. At one
end of the courage continuum there is outright bravery,
observable, for example, when a hero wins a battle of some kind.
At the other end is sheer cowardice, in which the existence of

fear is insurmountable. Although Hellman's courage in drawing

187

Muller and in her appearance before HUAC are admirable, the point
must be made that neither acted in complete bravery, devoid of
fear. Hellman certainly experienced trepidation and discomfort
before and during her hearing, and watched the clock, hoping for
a break in the proceedings. She trembled, perspired, and
developed a nervous tick. Yet her inner spirit prevailed, and she
emerged the victor. Just as we honor Muller for his ability to
act on behalf of courageous resisters, so, too, can we admire
Hellman for her ability to face the HUAC challenge.

Chapter Six seeks to delineate the points of yet another
continuum, one of moral failure. This failure is represented
through the moral lassitude of the characters in the play, The
Autumn Garden, on one end of the continuum, and through the
avarice and greed of the Hubbards in The Little Foxes at the
other end. Constance Tuckerman, Ben Griggs, and Ned Crossman,
among others, exist in a kind of frozen torpor, immobile in their
inability to respond to life's moral challenges, and they
effectively use each other to stay that way. Conversely, the
Hubbards and their ilk act only out of greed, avarice, and
revenge in their efforts to become wealthy and powerful. They are
only too willing to sacrifice the best interests of the poor and
the blacks to forward their own designs. Hellman argued, through
these characters, that moral failure took many forms, and that
the indecision and awkward groping of Tuckerman et al. is at
least as insidious as the rampant evil of the Hubbards. Hence,
Hellman's moral vision continued to make itself evident in these

plays as well.

188

The continuum theme has proven to be useful to me in this
endeavor, for it allows for a certain flexibility in the
presentation of ideas and considerations that are rooted in
dichotomy and that co-exist in Hellman's life as well as in her
work. These ideas are the representation of a very full and rich
life, during which many concepts and ideologies were tested,
"tried on", to then be accepted, rejected, or integrated into the
wonderfully complex areas of "grey" with which we are usually so
uncomfortable: we'd like all things to be simple, black or white.
The continuum model allows for the consideration of all ideas,
even as they might contradict one another, even as they live as
opposite end points. It is through the continuum that we might
understand the struggles inherent in many of the paradoxes
present in the moral challenges Hellman faced, with an eye to
understanding our own ability to meet such challenges. Hellman
endured her own uncertainty; she grew, she questioned, she
debated. It is through the continuum that we might view the range
and the divergent nature of the elements of Hellman's moral code,
particularly as she offered the wisdom of her experience to those
of us who might seek to avoid or embrace moral dilemma, even
those areas of struggle that appear gray and unresovable.

Hellman's force as a moral voice cannot be ignored for its
tone was a compelling one, deeply moving, logical even in its
complexity, based as it was on beliefs by which she attempted to
live. These beliefs resulted in the formation of standards whose
requirements she exacted not only of her friends but of herself

as well. Her moral commitment and the exercise of it in dramatic

189

form led others to question the suitability of the role of the
author/artist as ideologist, as one who presents any given
platform, who exhorts her public to any particular opinion,
believe, or point of action.1 In Hellman's life as in her work,
the political is fused with the artistic and neither entity
suffers at the hands of its complement. Hellman's award-winning
plays and memoirs move us, lead us to examine the nature of our
own ethical codes, and urge us to action in ways that are as
poetic, as artistic, as they are the hallmarks of a firebrand

orator o

190

END NOTES

1 For an interesting and challenging discussion of the
role of author as ideologist, see Albert Maltz, "What Shall We
Ask of Writers" in We! Masses, 2/12/46, pp. 19-22 and Lillian S.
Robinson, "Dwelling in Decencies: Radical Criticism and the
Feminist Perspective" in College English, May, 1971, pp. 879-889.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

191

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Books

Hellman, Lillian. Another Part _£ the Forest. New York:
Viking Press, 1947.

---------- The Autumn Garden. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,
1951.
---------- The Blessing. Austin: The University of Texas,

 

Lillian Hellman Collection. Film script adaptation of a
novel by Nancy Mitford.

 

 

 

---------- Candide. New York: Random House, 1957. Adaptation
of the novel by Voltaire.

---------- The Chase. Film script adaptation of a novel by
Horton Foote, 1966.

---------- The Children's Hour. New York: Knopf, 1934.

---------- The Collected Plays. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,
1972.

---------- The Dark Angel. Film script, written with Sidney
Kéggsley and based on the play by G. Bolton. United Artists,

---------- The Dead End. Film script, adaptation of a play by
Sidney Kingsley. United Artists, 1937.

---------- The Dear Queen. Unpublished play, with Louis
Kronenberger. Copyright December 30, 1932.

---------- Days to Come. New York: Knopf, 1936.

---------- Four Plays. New York: Random House, 1942.

---------- "Introduction." In Anton Chekhov, The Letters of

 

Anton Chekhov. New York: Fararr and Strauss, 1955.

192

Lillian Hellman, Ed., and Trans. Sidonie Lederer.

---------- "Introduction." In Dashiell Hammett, The Big
Knockover: New York: Random House, 1966.

 

---------- "Introduction." :2 Mg Preserved Forever. New York:
Lippincott, 1967. Lev Kopelev, Ed. and Trans. Anthony
Austin.

---------- Julia. Film script, with Alan Sargent, 1976.

---------- The Lark. New York: Random House, 1955. Adaptation
of the play By Anouilh.

---------- The Little Foxes. New York: Random House, 1936.

---------- The Little Foxes. Film script, with Dorothy Parker,

Arthur Kober, and Alan Campbell, 1941.
---------- Maybe. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1981.
---------- My Mother, My Father, and M3. New York: Random

House, 1963. Adaptation of the novel, How Much? by Burt
Blechman.

