Alice Griffin and
Geraldine Thorsten

A study of the influential career of the writer renowned for The Little Foxes.

5 x 7, 184 pages
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-302-1, $34.95s

Understanding Contemporary American Literature, Matthew J. Bruccoli, series editor

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this perceptive study of Lillian Hellman's career, Alice Griffin and Geraldine Thorsten provide a balanced, in-depth examination of the major works of one of America's preeminent women playwrights and memoirists. To some, Hellman was an anathema; to others heroic, especially in her defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. People remain fascinated by her love affairs, her thirty-year relationship with the detective fiction writer Dashiell Hammett, and her visits to Spain during its civil war, and to Russia during World War II. In the thirties, when Hellman's theater career began, George Jean Nathan, the dean of theater critics, suggested that although Hellman was the country's foremost playwright, she would never equal a man. Correcting the badly skewed evaluations that such bias fostered, Griffin and Thorsten give Hellman's plays a fresh critical assessment.

Griffin and Thorsten analyze not only Hellman's rarely acknowledged dramatic gifts for humor, irony, and satire, and for clear, strong narrative line and dialogue, but also her concern for moral issues. They credit Hellman's memoirs with introducing innovations in free association, elliptical time, and symbolism. They also reveal Hellman's pioneering effort to address women's issues, including dependence and self-doubt.

The authors demonstrate that though seldom recognized for such, Hellman's distinctive voice influenced other major playwrights, including Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and gave hope to a younger generation of women writers such as Marsha Norman. Griffin and Thorsten suggest that Hellman's most enduring contribution has been her faithful chronicle of the American woman's changing position during the eight decades of her life.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alice Griffin is professor emerita and former director of graduate studies in English at Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Rebels and Lovers: Shakespeare's Young Heroes and Heroines, Understanding Tennessee Williams and Understanding Arthur Miller. Griffin lives in Palm City, Florida, and in London.

Geraldine Thorsten teaches English at Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her previous books are God Herself and The Goddess in Your Stars.

ALSO FROM ALICE GRIFFIN

Understanding Arthur Miller