In the following essay, Watson analyzes Hellman's portrayal of the South in The Little Foxes, examining the varied critical commentary on the subject. Some critics argue that Hellman's play romanticizes the Old South, while others contend that the author offers a realistic and entirely unsentimental portrayal of the South.

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, thus gaining in the final stage of her career "both a new public and new...