A proposta dessa dissertação é analisar as peças The Children´s Hour e The Little Foxes, de Lillian Hellman, pela primeira vez encenadas nos Estados Unidos em 1934 e 1939 respectivamente. A análise discute a forma da peça bem feita e a forma do melodrama nessas obras, assim como o conteúdo delas, a fim de identificar como a crítica social e as formas teatrais propostas pela dramaturga estão intrincadas. Com base em autores como Peter Szondi, essencial para se entender a dialética entre forma e conteúdo, Jean Marie Thomasseau, teórico do melodrama, e de outros que escreveram sobre a peça bem feita, procurou-se entender como Hellman valeu-se das próprias formas correntes da cultura dominante e da indústria cultural para investigar a sociedade capitalista norte-americana. Para a compreensão ampla de tais questões, foram analisados os textos dramatúrgicos, encenações, adaptações para cinema e televisão, tanto nos Estados como no Brasil. Hellman foi constantemente criticada pelas opções formais de suas obras, algo que é revelado pela fortuna crítica mais relevante que foi coletada e é apresentada nessa dissertação, servindo de suplemento para as análises. Lillian Hellman examinou o conservadorismo arbitrário e as estratégias de manutenção do capitalismo criticando a classe dominante através da utilização das formas teatrais privilegiadas por essa classe. / This work aims to analyze Lillian Hellman\'s plays The Children´s Hour and The Little Foxes, which were first performed in the United States in 1934 and 1939 respectively. In addition to the content of these works, the analysis discusses the well-made play and the melodrama in order to identify how social criticism and these theater forms are interrelated, as proposed by her. Based on authors such as Peter Szondi, whose work is fundamental to understanding the dialectics between form and content, and Jean-Marie Thomasseau, a melodrama theorist, as well as others who wrote about the well-made play, this dissertation searches for a comprehension of how the playwright made use of the dominant culture\'s own forms to investigate North-American capitalist society. For a comprehensive understanding of such issues, the dramaturgical texts, performances, as well as film and television adaptations in both the United States and Brazil have been analyzed. Hellman was constantly criticized for the formal choices of her plays, something revealed in articles and essays by relevant critics. These criticisms are presented in this dissertation in order to supplement the analysis. Lillian Hellman criticized the dominant class\' arbitrary conservatism and the strategies of capitalist maintenance by employing theater forms which were endowed by that class.

A proposta dessa dissertação é analisar as peças The Children´s Hour e The Little Foxes, de Lillian Hellman, pela primeira vez encenadas nos Estados Unidos em 1934 e 1939 respectivamente. A análise discute a forma da peça bem feita e a forma do melodrama nessas obras, assim como o conteúdo delas, a fim de identificar como a crítica social e as formas teatrais propostas pela dramaturga estão intrincadas. Com base em autores como Peter Szondi, essencial para se entender a dialética entre forma e conteúdo, Jean Marie Thomasseau, teórico do melodrama, e de outros que escreveram sobre a peça bem feita, procurou-se entender como Hellman valeu-se das próprias formas correntes da cultura dominante e da indústria cultural para investigar a sociedade capitalista norte-americana. Para a compreensão ampla de tais questões, foram analisados os textos dramatúrgicos, encenações, adaptações para cinema e televisão, tanto nos Estados como no Brasil. Hellman foi constantemente criticada pelas opções formais de suas obras, algo que é revelado pela fortuna crítica mais relevante que foi coletada e é apresentada nessa dissertação, servindo de suplemento para as análises. Lillian Hellman examinou o conservadorismo arbitrário e as estratégias de manutenção do capitalismo criticando a classe dominante através da utilização das formas teatrais privilegiadas por essa classe. / This work aims to analyze Lillian Hellman\'s plays The Children´s Hour and The Little Foxes, which were first performed in the United States in 1934 and 1939 respectively. In addition to the content of these works, the analysis discusses the well-made play and the melodrama in order to identify how social criticism and these theater forms are interrelated, as proposed by her. Based on authors such as Peter Szondi, whose work is fundamental to understanding the dialectics between form and content, and Jean-Marie Thomasseau, a melodrama theorist, as well as others who wrote about the well-made play, this dissertation searches for a comprehension of how the playwright made use of the dominant culture\'s own forms to investigate North-American capitalist society. For a comprehensive understanding of such issues, the dramaturgical texts, performances, as well as film and television adaptations in both the United States and Brazil have been analyzed. Hellman was constantly criticized for the formal choices of her plays, something revealed in articles and essays by relevant critics. These criticisms are presented in this dissertation in order to supplement the analysis. Lillian Hellman criticized the dominant class\' arbitrary conservatism and the strategies of capitalist maintenance by employing theater forms which were endowed by that class.

