The Real Tom

By Dramaturg Katie Rasor

“My next play will be simple, direct, terrible—a picture of my own heart—there will be no artifice in it—I
will speak the truth as I see it… “
--Tennessee Williams

Some of this story really happened. Like the play’s protagonist Tom, to whom he gave his Christian name,
Tennessee Williams really did spend an unhappy youth in Saint Louis with a Southern Belle mother, a
disabled sister, and a travelling salesman father. Williams’ mother, Edwina, was every bit as strong willed
as the play’s Amanda. She demonstrates this all too clearly in her rather indignant recollection of The
Glass Menagerie’s premiere in her memoir Remember Me to Tom, which quickly devolves into an
adamant insistence that: “I am not Amanda. I'm sure that if Tom stops to think, he realizes I am not. The
only resemblance I have to Amanda is that we both like jonquils.” Williams even worked for a few
disappointing years in a shoe factory as Tom does in the play.

Although the Williams family was not in dire financial straits like the Wingfields, they felt the loss of their
social status acutely when they moved from a small Southern town to Saint Louis. While both Tom and
Tennessee were both aspiring writers, Williams was more motivated than his fictional counterpart,
regularly locking himself in his room with a pot of coffee and writing all night after his shift at the factory
instead of disappearing to the movies. Like Tom, Williams was very close with his sister, Rose, upon
whom the character of Laura is based. Rose’s fate was decidedly darker than Laura’s however. In 1943,
shortly before Williams began the play that would become The Glass Menagerie, he learned that back
home in St. Louis his mother had authorized doctors to perform a prefrontal lobotomy on Rose, who had
struggled with mental illness since her teens. She was institutionalized for the rest of her life.

That Williams felt responsibility for his sister is undeniable. In Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams,
Lyle Leverich asserts that, “throughout his life, Tennessee Williams had two overriding devotions: his
career as a writer and his sister, Rose.” Indeed, when Williams died in 1983, he left the bulk of his estate
in trust for Rose’s care.

Only some of this story really happened, but all of it is true. In it, Williams captures the reliable
unreliability of memory, the complicated love of family, and the pain of coming of age. I believe that it is
this emotional, if not strictly factual, truth that has captured American audiences’ attention for seventy
years. Whether it’s Tom’s dreams of excitement, Laura’s sincerity and loyalty, Amanda’s will to survive, or
Jim’s need to be liked, we all see some part of ourselves onstage. By sharing a “picture of [his] own
heart,” Williams shows us our own.

Sources:

Tennessee Williams: Notebooks edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton

“Rose Williams, 86, Sister and Muse of the Playwright” by Mel Gussow New York Times Obituary
September 7, 1996