During the time Lillian Hellman wrote The Children's Hour, there is this ideal or belief of a “new woman” (Cuenca and Seguro) or the “myth of woman” (Beauvoir). Lillian Faderman, in her work Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1992), explains
…as the late nineteenth-century feminist movement grew in strength and its potential to overthrow the old sex roles, it was not too long before feminism itself was also equated with sexual inversion and many women of the middle class came to be suspected of anomaly, since as feminists they acted in ways inappropriate to their gender, desiring to get an education, for example, or work in a challenging, lucrative profession. (46)
So, Martha and Karen are both anomalies having established their own business (the school) without the aid of any man. However, Karen is the only one seen as being normal or escaping the lonely life of a feminist by entering a relationship with Joe. Whereas Martha has not made any romantic connection with a man, so she is struggling to subvert this idea of the “female invert” (Cuenca and Seguro). The idea of the invert “focused on ideas of gender rather than sexual identity” (Bauer). Therefore, this idea of an “invert” is connected to the association of feminists to lesbianism. Those who were considered feminists were assumed to also be lesbians. This idea of feminist and the “new woman” that dominated society during Hellman’s time is also discussed in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.
In chapter eleven of The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir discusses the myth of woman and the opposing idea of the “Eternal Feminine” (Beauvoir 1265). She states:
…woman is other than man, and this alterity is directly felt in desire, the embrace, love; but the real relation is one of reciprocity; as such it gives rise to authentic drama. Through eroticism, love, friendship, and their alternatives, deception, hate, rivalry, the relation is a struggle between conscious beings each of whom wishes to be essential, it is the mutual recognition of free beings who confirm one another’s freedom, it is the vague transition from aversion to participation. (Beauvoir)
In saying this, Beauvoir is saying that otherness is felt in heterosexual romantic relationships, but the “real relation is one of reciprocity,” such as Karen and Martha’s relationship considering it “gives rise to authentic drama.” Furthermore, Karen and Martha confirm each other’s freedom which leads to this transition of aversion (Martha and Karen’s vehement denial of Mary’s accusation) to participation (Martha’s confession and Karen’s inevitable acceptance).
Overall, it is important to note that feminists during Hellman's time were, essentially, considered lesbians as well because they focused not on creating an "ideal family" but rather on professional, financial, and personal success through which the necessity of men was mute. Due to this assumption, Hellman herself was thought to be a lesbian because of her financial and romantic independence from men. So, Hellman wrote The Children's Hour to (supposedly) bring attention to the consequences of idle gossip and assumptions.
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