CULTURAL MILIEU

The play was written in the 1960s in a time when values were beginning to change. Many countries around the world had embarked in women’s liberation movements and this signaled a change in thinking. Many suppressed social groups, women, people from minority races, and homosexuals were beginning to become recognised and this signaled the rise of the underdogs. In regards to the stage of crime fiction, the play was written at the beginning of the refinement stage. The society of the time had grown weary of Christie’s cosy crimes that were inevitably solved, and were beginning to realise that crimes did not occur quite as formulaically as often portrayed in golden age films. This is one societal influence that had a huge bearing on the way in which Stoppard constructed The Hound, as a tongue-in-cheek parody that laughs at the cosy conventions of earlier crime fiction texts.

-Aashna