Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

¶ … Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and the short story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. Specifically it will discuss the image of Southern women and womanhood in the two works. It will also look at how Southern women live sheltered and unrealistic lives. Both of these dissimilar works have central characters that epitomize the Southern woman - delicate, sheltered, and harboring unrealistic goals about themselves and their relationships with men. Both characters live staunchly in the past, unable to face a future without men or love in their lives.

Both these works portray the lives of southern women as they were in the past, and these two characters, Amanda and Emily, continually live in the past in a desperate attempt to block out their present circumstances. They have different motivations, to be sure, but they still epitomize southern womanhood in the Antebellum South - pampered, sheltered, unrealistic, and genteel. Throughout Williams' play, Amanda refers to her youth, when "gentlemen callers" would surround her because she was so pretty and popular. That is no longer the case, but she cannot face that fact. She remembers, "One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain, your mother received seventeen gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren't chairs enough to accommodate them all. We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house" (Williams). She continues, "It wasn't enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure although I wasn't alighted in either respect. She also needed to have a nimble wit and a tongue to meet all occasions" (Williams). Amanda does have a tongue, and she is not afraid to use it against her children. However, Amanda is no longer "pretty and graceful," and she knows it, but cannot face it, and so she lives in her memories rather than facing her present circumstances.

Both women are also clear martyrs. Emily gives up everything for the man she loves, even her sanity, and will not be forced to relinquish him. She is a true martyr who shuts herself off from the entire world when Homer refuses her. Amanda too is a martyr; she is a martyr to her children, who she gives up "everything" for, including her happiness. She says, "I've had to put up a solitary battle all these years. But you're my right-hand bower! Don't fall down, don't fail!" (Williams). Both women place their fate in the hands of others. Amanda clings much too tightly to her children, while Emily clings unreasonably to a man who did not love her, and was going to leave her. They martyr themselves for the "good" of others, and it really is not good for any of the characters. Amanda's children resent her and her absolute attempts to control their lives, while Homer, well, Homer cannot resent her, he is dead. He paid the ultimate price for her martyrdom, while Amanda's children still have at least a chance to get away and make real lives for themselves.

Emily leads more than a sheltered life. She is a recluse, and it seems her aggressive father had something to do with it. Faulkner notes, "We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will" (Faulkner). This is another clue at how men treat women in the South. Emily has no life because her father drove away anyone who might have shown an interest in her. He might have thought he was "protecting" her, but in reality, he was mentally abusing her, and leaving her emotionally unprepared to manage in the real world. It is no wonder she kills her lover and leaves him lying in bed for all the following years. She could not let go of him, and could not face life alone, and so, in her own twisted way, she assured herself she would never be alone again.

Marriage is so important to these women, because of the culture of the South, that they go to tremendous lengths to assure they are married or at least appear married or have a sweetheart. Amanda says, "I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South - barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife!" (Williams). The worst fate is to be alone and unmarried, which is why Emily no longer goes out. The gossips pity her, and she cannot stand to be pitied, so she hides in her own home, and refuses to take part in society or the real world at all. She would rather molder away with her dead boyfriend than face the world outside her door that pities her and does not understand her.

Southern women are also gossips, as both these works indicate. The women of town feel "sorry" for Emily because she is reduced to dating a Yankee. Faulkner notes, "This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: 'Poor Emily'" (Faulkner). Amanda, too, is a gossip, as her conversations with other women as she attempts to sell them magazines. She says, "We missed you at the D.A.R. last Monday! I said to myself: She's probably suffering with that sinus condition! How is that sinus condition? Horrors! Heaven have mercy!- You're a Christian martyr, yes, that's what you are, a Christian martyr!" (Williams). Gossip is a way of life for these women, and without it, it seems they would have little to keep them occupied or interested in anything.

Because of their conservative and sheltered upbringing, neither woman is prepared to deal with the ups and downs of the real world. Emily is the worst, as she cannot face a life alone and comes up with a way to keep Homer with her forever. She has lost all sense of reality and cannot tell right from wrong. She has had no real world experience, she has been sheltered and taken care of by one man or another for her entire life, and so she is incapable of making rational decisions. Amanda has been forced to face reality because her husband leaves her, but she too was so sheltered as a girl that she has a hard time facing the real world. She will not admit aloud that her daughter is a cripple and her son wants nothing more than to escape the family forever. Reality is too difficult for both these sheltered women to deal with, so one retreats from it and the other lives in the past so she does not have to face the present.

There is another interesting parallel between the two women and their youth in the South. Both come from families with servants, who they both refer to as "niggers" at some point in the story. Both women are used to being taken care of by men. Emily continues this throughout her life with the Negro servant who stays with her no matter what, while Amanda must give up her life of leisure when her husband deserts her. Both women grew up believing that someone else would take care of them throughout their lives, and both were disappointed when they discovered that was not the case. Neither one deals with the disappointment very well. Amanda relies on her son's income to survive, and Emily chooses murder over disappointment. That means they were not prepared to be disappointed, they were only prepared to depend on someone else for their happiness and completeness.

Overall, neither of these works portrays the southern women of a former generation in a very flattering light. Amanda is silly and lives in the past to escape her unpleasant present, and Emily lives in a dream world where her lover still lives. Neither woman is strong emotionally, and neither copes with reality very well. They seem to illustrate that southern women may be charming and clever, but they are not very good with day-to-day concerns and coping with real life. They are meant to be taken care of and pampered, rather than strong and capable on their own.