Psychology and Family Dysfunction in The Glass Menagerie

Introduction: A Dysfunctional Family Portrait

Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie centers on three members of the Wingfield family: Tom, Laura, and their mother Amanda. They have lived together since the disappearance of the Wingfield patriarch. This family dynamic is deeply dysfunctional, and the three members harm one another more than they provide support — with the exception of Laura, who attempts to bring positivity into the home but is unable to do so because of the toxicity surrounding her. Tom and Laura are both unhappy young people, dissatisfied with their lives largely because of the way they were raised. Their mother Amanda is similarly dissatisfied, but unlike her children she believes there is still a chance for all three of them to achieve social mobility and the financial and sociological elevation she feels they deserve.

Each character contends with a distinct form of psychological difficulty that negatively affects their behavior and their ability to cope with the wider world. Amanda is a woman living in the past, driven by delusions of social climbing. Her son Tom suffers from severe depression and maintains a caustic relationship with her. Meanwhile, the youngest member of the family, Laura, suffers from social anxiety and significant cognitive limitations. Together, the three Wingfields illustrate how family dysfunction can shape and distort individual psychology in lasting ways.

Amanda Wingfield: Narcissism and Delusion

Amanda Wingfield is perhaps the most psychologically disturbed member of the family, though this is not immediately apparent. She is psychologically trapped by the past, and all of her actions are designed to recapture a long-ago moment (Bluefarb). She is forceful in her attitudes toward her two children, pushing them to conform to her expectations regardless of what they actually want for themselves. Her domineering manner is intrinsically linked to her psychological problems.

Amanda is obsessed with her youth and determined to make her daughter a debutante with a string of wealthy suitors, despite the fact that this bears no relation to reality. On the night that the suitor Jim comes to visit Laura, Amanda is distraught when she learns he is already engaged. She is incensed and immediately blames Tom for the situation, insisting that he knew all along about Jim's engagement and simply wanted to make fools of his family. She had insisted on cleaning the apartment top to bottom and expending tremendous effort — effort that Tom had told her was unnecessary. "Now that you've had us make such fools of ourselves. The effort, the preparations, all the expense! The new floor lamp, the rug, the clothes for Laura! All for what? To entertain some other girl's fiancée!" (1657). No logic penetrates Amanda's worldview. To her, her children exist primarily as potential sources of financial gain. If a child cannot provide for her materially, that child is of little use. She exhibits the hallmarks of a personality disorder and narcissism at the very least, in addition to being, by any measure, a deeply inadequate mother.

Tom Wingfield is never mentally present within his family's home. Time is extremely important to his character and to understanding what drives him. This is evident in the fact that Tom narrates The Glass Menagerie from some indistinct point in the future (King). At some point before the narration but after the events depicted in the play, he escapes the family home and sets out to live for himself. Exactly when this occurs is unclear, but it can be assumed it is not long after the events portrayed in the plot. Only after escaping the home is Tom able to understand himself well enough to analyze his own actions and those of his family members.

Tom Wingfield: Depression and Psychological Escape

Tom is jaded by his experiences with his mother. He says: "The play is a memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic" (1615). Were the play told as a straightforward narrative in real time, the ambiguity of memory would be lost. Tom acknowledges that his memory may be faulty, and thus the characterization of his family members might be colored by those recollections, adding to the psychological ambiguity surrounding all three major characters. This use of the memory play form is central to Williams's dramatic technique.

Tom tells his story while dressed as a merchant sailor, reflecting on his youth from across the years. Given the melancholy tone of the narrator, it seems unlikely that he found lasting satisfaction in his life. Tom has never returned home — at least not physically. Mentally, however, he has returned over and over since the day he left. He has escaped Amanda, but he has not escaped Laura. "Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger — anything that can blow your candles out!" (1658). His little sister is everywhere he goes. He has been so thoroughly haunted by his memories that he cannot escape them. It is possible that Laura died and that her death was the catalyst he needed to leave, or perhaps she died after he left and he feels responsible. Either way, Tom himself reveals that he is not psychologically whole.

He has not achieved financial success and so took to the sea. While living with his family, Tom was psychologically distant from both Laura and Amanda, though far more affectionate toward his sister than toward his mother. Rather than inhabiting the same emotional present as his family, his mind was consumed with the future, and nothing he did in the current moment held any meaning for him (Bluefarb). He spent his time either working or going to the movies, doing everything he could to minimize time at home, given how oppressive his relationship with his mother had become.

Conclusion: Dysfunction and Its Lasting Damage

King, Thomas L. "Irony and Distance in The Glass Menagerie." Educational Theater Journal. 25:2. May 1973. Print.

O'Connor, Jacqueline. "Babbling Lunatics: Language and Madness." Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, NY: Infobase. 2007. 11–27. Print.

Scanlon, Tom. "On Family and Psyche." The Glass Menagerie. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, NY: Infobase. 2007. Print.

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. By X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 11th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 1612–1660. Print.