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Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams, His Mother and the Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams is among the most celebrated playwrights of the 20th century. His family portraits, set to the backdrop of a deteriorating Southern tradition, are a window into human foibles like vanity, insecurity, detachment and personal disappointment. All of these themes are in full display with Williams' breakthrough work, 1944's The Glass Menagerie. A peering insight into the unhappy lives of the Wingfields, the story is told from son Tom's point-of-view and concerns his relationship with his overbearing mother Amanda and his emotionally introverted and cripplingly shy sister Laura. However, the story is driven almost entirely by the will of Amanda, an aged Southern Belle abandoned by her husband and generally focusing her neuroses on her two adult children. This complex set of relationships is culled directly from Williams' real experiences as a child, with the characters of Amanda and Laura closely reflecting many of the defining characteristics of the...
Disliked by his father for a perceived effeminate quality and a sickly stature, Williams was doted upon by a frequently dramatic and protective mother prone to bouts with mental illness. His sister Rose, even more vulnerable to mental illness, would inspire Laura and a great many other characters and characterizations in his future work. The disquieting hostility between the three family members in The Glass Menagerie seems to capture a specific inflection point in the playwright's life. Here, according to O'Connor (1997), during Williams' college studies, a "transfer to the University of Iowa took him away from home in the fall, so he was absent when Rose's doctors convinced her parents that a prefrontal lobotomy was the only possibility for cure. Williams blamed his mother, who in turn claimed that her husband, Cornelius, made the final decision. Clearly, however, the family shared the burden for what happened to…
Works Cited:
O'Connor, J. (1997). Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Bowling Green State University Press.
Williams, T. (2011). The Glass Menagerie: The Deluxe Edition. New Directions
86). Jim symbolically inspires Laura to accept her individuality and to see that beneath her outstanding traits she is no different from anyone else. His gentility and kindness, borne of Southern culture, help Laura come to terms with herself and her social awkwardness. Laura's personality transformation through Jim's kindness paralleled her symbolic transformation through the unicorn. Had the unicorn not been made of glass, its horn would not have so
Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, presents the drama of three family members who live in a world whose values and supporting pillars are shaking as a consequence of the disastrous economic times people went through during the Great Depression. The lack of role models in the micro universe of the Wingfield family as well as their dissolution in the macro universe of the whole American society is deeply
Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie is about the three members of the Wingfield family, Tom, Laura, and their mother Amanda. They live together and have done so since the loss of the Wingfield patriarch. This family dynamic is very dysfunctional and the three serve to harm one another more than provide support as a family unit with the exception of Laura who tries to provide positivity in
Menagerie REVISED Prince, don't ask me in a week / or in a year what place they are; I can only give you this refrain: / Where are the snows of yesteryear? Francois Villon, c. 1461 "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" asks Tennessee Williams in the opening screen of The Glass Menagerie (401), quoting a poem by Francis Villon. Williams explains in the production notes to this famous play that he has left
Towards the play's end, Tom tells his audience/readers: "Oh Laura...I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette...anything that can blow your candles out!" This passage from the play showed how, in his fear for his sister and attempt to shield her from the harshness of life, Tom wanted to "blow (Laura's) candles out," an act
Her expectation is anything but realistic. To deal with her mother's insurmountable expectations, Laura disappears into her own fantasy world with the sparkling, clear world of the glass animals. These unique glass figurines give her something positive and of value, which is lacking in her present life. Unfortunately, Laura, like her mother, cannot always stay in this fantasy world. She has a more difficult time staying in an unrealistic world