I, too, picked up on those details that turn up occasionally throughout the one hour 47 minutes that the film runs.
But they indicate only that Martha has lesbian tendencies. She may have fallen in love with a man at some point before the story begins. We don't know that because she has nobody with whom she can discuss her feelings, either current ones or from long ago.
We never get any clue that Karen reciprocates Martha's feelings or that Karen ever feels mannish or inordinately interested in another woman's beauty or personality. We do get many indications that Karen loves Joe. IMHO, the producers cast James Garner because many actresses and female moviegoers found him very handsome, and what woman can resist him?
"There was barely any resistance from Karen after Martha's confession ..." ??
During the last conversation between the teachers, Karen has important things to say, and showing resistance isn't on her agenda. Her agenda is to remind Martha, who is clearly upset, that Mary is a vengeful child who told her grandmother what she told her grandmother in order to hurt both of them (Karen and Martha), not to expose any truth about unnatural sex.
Karen feels it is important to point out to Martha that Mary concocted any nasty story she could have imagined for the purpose of hurting them. The fictitious story was not meant to preach against unnatural sexual feelings. It was an act of revenge by a child.
Had Mary been a better student and had she learned anything from reading books at school, she could just as easily have manufactured a story about Martha being an undercover spy for the Nazis. (Nazi Germany was a current issue when Lillian Hellman wrote the original stage version of The Children's Hour. She later wrote an entire play about undercover Nazis.)
Mary can't read Martha's mind. Is Mary present during the scene early in the movie where Martha becomes sentimental and remembers the first time she ever saw the beautiful Karen? No, Mary isn't there. She doesn't have any CIA listening devices hidden in the room. The only information Mary learns through eavesdropping is that Martha's aunt thinks Martha always has been obsessed with Karen, and she doesn't want Karen to marry Joe. That's it. That could mean Martha doesn't have enough confidence to look for a boyfriend of her own. In that era, many female teachers at boarding schools in small towns had very little contact with eligible bachelors. Without practicing their flirting for many years, they lost confidence, then they realized too late that they were too old to attract the kind of men they felt comfortable with.
Karen is focusing on reminding Martha that Mary's behavior was an act of revenge, not a sermon that her grandmother approved of.
reply
share