Reflecting on that Time Audrey Hepburn Played a Lesbian: A Return to The Children’s Hour
Audrey Hepburn played a lesbian in The Children’s Hour and I feel it’s not discussed enough. Let’s fix that.
TW for some discussion of suicide in this film.
“…Every word has a new meaning. Child, love, friend, woman. There aren’t many safe words anymore. Even marriage doesn’t have the same meaning anymore.” — Audrey Hepburn as Karen Wright in The Children’s Hour
I was a child when I sat between my Mother’s knees as she had on the TCM channel on the television in her bedroom. An old black and white movie played as she did my hair for school the next day. I had just crawled out from under the loud tan bulky hair dryer, my scalp still tender from a perm that had been put in it to tame the storm of curls on my head. I submitted to the routine of having my hair combed and braided. We often watched movies or television shows to pass the time, my Mom and I, as braiding hair could take anywhere from 2–6 hours depending on the style.
We watched The Children’s Hour mostly in silence. As my Mom parted my hair and greased my scalp to prepare the area for cornrows, I watched the screen intently. I had never seen any piece of media so plainly talk about homosexuality before. It was a topic that had never come up in my house. I watched the pretty women on screen grapple with a child’s lie about their relationship to one another, and try to make it out of the narrative unscathed as their entire livelihood was threatened by the accusation that they were lovers. I sat in awe, drinking in the chemistry between the women as the film reached a crescendo into what is arguably the most memorable scene of the film. Martha Dobie, overwhelmed and in tears, confesses to her best friend Karen Wright that there was some truth to the child’s lie, and that she did have feelings for her all along. During this confession, I remember feeling something in me flutter and I felt seen for the very first time.
We sat in silence in the scenes to follow. I hadn’t learned yet that one or both lesbians always dies at the end. When Martha ran up the stairs in a flurry of emotion, I stared with hopeful eyes when Karen followed and asked Martha to go away from the school and to start over elsewhere. I was swept up in a romantic notion that they were going to leave all of their heartache and ruin behind. I was wrong of course. Part of me is forever frozen in time in my Mom’s bedroom, watching Karen run back to the house from her walk. Both of us knowing that she was too late to save Martha from her fate.
It has been sixty years since the release of The Children’s Hour, a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, who play two school teachers running a boarding school and whose lives are turned upside down by a child’s lie accusing them both of being lovers. The Children’s Hour is perhaps most well known for being the first film produced after the lifting of the Hays code, which regulated film content for nearly 40 years which restricted, among other ‘salacious’ content, depictions of homosexuality. Before the lifting of this code, you could find depictions of homosexuality in film, but you would have to find it within innuendo and subtext that was placed there by directors and writers.
When I return to The Children’s Hour now, I feel like I’m on a pilgrimage to visit the place in my memory where it laid me bare for the first time. Watching this film again in my adulthood, I perceive many of its most pivotal scenes with a new eye, now that I’ve lived more life and consumed more (Lesbian)media. The film’s genre is billed as drama and romance, and for those who have seen it may assume that the romantic aspect of this narrative would be given to the characters Karen Wright and her betrothed, Dr. Joe Cardin. But the real chemistry, and true romance in the film is between Karen and Martha, played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine respectively.
The film opens on an idyllic scene. Girls are riding bicycles and the sound of music is heard off camera as it pans to the Wright and Dobie Boarding School for Girls. The two women have twenty students and are excited that they are finally prospering after being in the red for so long. The viewer gets insight into their day to day life with one another. They talk with one another as they put away dishes, do laundry and discuss finances. Martha is so comfortable in this moment that she begins to reminisce and discuss affectionately with Karen what her first impression was the first time she saw her, remarking one of her first thoughts about her was “What a pretty girl.”
