Tennessee Williams and

Expressionism
(With reference to The Glass Menagerie)

Micro-teaching CCE 2 by-

Pragya Keeba Toppo
M.A. English 4th Semester
About the author
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25,
1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an
American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries
Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the
three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly
became famous with the success of ‘The Glass Menagerie’ (1944)
in New York City. He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it
closely reflected his own unhappy family background.
Introduction
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944
and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical
elements, featuring characters based on its author, his histrionic mother, and his
mentally fragile sister. In writing the play, Williams drew on an earlier short story, as
well as a screenplay he had written under the title of ‘The Gentleman Caller’.

The play premiered in Chicago in 1944. After a shaky start, it was championed by
Chicago critics Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy, whose enthusiasm helped build
audiences so the producers could move the play to Broadway where it won the New York
Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1945. The Glass Menagerie was Williams' first
successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded
playwrights.
“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of
those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”

Amanda Wingfield
(The Glass Menagerie)
Expressionism
The term expressionism is defined as One of the chief “a movement in the arts emphasizing the free
expression of the artist’s subjective, emotional responses to objects and events, rather than their objective
representation, characterized by extortion or exaggeration, of natural forms and intensification of color for
purpose of expression.” One of the chief aspects of literature that was mainly dominated by this movement
was theatre.
The first recognized expressionist play-wright was August Strindberg of Sweden, who
revealed his subjectivity through various symbols of the stage. On the whole it was the break through the
traditional realism of the theatre. This reactionary movement against realism was manifested in different
ways by different writers. Germans introduced modern devices. There characters “were types, each
representative of many men, and others endeavored to concentrate in a few patterned phrases what might
have had to be wise expressed in hundreds or thousands of word.”
 Tennessee Williams is one of the leading 20th century American dramatist who used this technique in his plays to present the
intellection idea before the audience.

 Expressionism in drama stands for objectifying what is subjective through symbols and other resources of the stage lite marks, tricky
light, special make-up, etc. to express the inner tense of the characters.

 To abandon the traditional realism in theatres, it was inevitable to make certain changes in the mode and method of presentation. And
that curiosity gave birth to expressionism, which was accepted by many dramatists of that time.

 Although expressionism was popular in the American theatre in the 1920’s, its techniques having been harmonized with both the
drama and the film were familiar to dramatists of later period. Presenting human frustration perversion and sexual maladjustment on
the stage, was a difficult task.

 Tennessee Williams projected the objective ideas through the expressionistic and naturalistic device on the stage. Early plays of
Tennessee Williams reveal the influence of the dramatic method, popularized by the expressionistic movement. The use of theatrical
elements settings, props, lighting, music, sound effect was not merely a background for the effect but a symbolic manifestation of
the inner truth.

