The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
"The Glass Menagerie," written by Tennessee Williams, is a poignant memory play set during the Great Depression, focusing on the Wingfield family dynamics in St. Louis. The narrative is primarily relayed by Tom Wingfield, who reflects on his life with his overbearing mother Amanda and his shy sister Laura. Amanda, a former Southern belle, clings to optimism and attempts to arrange a brighter future for her children despite their struggles. Laura, who is disabled by illness and characterized by her extreme shyness, finds solace in her collection of delicate glass animals, a metaphor for her fragility and dreams.
Tom works in a shoe factory but yearns for a life beyond his mundane existence, often escaping to the movies. Tensions rise within the household as Amanda pressures Tom to find a suitor for Laura, leading to a pivotal dinner invitation for a gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor. This encounter stirs hope in Laura but ultimately culminates in disappointment, as Jim reveals he is engaged to another woman. The play concludes with Tom’s bittersweet reflection on his past and the emotional weight of his memories, underscoring themes of longing, illusion, and the struggle to escape one’s circumstances. "The Glass Menagerie" is a timeless exploration of family, dreams, and the complexities of human relationships.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
First produced: 1944; first published, 1945
Type of work: Drama
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1930’s
Locale: St. Louis, Missouri
Principal Characters
Tom Wingfield , the narratorAmanda Wingfield , his motherLaura Wingfield , his sisterJim O’Connor , Laura’s gentleman caller
The Story
Tom and Laura’s father—Amanda Wingfield’s husband—abandoned his family many years ago, and Tom tells the audience that he is about to relate a memory play, “truth in the pleasant guise of illusion.” The time Tom recalls is during the Great Depression, when he lived with his mother and sister in a St. Louis apartment building described as “one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units.” Amanda dominated the household as an aging southern belle who retained her girlish charm as well as an eternal optimism and a fierce determination that she and her children would overcome what she insisted on viewing as temporary obstacles. Laura, who had lived at home since high school, spent her days listening to her father’s record collection and playing with the glass animals she collected and called her “menagerie.” Tom worked in a shoe factory, a job he loathed and therefore barely tended to, instead focusing his passion on writing poetry and his leisure on going to films.
Tom’s recollection of the family’s interactions begins with an occasion when Amanda told Tom precisely how to eat his dinner. Tom could not stomach his mother’s remarks and responded to his mother’s lecture with anger. Amanda then turned to Laura, who was upset by the scene, and coddled her while she also cajoled her to remain “fresh and pretty” for the gentleman callers that Laura knew would never arrive. Amanda ignored both her adult children’s frustration and embarrassment, and she proceeded to recall aloud her many beaux who sought her company when she was a girl.
Tom remembers that on another day his mother decided to stop in at the business college Laura was supposedly attending, only to find that Laura had quit school early in the semester. Amanda went home and confronted Laura, accusing her of deception. Laura, disabled from a teenage bout with pleurosis, suffered even greater paralysis from shyness and confessed to her mother that she had spent her hours scheduled for class wandering about the city, taking refuge in the museum, the zoo, and the Jewel Box, a hothouse for exotic plants. Amanda’s hurt at the thought that Laura had deceived her turned to anguish at the notion that Laura had forfeited her future, until Laura admitted to having once liked a boy in high school. Immediately, Amanda perked up and launched a plan to ensure Laura’s welfare by snaring her daughter an eligible man.
Amanda plotted a liaison for Laura while she also attempted to supplement the family income by selling magazine subscriptions. She chided Tom for his lack of ambition, and her actions and words resulted in repeated, escalating arguments between them. More and more often, Tom fled to the movies for respite. One day while Amanda and Tom fought, Laura fell, causing mother and son to temporarily halt their hostilities. The separate nature of their care for Laura caused further angst, as Tom insisted that his mother recognize Laura’s personality and physical impairment in order to accept her, and Amanda recoiled at Tom’s words, declaring that Laura’s crippled state was but a slight “defect.”
Amanda nagged Tom to bring home a “gentleman caller” for Laura, and one evening Tom announced to Amanda that he had invited a man from work to come to dinner the following evening. Amanda’s initial excitement turned to panic when she realized that she lacked the time necessary to completely transform the Wingfield apartment in honor of the rare guest. Amanda performed her magic, however, and when the gentleman caller arrived she had restored not only the Wingfield apartment but also herself to a semblance of former glory.
Prior to the arrival of Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller, Laura discovered that in all probability the man her brother would be bringing home was the same person she had a crush on in high school. When Jim arrived and Laura realized that he was indeed the boy she once knew, shyness and embarrassment overcame her to the extent that she found herself incapable of sharing the meal that Amanda pretended her daughter cooked. During dinner, the lights went out, and although Amanda carried forth cheerfully, noting the romance of dining by candlelight, she knew that Tom had failed to pay the electric bill. What she did not know was what Tom had confessed to Jim—that he had sent the money to the Union of Merchant Seamen as a first step toward leaving home.
After dinner, Jim sought out Laura and engaged her in conversation. Laura learned that Jim was not married, as she had first thought. Jim told Laura that her singular traits made her special instead of defective. They danced, and Laura’s self-consciousness turned to romantic hope. Laura’s dream shattered when Jim accidentally broke the horn off her favorite glass animal, a unicorn, and told her he was engaged to another woman. Laura gave Jim the broken unicorn as a “souvenir.” After Jim left, Amanda railed against Tom, first accusing him of having known Jim was engaged and then calling him irresponsible for not having realized the truth.
In the end, Tom again addresses the audience alone. Years and miles separate him from the mother he cannot live with and the sister he could not forget. In the darkness, Tom cries out his anguish that “nowadays the world is lit by lightning!” and that his memory of Laura is but a candle that he must blow out to free himself of her haunting, dreamlike presence.
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