When Karen returns downstairs, she finds Dr. Joe Cardin, her boyfriend, there. Martha is notably not as warm toward him in private, but they get along in front of Karen. Joe and Karen go for a ride together in his car, and here we get a look into their relationship. Joe has been asking Karen repeatedly for her hand in marriage, but she’s been hesitant. They don’t want the same things. Karen tells Joe he doesn’t want to go to the movies, or take walks, or read books, all things she says wouldn’t suddenly change if they got married. She also explains she couldn’t leave Martha just as the school had gotten off the ground and was doing so well. Joe is visibly frustrated, and so Karen gives him the condition that if they have a baby within the year that they are married, she will agree to his proposal. With this condition met, Karen is now beaming, and all the worries about being treated as a person in love are out the window now that the promise of a baby are on the horizon.
Karen is settling with Joe. Even voicing out loud her concerns that Joe simply wants a wife or trophy, and not necessarily a partner or companion to talk to and share a life with, Karen is willing to enter this marriage simply to have a baby and likely to ease the minds of the populace around her in addition to having a child she can call her own. After all, one of the first things Joe asked Martha when he visited the house earlier in the evening was how many kids she intended to have in her lifetime, to which Martha replied “I already have twenty.” (In reference to her students). The insidiousness in which these women are tasked with having to prove to others that they are ‘normal’, is ingrained in the both of them. Martha has been keeping Karen at a careful distance all of her adult life, hiding her true feelings away to the point that it makes her feel great shame, and Karen has gone to the lengths of dating a man and settling down with him. She may care for him to an extent, but in actions, the care she shows for Joe does not mirror the care she shows for Martha. When Karen arrives home and breaks the news of her engagement to Martha, she can’t hide her jealousy and lashes out at Karen. In an instant, Karen forgives her for this transgression, citing that they’ve both just had a long day. She kisses her good night on the cheek, and takes off to her room.
Once the accusations begin and the livelihoods of Karen and Martha are ruined because of them, we see how strong their relationship truly is. They have made national news for having ‘sinful sexual knowledge’ of one another. They have not been able to leave the house for weeks because people stare at them as if they are abnormal. A man who brings their groceries purposefully does not knock and enters their home, just to trespass on their privacy. Karen has a fiancé and still has a set wedding date, but this still does not matter. The power of believing that Martha and Karen have had a sexual relationship, and even worse, have built a financially successful life in the absence of men, has given everyone around them free reign to punish both of them for not conforming to heteronormativity.
In an overlooked scene, Karen and Martha sit in their cold, empty school that was once brimming with warmth and life. Karen sits almost despondent, and asks Martha, “What are we doing here anymore?” Though she can not articulate it, Karen is beginning to feel the weight people’s homophobia. Martha tries to offer her hope. She walks over to her and says she’ll be married to Joe soon and the two of them, at least, will be able to leave all of this behind. Then she asks her what’s wrong, to which Karen simply responds:
“There’s nothing wrong. It’s just I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore.”
The two touch hands and hold them there for a moment. Martha shrinks and looks away, but Karen tearfully leans into an embrace. It is, I believe, the most intimate and romantic moment the two women are given in the film. Audrey Hepburn’s performance is at her most empathetic and vulnerable as Karen, and Shirley MacLaine is at her most subdued as Martha, keeping her feelings for Karen barely bubbling at the surface.
After this tender scene with Martha, Karen breaks off her engagement with Dr. Joe Cardin, even after he makes arrangements to take both her and Martha with him to start life anew in another place. She regrets dragging him into her and Martha’s mess, and what deadens their relationship for good, is the fact that Joe is honest in saying that they will not have a baby within the first year of marriage like he promised for fear of further ruining their already fragile finances. Joe is agitated with Karen’s reaction, but she is steadfast in ending their engagement, especially after he asks her, at her encouragement, if she and Martha ever had relations with one another. This question, she feared, would always loom over their relationship whether he believed Karen and Martha had an intimate relationship or not. Joe leaves believing Karen simply needs space, but it is clear that she is making a choice between Joe and Martha, and she has undeniably chosen Martha.
