SOURCE: Watson, Ritchie D. Jr. “Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes and the New South Creed: An Ironic View of Southern History.” Southern Literary Journal 28, no. 2 (spring 1996): 59-68.

In the following essay, Watson argues against the prevailing contemporary judgement of The Little Foxes as oversentimentalizing the postbellum American South, noting instead that the play is an astute critique of the New South's ultimate sterility of spirit.

If one looks for a copy of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes in a chain or suburban mall bookstore he is not likely to find it. More often than not, however, the clerk will produce one of the author's memoirs, such as Pentimento or An Unfinished Woman. The ready availability in bookstores of what critic John Lahr describes as Hellman's “quasi autobiography” testifies to the success with which, beginning in the late 1960s, she transformed herself from a playwright into a prose writer...