---------- Montserrat. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1950.
Adaptation of the play by Robles.

Stuart Heisler Papers, The University of California.
Unpublished manuscript.

---------- The North Star: A Motion Picture About Some Russian
People. New York: Viking Press, 1943.

---------- Pentimento: A Book pf Portraits. Boston: Little,
Brown, and Co., 1973.

---------- Regina. New York: Schappell and Co., 1954. Operetta
adapted by Marc Blizstein. Recorded by the New York City
Opera, 1970.

---------- Scoundrel Time. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,

---------- The Searching Wind. New York: Viking Press, 1944.

 

"3

he Searching Wind. Film script, 1946.

 

(I)

i

N

Plays. New York: Random House, 1960.

v-i

---------- he Spanish Earth. Contemporary Historians, Inc.,

1937. Film script collaboration with Archibald MacLeish,
Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos.

193

 

---------- IM£§2_IMygg. Film script of The Children's Hour.
---------- IMygg. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1979.
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Brown, and Co., 1969.

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Articles

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---------. "Baby Cries." pyg, 1/21/73, p. B:l8.

---------- "Back of Those Foxes." M11, 2/26/39. pp. I:l-2.

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University of Texas, Lillian Hellman Collection. Unpublished
manuscript.

---------- Book Reviews. Mg! York Herald Tribune Books
(NYHT): 9/26/26, 21:1: 10724/26, 22:1; 11728726, 14:2:
10723/27, 22:2; 12/4/27, 40:3; 12/11/27, 16:2; 2/24/29,
27:3; 6/2/29, 12:1.

 

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---------- Excerpts from Pentimento: "Man of Unnecessary

 

Things" Atlantic, 231, 6/73, pp. 56-62+; "Turtle"

Es uire, 79, 6/73, pp. 146-49+: "Julia" Esguire, 80,
7733, pp. 95-101+; "Theater Pictures" Esguire, 80, 8/73,
pp. 64-68+; "Flipping for a Diamond" Mg! York Review pf
Books, 20, 9/20/73, pp. 33-34; "Death Ain't What You
Think" IMg_Times (London), 4/6/74, p. 9.

.......... "For Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Ml_,
6/4/75, p. 390

---------- "H.G. Wells and Rebecca West." New York Times Book

194

Review (NYTBR), 10/13/74, pp. 4-5.

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NYS, 11/4/48, p. 13.

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9/11/33, p.2.

---------- "I Meet the Front Line Russians." Collier's,
3/31/45, pp. 11, 68, 71.

---------- "Interlude in Budapest. Holiday, 42, 11/67, pp.

60-61 0
---------- "An Interview With Tito." NYS, 11/8/48, p. 9.

---------- "The Judas Goats." The Screen Writer, 3, 12/47. P-
7.

---------- "0n Jumping Into Life." Mademoiselle, 8/75, pp. 166-
167.

---------- "Land That Holds the Legend of Our Lives." Ladies'
Home Journal, 81, 4/64, pp. 56-57.

---------- "Lillian Hellman Asks a Little Respect for Her Agony:
An Emminent Playwright Hallucinates After a Fall Brought on
By a Current Dramatic Hit." Show, 4, 5/64, pp. 12-13.

---------- "The Little Men in Philadelphia." 2M. 6/25/40. 9-
6:4.

---------- "The Little War." In This ;§,My Best. Whitney
Burnett, Ed. New York: Dial Press, 1942, pp. 989-996.

 

 

---------- "They Fought for Spain." New Masses, 37, 12/10/40.
p. 11.

---------- "Marc Blitzstein Remembered." NYT, 2/2/64, p. B:3.
---------- "Martinique." Travel and Leisure, 1/74.

---------- "Memoir of a New Orleans Boarding House." N T,
5/21/80, pp. 1:3, 12:1. “'

---------- "Perberty in Los Angeles." American Spectator, 2,
1/15/34, p. 4.

.......... "Plain Speaking With Mrs. Carter." Rolling.§£gyg,
226, 11/18/76, pp. 43-45.
---------- "Reports on Yugoslavia." NYS: 11/4/48. Po 13;

11/5/48, p.9; 11/7/48, p. 8; 1178748, p. 9; 11/9/48, p. 6;
11/10/48, p. 11.

195

---------- "Richard Harding Davis, 1938." Austin: The University
of Texas, Lillian Hellman Collection. Unpublished
manuscript.

---------- "A Scene From an Unfinished Play." New Republic,
CDXXI, 11/30/74, pp. 35-39.

---------- "Scotch on the Rocks." NYRB, 10/17/63, p. 6.

---------- "Slavs Warm but Hard to Understand." NYS, 11/7/48.
p. 8.

---------- "Sophronia's Grandson Goes to Washington." Ladies'
Home Journal, 80, 3/64, pp. 78-80, 82.

---------- "Statement." Ladies' Home Journal, 81, 3/64, p. 82.
---------- "Stopover in Paris Brings Memories of Spanish War."

NYS, 11/10/48, p. 11.

---------- "The Time of the Foxes." NYT, 10/22/67, pp. B:1, 5.
---------- "Tito's 'Personal'~Regime Isn't Socialism, Czechs

Say." NYS, 11/5/48, p. 9.

---------- "Topics: The Baggage of a Political Exile." Eli,
8/23/69, p. 26.

---------- "Une Piece en Trois Actes: Les Innocents."
L'Illustration (Paris), 4879, 9/5/36.

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90-128.

---------- "Visas for the Treppers." NYT, 11/13/72, p. 40.

---------- , Gretchen Cryer, Rosalyn Drexler, et alia, "Where Are
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196

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'—

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