Marrying Joe would allow her to start over with the title of wife, and eventually Mother. A life of relative ease awaited her, had she decided to marry Joe. But without the guaranteed promise of a baby on her terms, the only condition she required, their engagement was now off and the veil of heteronormativity has lifted for Karen. While Martha’s confession to Karen in the upcoming scene is blatant and straightforward, Karen’s feelings and choosing of Martha are more subtle, but still direct and romantic. Her livelihood and reputation has been destroyed by the accusation of participating in a lesbian affair with Martha, but she continues to risk it all by being with her.
In the famous confession scene that The Children’s Hour is likely most well known for, Martha is distraught over Karen breaking off her engagement. Karen is staring wistfully away from Martha, listening halfheartedly at first as she confesses her love for her. It’s only when Martha grows desperate and begins to shout that Karen rushes over. In sending away Joe, Karen realizes she and Martha have had it all, financial success, domestic life, and peace, and can have it all again on their own terms. She recognizes, even if Martha does not, that Martha’s feelings of shame in loving Karen is because of the aggressive homophobia they are facing from the people around them, and is being further exasperated the longer they stay at their now failed boarding school.
Shirley MacLaine appeared in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet in 1995, and had this to say about Martha’s confession to Karen: “…The profundity of this subject was not in the lexicon of our rehearsal period. Audrey and I never talked about this. Isn’t that amazing? Truly amazing.”
MacLaine is referring to the dialogue in Martha’s confession where she refers to herself as ‘dirty’ and that she has ruined Karen’s life by association. To date, Shirley MacLaine’s commentary regarding this scene is the only insight viewers have gotten into what it was like to shoot this movie and deal with this subject matter after the Hay’s code first lifted.
Focus is typically put on Martha and how her death was driven by her own hand because of her shame. I believe the public consciousness about this film needs to change, as people are quick to try to explain away Karen’s romantic love for Martha, or ignore it altogether and say that Martha’s love was unrequited. Karen, in this film, is a classic example of a woman who leaned into heteronormative values, and I believe has been overlooked for many years for being a lesbian character that broke out of those values by the end of the film.
As the film dwindles to a close, we find that the accusation that Martha and Karen are lovers is false, but it is too late. With the damage done, Martha is overwhelmed and defeated and rushes up to her bedroom. Karen follows, and delivers the most romantic line in the entire film:
“Martha, I’m going away someplace to begin again. Will you come with me?”
There is absolutely no heterosexual reason to say that to someone who you’ve just been accused of having ‘sinful sexual knowledge’ of. Martha doesn’t give Karen an answer, telling her she wants to talk with Karen about the matter after she wakes up, because she is tired and wants to sleep. But this is the last exchange they have with one another. Karen goes for a walk and Martha takes one last look at her walking away through the window. This is the last time the viewer sees Martha alive.
But Karen prevails, and in 1961 this was a big deal. And in the 90’s watching this on the TCM channel in my Mom’s bedroom getting my hair braided, it was a big deal too. Audrey Hepburn playing a sympathetic lesbian at a time where such a role was unheard of mattered, and it still matters. To me, the culmination of this film wasn’t Gay shame kills, but, a condemnation of homophobia. Because after all, what breeds shame? Who tells us to hate ourselves? Because of homophobia, Martha was encouraged to feel shame, Karen almost married a man she did not love just to have a baby, and of course, the crux of the entire film’s plot was a child telling a lie about two women being in love because they knew it would cause the adults around them to behave irrationally.
When I journey back from The Children’s Hour, I always find myself in a mixed state of emotions. This was the first time I saw myself on screen, but it was the first time I saw others as well. It was the first time I saw the simple, sweet tenderness between two women, but it was also the first time I learned that that connection could make some people genuinely afraid and angry. Sixty years since its release, lesbian cinema is wrought with patterns of tragedy, similar to how Martha meets her fate. But I believe if we are to reach back and pull something from The Children’s Hour to carry forward, it would be the condemnation of the people who encourage shame in others. Shame has to be given life and fuel to breathe and grow. In the final frames of this film, Karen gives no satisfaction or final words to her and Martha’s tormentors. Poised, she walks past them all, with her head held high, ready to leave the heartache behind and begin again.
All images featured in this article from The Children’s Hour are © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
