The Glass Menagerie

In the Wingfield apartment in St. Louis, the mother, Amanda, lives with her
crippled daughter and her working son, Tom. At dinner she tells her daughter,
Laura, to stay nice and pretty for her gentlemen callers even though Laura has
never had any callers and expects none. Amanda remembers the time that she
had seventeen gentlemen callers all on one Sunday afternoon. Amanda then tells
Laura to practice her shorthand and typing. A few days later Amanda comes
home from Laura's school after finding out that Laura had dropped out several
months earlier. Amanda is shocked and wonders what they will do with their lives
since Laura refuses to try to help and spends all her time playing with her glass
menagerie and her old phonograph records. Amanda decides that they must
have a gentleman caller for Laura, and Laura tells her that she has liked only one
boy in her whole life, a high school boy named Jim.
When Tom goes out to the movies that night, Amanda accuses him of doing
something else rather than going to the movies every night. They have an
argument, and the next morning after Tom apologizes, Amanda asks him to find
some nice gentleman caller for Laura and to bring him home for dinner. A few
days later, Tom tells Amanda that he has invited a young man named Jim
O'Connor home for dinner. Amanda immediately begins to make rather elaborate
plans for the gentleman caller.
On the next night, Amanda oversees Laura's dress and adds some "gay
deceivers" to the dress to make Laura more attractive. When she mentions the
name of the gentleman caller, Laura realizes that it is possibly the same Jim on
whom she had a crush in high school. She tells her mother that she might not be
able to come for dinner if it is the same one. Amanda will have nothing to do
with such foolishness, and even though Laura is sick when the gentleman caller
arrives, Amanda forces her to open the door. And it is the Jim that she knew
from high school. At dinner she is physically sick and has to be excused.
Later, Amanda sends Jim, the gentleman caller, into the living room to keep
Laura company while she and Tom do the dishes. As Jim and Laura talk, she
loses some of her shyness and becomes rather charming. Jim is attracted by
Laura's quiet charms, but later after having kissed her, he must explain that he is
already engaged. When Amanda reappears, Jim explains to her also that he is
engaged and must go. Amanda is so stunned that she accuses Tom of
deliberately playing a trick on them. The play ends with Tom some years in the
future thinking back on his sister Laura whom he can never forget.

About
The structure of the play involves the presentation of the scenes through the
memory of one of the characters. Tom Wingfield is both the narrator and a
character in the play. The separate scenes, then, should be seen as part of Tom's
memory of a crucial time in his life. The scenes do not function to give us a
traditional plot or story-line, but, instead, they are selected to give the audience
a slice of life that the author once lived through. In his own world, he wants to
present truth through illusion; that is, he wants to try to say something about his
life by recalling certain scenes of his past life. Thus the play is structured upon
the principle of presenting a series of episodes which should accumulate to make
a total comment about a specific life.
This type of structure forces Tom to be both a narrator and a character in the
play. He must let the audience know that these are scenes from memory and
that he is both the person remembering them and the person centrally involved
in the scenes. Some critics have objected to this structure because, as they point
out, Tom could not possibly know what happened in the scene between Laura
and the gentleman caller. But as Tom suggests, he takes the license of a poet
and projects himself into scenes in order to present poetic truths.
The stage directions call for the use of several technical devices in order to
convey the idea that this is a memory play. For example, some of the scenes
should be presented with some type of net or gauze between the audience and
the actors. Or in many places, Williams suggests the use of titles and images to
be projected on a scene in order to force or reinforce the idea of memory and to
recall certain events that occurred during the time of the play. Others are
supposed to be used to suggest some symbolic aspect of the play. But when the
play is produced, they are virtually never used. Most directors feel that the play
is sufficient without the extra use of images. In fact, most directors feel that the
use of these images would detract from the central action of the play. But the
point is that Williams included them so as to help with the structure of the play
as a memory play.

Character
Amanda Wingfield The mother whose husband deserted her years ago leaving
her with a son and daughter to raise. She lives partially in the world of her youth
and her gentlemen callers in order to escape the brutalities of today's world.

Tom Wingfield Her son who is employed in a shoe warehouse in order to

support the family. He is a poet by nature and feels that his environment is
destroying his creative abilities.
Laura Wingfield The daughter who is slightly crippled. She has retreated from
this world and lives in a world of old phonograph records and little glass animals.
Jim O'Connor The "emissary" from the world of reality. He is the average or
ordinary young man who brings a touch of the common world into the Wingfield
world of dreams.

Analysis and plot summary

Before beginning this summary and analysis of Glass Menagerie by Tennessee
Williams, it is important to point out that this play is not happening in the
narrators (Toms) present, but it is based on his memories. The setting of The
Glass Menagerie is a cramped apartment in a lower-class part of St. Louis in the
year 1937. The main character and narrator of The Glass Menagerie by
Tennessee Williams, Tom, is in a merchant sailors uniform and he details the
setting even further, telling us that Americas lower classes are still recovering
from the Great Depression.
In the early stages of the plot of the Glass Menagerie, we also learn that his father
left the family a long time ago, even though there is a picture of him that is plain
sight throughout The Glass Menagerie. While Tom is speaking (as well as
throughout the play) pay attention to the screen which presents certain words
and images important to the text and try to imagine how this might be if you were
sitting in the audience. In these first few scenes of The Glass Menagerie by
Tennessee Williams, we meet the mother, Amanda, who still seems caught up in
her life as a former Southern belle. She chides both of her children about being
odd (Laura wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy while Tom writes poetry
and disappears every night to go the movies and get away from the depressing
house). Laura is a fragile figure and collects glass animals and one night, when
Amanda and Tom quarrel, he breaks several of Lauras prized possessions.
True to her character in The Glass Menagerie, Laura does not angry, she only becomes
more sad and fragile and the family that is falling apart before her eyes. Amanda is
constantly pressuring Laura (click for a character analysis of Laura in The Glass
Menagerie) to find a suitor and even enrolls her daughter in business classes to
improve her chances of snagging a man. Instead of going to these, however, she skips
class and wanders through the streets with her gimp leg simply because she is too shy to
manage. Both Tom and Laura live in their own fantasy worlds and their mothers
insistence that they strive to be better somehow only causes more tension. In a last-ditch
effort to secure a husband for Laura, Amanda tells Tom to keep an eye out at the