This study analyzed the personalities and actions of Regina, Birdie, Alexandra, and Lavinia from Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes and Another Part of the Forest. The analysis was focused on the relationship between the life and personality of Lillian Hellman and each of the characters. The method of character analysis that was used was that described by David Grote in Script Analysis, but the effect of cultural history on the characters and on Lillian Hellman was examined as well. It was discovered that Lillian Hellman had infused the characters with many aspects her own personality. In the case of Regina and Lavinia, Hellman also used the characterizations to sort out her mixed feelings toward her parents.

This study analyzed The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine, Toys in the Attic in terms of the forms of human love delineated by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving. The motives and actions of one or more principal characters and their dramatic situations were studied. It was discovered that, in the plays that were examined, each character responded to his or her situation in a loving or a hateful manner and that these choices with regard to love provided the dramatic matrix of the play.

It is my belief that theatre is the telling of stories, and that playwrighting is the creation of those stories. Regardless of the underlying motives (to make the audience think, to make them feel, to offend them or to draw them in,) the core of the theatre world is the storyline. Some critics write of the importance of audience effect and audience reception; after all, a performance can only be so named if at least one person is there to witness it. So much of audience effect is based the storyline itself - that structure of which is created by the power characters have over others. Theatre generalists learn of Aristotle's well-made play structure. Playwrights quickly learn to distinguish between protagonists and antagonists. Actors are routinely taught physicalizations of creating "status" onstage. A plotline is driven by the power that people, circumstances, and even fate exercise over protagonists. Most audience members naturally sympathize with the underdog or victim in a given storyline, and so the submissive or oppressed character becomes (largely) the most integral. By what process, then, is this sense of oppression created in a play? How can oppression/victimization be analyzed with regard to character development? With emerging criticism suggesting that the concept of character is dying, what portrayals of victim have we seen in the late 20th century? What framework can we use to fully understand this complex concept? What are we to see in the future, and how will the concept evolve? In my attempt to answer these questions, I first analyze the definition of "victim" and what categories of victimization exist - the victim of a crime, for example, or the victim of psychological oppression. "Victim" is a word with an extraordinarily complex definition, and so for the purposes of this study, I focus entirely on social victimization - that is, oppression or harm inflicted on a character by their peers or society. I focus on three major elements of this sort of victimization: harm inflicted on a character by another (not by their own actions), harm inflicted despite struggle or protest, and a power or authority endowed on the victimizer by the victim. After defining these elements, I analyze the literary methods by which playwrights can represent or create victimization - blurred lines of authority, expressive text, and the creation of emotion through visual and auditory means. Once the concept of victim is defined and a framework established for viewing it in the theatre, I analyze the victimization of one of American theatre's most famous sufferers - Eugene O'Neill's Yank in The Hairy Ape. To best contextualize this character, I explore the theories of theatre in this time period - reflections of social struggles, the concept of hierarchy, and clearly drawn class lines. I also position The Hairy Ape in its immediate historical and theoretical time period, to understand if O'Neill created a reflection on or of his contemporaries. Finally, I look at the concept of victim through the nonrealistic and nonlinear plays of the 20th century - how it has changed, evolved, or even (as Eleanor Fuchs may suggest) died. I found that my previously established framework for "making victim" has change dramatically to apply to contemporary nonlinear theatre pieces. Through this study, I have found that the lines of victimization and authority are as blurred today in nonrealistic and nonlinear theatre as they were in the seemingly "black and white" dramas of the 1920s and 30s. In my research, I have found the very beginnings of an extraordinarily complex definition of "victim".