SOURCE: Brantley, Will. “Lillian Hellman and Katherine Anne Porter: Memoirs from Outside the Shelter.” In Feminine Sense in Southern Memoir: Smith, Glasgow, Welty, Hellman, Porter, and Hurston, pp. 133-84. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

In the following essay, Brantley examines similarities between Hellman's and Porter's attempts in their respective memoirs to portray themselves in the highly politicized atmosphere in which they lived.

Lillian Hellman and Katherine Anne Porter did not produce autobiographies on the order of The Woman Within or One Writer's Beginnings, though, like Lillian Smith, they did attempt to represent themselves within works that combine self-analysis and cultural critique.

… Smith, Hellman, and Porter were each drawn to one important theme—the dangers of a passive collusion with evil—and each has used her self-writing to explore her own motives while venting scorn on those who, through passivity, ignorance, or their own refusal to explore themselves, allow...