warehouse for a suitable match for Laura. Finally, Tom asks an acquaintance from work,
Jim, to come over for dinner, not knowing that it was Lauras secret crush from high
school whom she was far too shy to ever speak of.
When he arrives, she hides for most of the evening until Jim brings her a glass of
wine and the two sit and talk. He does not remember her until she says that he
called her Blue Roses because he misunderstood the name of her disease. He
tries to tell her to be more confident as he examines one of her favorite figurines
a glass unicorn. Unfortunately, the unicorn slips from his hand and the horn
breaks off, making it just a regular horse. Laura does not seem upset. He then
tells her she needs to be kissed, and does so, sending the poor girl reeling.
Unfortunately, he quickly leaves the house since he is to be married
soon. Laura tells him to keep the unicorn as a souvenir and it is clear that she is
crushed. At this point in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the
lights are all out (because Tom used the electric bill money to pay for his secret
new job as a merchant sailor) and Amanda accuses Tom of bringing Jim even
though he was engaged. Tom did not know Jim was engaged at he leaves, never
to return again. He is narrating from the future in the play by Tennessee Williams
and admits his guilt about leaving Laura.
For anyone familiar with other plays by Tennessee Williams, particularly A
Streetcar Named Desire,some of the characters in this work will seem familiar.
The aging ex-Southern Belle, the mentally unstable young woman, the frustrated
young man. This is partly because they are figures from Williams past and
family life (see the biography). The reason why these characters resonate so
clearly is because this is a play based on memoriesalbeit of Tom Wingfield. It
would be rather simple to draw any number of parallels between Williams life
and that of Tom Wingfieldthey both worked at a shoe factory, both had a sister
with a crippling mental illness (and in the case of the play, a physical malady as
well) and both dealt with a mother still living in her Southern Belle days. In short,
if you havent yet read the biography of Tennessee Williams below or elsewhere,
it might be illuminating, especially if youre going to go on to
read Streetcaror Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Plot overview
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of the
narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 1937. He is
an aspiring poet who toils in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister,
Laura. Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Lauras father, ran off years ago and, except for one postcard,
has not been heard from since.

Amanda, originally from a genteel Southern family, regales her children frequently with tales
of her idyllic youth and the scores of suitors who once pursued her. She is disappointed that
Laura, who wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentlemen
callers. She enrolls Laura in a business college, hoping that she will make her own and the
familys fortune through a business career. Weeks later, however, Amanda discovers that
Lauras crippling shyness has led her to drop out of the class secretly and spend her days
wandering the city alone. Amanda then decides that Lauras last hope must lie in marriage
and begins selling magazine subscriptions to earn the extra money she believes will help to
attract suitors for Laura. Meanwhile, Tom, who loathes his warehouse job, finds escape in
liquor, movies, and literature, much to his mothers chagrin. During one of the frequent
arguments between mother and son, Tom accidentally breaks several of the glass animal
figurines that are Lauras most prized possessions.
Amanda and Tom discuss Lauras prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for
potential suitors at the warehouse. Tom selects Jim OConnor, a casual friend, and invites
him to dinner. Amanda quizzes Tom about Jim and is delighted to learn that he is a driven
young man with his mind set on career advancement. She prepares an elaborate dinner and
insists that Laura wear a new dress. At the last minute, Laura learns the name of her caller;
as it turns out, she had a devastating crush on Jim in high school. When Jim arrives, Laura
answers the door, on Amandas orders, and then quickly disappears, leaving Tom and Jim
alone. Tom confides to Jim that he has used the money for his familys electric bill to join the
merchant marine and plans to leave his job and family in search of adventure. Laura refuses
to eat dinner with the others, feigning illness. Amanda, wearing an ostentatious dress from
her glamorous youth, talks vivaciously with Jim throughout the meal.
As dinner is ending, the lights go out as a consequence of the unpaid electric bill. The
characters light candles, and Amanda encourages Jim to entertain Laura in the living room
while she and Tom clean up. Laura is at first paralyzed by Jims presence, but his warm and
open behavior soon draws her out of her shell. She confesses that she knew and liked him in
high school but was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him
of the nickname he had given her: Blue Roses, an accidental corruption of pleurosis, an
illness Laura had in high school. He reproaches her for her shyness and low self-esteem but
praises her uniqueness. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal, a
unicorn. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally knocks over the unicorn,
breaking off its horn. Laura is forgiving, noting that now the unicorn is a normal horse. Jim
then kisses her, but he quickly draws back and apologizes, explaining that he was carried

away by the moment and that he actually has a serious girlfriend. Resigned, Laura offers him
the broken unicorn as a souvenir.
Amanda enters the living room, full of good cheer. Jim hastily explains that he must leave
because of an appointment with his fiance. Amanda sees him off warmly but, after he is
gone, turns on Tom, who had not known that Jim was engaged. Amanda accuses Tom of
being an inattentive, selfish dreamer and then throws herself into comforting Laura. From the
fire escape outside of their apartment, Tom watches the two women and explains that, not
long after Jims visit, he gets fired from his job and leaves Amanda and Laura behind. Years
later, though he travels far, he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of
Laura.