 Three of Williams plays The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire and Camino Real are true representatives of that
expressionistic form in the sense that they dramatize the internal actions of characters. Williams Battle of Angels and You Touched
Me employ the trapping of expressionism without accomplishing the purpose of revealing the inner life. The plays under reference
are true expressionistic plays because they describe internal actions through free representation of objective facts.
Expressionism
- in ‘The Glass Menagerie’
 In the production note of The Glass Menagerie, Williams lay emphasis on the necessity for the play wrights to abandon exhausted
connections of photographic realism in the theatre and to substitute for them newer techniques’ such as those of expressionism.
“Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama”, he writes “have only one valid aim and that is a close
approach to truth.”
 The Glass Menagerie is the first of his plays which is expressionistic in method and Williams uses various devices like light, music,
sound and even a slide screen to have a closer approach to the internal state of the characters. So far as the resources of the stage are
concerned, the screen device music the lightness all are helpful in the expressionistic production of the play.
 During the play a constant tune “The Glass Menagerie gives the emotional emphasis to suitable passages. It expresses the surface
vivacity of life with the underlying strain of immutable and inexpressible sorrow.” On the whole these expressionistic devices are
immensely helpful in the presentation of the plays as a memory play through expressionism. The play founded a new form of
expression in drawing a true picture of the realities of the expressionism of the middle class life after the World War II.
 The purpose of using such a newer technique by Williams is to suggest the inner reality that lie beneath the surface of life. No other
form could have been so successful in its presentation as the above mentioned one. The playwright, ignoring the outer facts, is mainly
concerned with idea. The scenes of the above play are out of order not waited in a sequence. The dislocation of time is also an
important factor in the play.
 According to Williams, to present the reality of life, it was necessary to achieve such a freedom in its presentation.
 “My desire was to give these audiences my own sense of
something wild and unrestricted that my own sense in the
mountains or clouds changing shape in the gale or the
continually dissolving and transforming images of a
dream.”
- Tennessee Williams’ justification for using
“Expressionism” in his literary works.
The Glass menagerie of
Expressions
 The Glass Menagerie's stage innovation was taken from European Expressionism, but when all the elements of this "plastic theatre"
(with emphasis more on the representation of reality) were combined with Williams' exquisite romantic lyricism, the result was a
formidable new force on the American stage.
 The American audience of 1940s, weary of old realism and prosaic dialogue, eagerly embraced the new theatrical climate gifted by
Williams. Through The Glass Menagerie, he realized that a relatable crisis of heart that goes through every family around the world at
least once, will garner the audience's empathy and catharsis. Autobiographical in nature, William described the play in an interview
as "the saddest play I have ever written. It is full of pain. It's painful for me to see it.“
 With The Glass Menagerie', Williams explores the internal truth, a world of private need beneath the daily social performance of
Americans who chased the idea of progress sold to them.
 For example- Amanda's affliction due to the loss of glorious past, fear of financial insecurity, thwarted ambitions for her children;
Laura's insecurities, physical and emotional isolation; and Tom's unrealized literary ambition and dreamed life crushed by his
warehouse job and responsibility towards family, project three characters who do dream, but their dream is choked down by the
greater American Dream, which in its very definition emphasized how- "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone,
with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement". Certainly, Williams proves that richness by money alone cannot
provide a fuller life.
 Considering the fact that Expressionist elements make artist's work much revelatory of self as well as society, and add
autobiographical traces by presenting a feeling of intense love or hate or anger to his environment, here, Williams projects a
dilemma which had castrated his personal life as well as the society.

 The entire Expressionist play intensifies the elements it is wheeled upon, memory, reality. and illusion. The dim lightings
throughout the play communicate how the characters' dull lives has incarcerated them.

 The Glass Menagerie is a modern drama that engages with psychological motivation beneath the surface of external human
characteristics. Drama is about conflict'. This conflict in an Expressionist play like The Glass Menagerie proves that human actions
themselves become a staged play. The play brings the truth to light that human actions are majorly performances.
Conclusion
Title of 'The Glass Menagerie' is symbolic in itself like The Streetcar named Desire', The Caton a hot tin
Roof', Summer and Smoke' and other plays of Williams. The characters of Amanda, Tom and Laura
speak eloquently of their intimate secrets, personal dilemmas and are fragile like Laura's glass
menagerie. The radiance of these characters is often hidden, obscured, usually until a fantastic i.e. true
moment illuminates them. They are like pieces of translucent glass which when touched by light, transmit
a brief glow of their reality. Just like glass menageries reflects light when it falls upon it, 'The Glass
Menagerie' too reflects reality of these afflicted and trapped characters as the theatre light falls upon the
stage.

To conclude, The Glass menagerie is a revelatory play. It reveals the playwright's story of sufferings,
desires, thwarted ambition, fear of non being and family conflicts, it depicts the society that mourns the
glorious past and feeds on the idea of progress served to them by authorities and most importantly, it
reveals what it is to be human in a dramatized manner. In every way, The Glass Menagerie scintillates
brightly as a great Expressionist drama.