What Do I Read Next?
In Another Part of the Forest, the prequel to The Little Foxes, Hellman takes us back 20 years to reveal the origins of the family's cycle of revenge. It depicts a domineering father, Marcus, who is blackmailed by his son Ben. Ben uses evidence of Marcus's betrayal of neighboring soldiers during the Civil War to gain full control of the family estate, leaving Regina and Oscar nearly destitute.
Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House (1879) served as a model of social realism for Hellman. In the play, a devoted wife leaves her husband after realizing that he has always viewed her as little more than a doll, rather than as a human being.
All My Sons, the 1947 play by Hellman's contemporary and rival Arthur Miller, centers on Joe Keller, a manufacturer who knowingly ships defective airplane parts that result in the deaths of twenty-two American pilots during World War II, allowing his partner to take the fall and serve the prison sentence.
In Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman (1949), Willy Loman sacrifices his integrity in pursuit of anticipated wealth.
In Tennessee Williams's intense drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), the son of Big Daddy, a wealthy cotton plantation owner, turns to alcoholism instead of following in his father's footsteps.
Aeschylus's Oresteia, a Greek trilogy exploring a family's legacy of malice and revenge, is an excellent example of Greek tragic theater.
Historian Edward L. Ayers's Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906 (Oxford University Press, 1995), provides a detailed account of daily life, public affairs, and cultural developments in the South from post-Reconstruction through the Progressive period, including the turn of the century depicted in Hellman's play.
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