Bullying at School: A Psychocritical Study in Children’s Hour
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.9.3.P3.14Keywords:
Bullying, Psychology, Victims, Before The BellAbstract
This article explores the theme of bullying as it is portrayed by Lillian Hellman in her play The Children's Hour (1934), focusing on the psychological and social mechanisms of power, victimisation, and rumour. The play dramatises the consequences of one child's lie, Mary Tilford, which comes to the ears of the headmistress of an all-girls school, and the lie eventually leads to devastation, tragedy and death. This was a herd behaviour with widespread implications. In the context of the contemporary portrayal discourse on school bullying, the paper argues that Mary’s action illustrates the forms of psychological aggression, manipulation, coercion and rumour spreading, which continue to extend bullying to the present day. Using a psychosocial approach, the examination investigates the production of power imbalances, the internalisation of stigma by victims, and the perpetuation of injury through communal silence. The paper asks: How does The Children's Hour resonate with contemporary understandings of bullying and its effects? How does the play dramatise the results of unchecked rumour and group inaction? By foregrounding the lethal consequences of bullying, Hellman's drama underscores the importance of teaching empathy, responsibility, and social resilience. Finally, the research adds to the fields of literary studies and educational psychology, being the study of the dramatic representation of texts by a group of peers, looking at the perennial problem of bullying in schools and society.
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