The Glass Menagerie: Memory, Loss, and Hidden Hope

Introduction: Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear?

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?

— François 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 François Villon. Williams explains in the production notes to this famous play that he has left in the manuscript a device omitted from the "acting version" of the play (Williams 395): a series of messages projected on screens, some verbal, some pictorial, that prompt and reflect the action on stage. Williams sums up the action in two lines before those notes as preparation for a gentleman caller, and "the gentleman calls" (394). This summary is so understated as to suggest a possible joke, because The Glass Menagerie is such a rich play that those lines hardly describe the complex emotions dealt with by its tormented characters. Such innovations as the screen projections, or the transparent walls Williams employs in The Glass Menagerie, attempt "a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are" (Williams 395). The fact that The Glass Menagerie has captivated so many—called by Hale "the great American play," more performed and reprinted than most "in modern theater history" (27)—indicates that Williams was not alone in his obsession with a past he could never recapture but could never fully leave behind.

Characters Caught Between Past and Future

This theme runs through The Glass Menagerie however the reader approaches it. Key speeches and actions demonstrate how character, setting, plot, and dialogue work together to reinforce the theme of a present caught between a future that never stops arriving and a past the characters cannot escape. Every single character looks back at a dream of the past while the future arrives faster than they would prefer and perhaps can handle. Amanda relives her girlhood through Laura's pathetic first date, while Laura herself cannot move past the often-frightening dreams of adolescence. Likewise, Jim finds disappointment after the triumphs of early adulthood, and the present for all of them is a letdown from these past high points. Of course, the entire story is merely a memory belonging to narrator Tom, looked back upon from a future spent running from the events unfolding on the stage.

Works Cited

Bigsby, C.W.E. "Entering The Glass Menagerie." The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C. Roudane. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 29–44.

Hale, A. "Early Williams: The Making of a Playwright." The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C. Roudane. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 11–28.

Janardanan, D. "Images of Loss in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman, Marsha Norman's night Mother, and Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive." Diss. Georgia State U, 2007. 13 Nov. 2007 <

Williams, T. "The Glass Menagerie." Tennessee Williams Plays 1937–1955. Eds. Mel Gussow and Kenneth Holditch. New York: The Library of America, 2000. 393–466.

Williams, T. "The Catastrophe of Success." Tennessee Williams Plays 1937–1955. Eds. Mel Gussow and Kenneth Holditch. New York: The Library of America, 2000. 1044–1049.

Villon, F. (c. 1460). Ballade des dames du temps jadis. Trans. Robin Shirley (1993). Different English Translations of François Villon c. 1461 — Ballade (des dames de temps jadis) (Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?). <