Introduction
Amanda, Tom, and Laura are the principal characters in Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie.” The three of them are the remaining members of a small family who have been deserted by a wandering yet a charming father. Amanda is the mother, raised in the Old South, who finds it difficult to accept both her age and her current financial position.
Although Tom is the younger of the two children, he is mostly responsible for the family as the only male.
The play opens with him working at a job he detests while dreaming of traveling and being a writer. His frustration is expressed through his drinking and going to the movies in the evenings and reading and writing poetry on the job. Both of these characters revolve around Laura, the extremely shy sister. She suffers from a crippling disease (pleurodesis) which forces her to wear a brace on her leg and walk with a limp, and she spends her time dreaming about her glass figurines. Although they each do it differently, all three of these characters are guilty of escaping into a world of illusion to avoid reality.
An illusion of Tom’s mind
Tom’s first words reveal that the entire play is an illusion. His first words are “the play is a memory” (I, 145).
Tom keeps separating himself from the action of the play from time to time to narrate and point to specific ideas or events or make other comments, which reminds the audience that the play is an illusion of Tom’s mind. By keeping the concept that almost the entire play is a memory belonging to Tom in clear focus, Williams can illustrate how memory has become Tom’s illusion, something he can’t help escaping to no matter where his travels take him. Tom tells the audience at the end of the play that he followed “in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. I traveled around a great deal … I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something” (VII, 237).
That something turns out to be the memories he has shared through the course of the play. Rather than helping him hide from reality, his memories serve to force reality upon him at odd moments throughout every day.
Laura’s world of illusion
Laura lives in the most obvious world of illusion as she drifts through life in a cloud of disconnection.
She associates the classical music of her records with a happier time in her life while she associates her school days with the ‘thunder’ of her leg brace as she struggled into her music room late day after day. Her past has a huge significance to her present state of apathy, she dropped out of high school because she “made bad grades on my final examinations” (VII, 219) just as she couldn’t go back to business school because “I couldn’t go back there. I – threw up – on the floor!” (II, 155).
Unable to face her reality, Laura fills her time listening to her radio and playing with her glass figures. Her illusion is that time is not passing, that her hopes and dreams of long ago will still be attainable if she can ever move beyond her shyness. Her dreams are echoed in her cherished yearbook in which she still knows how to find the picture of the one boy she liked in high school, Jim O’Connor because he gave her a pet name that didn’t sound like a slur of some sort. “When I had that attack of pleurodesis – he asked me what was the matter when I cam back.
I said pleurodesis – he thought that I said, Blue Roses! So that’s what he always called me after that” (II, 157). She imagines that if she could have gained the attention of Jim O’Connor in high school, her life would be much different. Although Laura allows her memories of the past to paint a picture of the present that is more acceptable than reality, her encounter with reality in the form of the living and breathing Jim O’Connor allows her to realize that her trap is large of her imagination.
Memories of Amanda
The character who lives most within the illusions created by her memory is Amanda, the mother. Her first words in the play indicate her inability to leave her past in the past as she instructs Tom in the proper forms of eating and then tells stories of her immense popularity as a Southern belle in the Old South.
Although she takes on odd jobs to try to earn enough money to pay for the little extras around the house, she does not have the skills to take on a regular out-of-the-home job nor, as a proper Southern belle, would she consider it. Her refusal to exist in the present is also demonstrated in her dedication and devotion to the DAR. She even points out Laura’s attributes in terms of old values, “It’s rare for a girl as sweet and pretty as Laura to be domestic! But Laura is thank heavens, not only pretty but also very domestic.
I’m not at all. I never was a bit. I never could make a thing but angel-food cake. Well, in the South we had so many servants … I wasn’t prepared for what the future brought me” (VI, 204). Her memories of herself at her daughter’s age have her expecting Laura’s life to begin echoing her own. Not even the brace on her daughter’s leg or the frank comments of her son can wake her up to the facts. However, the shock of Jim’s engagement announcement is seen to have perhaps shaken her out of her imaginary world momentarily at least as expressed in the last image the audience is given of her: “Now that we cannot hear the mother’s speech, her silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty … Amanda’s gestures are slow and graceful, almost dancelike, as she comforts her daughter” (VII, 236).
Conclusion
Through the action of the play, all three characters experience at least a temporary reality check from the illusory worlds they live in as a result of the power of their memories.
For Tom, the play itself becomes the release of his memory that allows him to find a sense of temporary closure on his past. For Laura, stuck in a steady haze in the present, the realization of her thwarted hopes and dreams from the past allows her to consider new ideas brought in by the hero she envisioned, although not in the way she had imagined. For Amanda, the wake-up call doesn’t come until the end of the play, when she finally acknowledges the truths of the present, “Don’t think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who’s crippled and has no job!” (VII, 236).
While the duration of this reality check may not be measured in the play or real life, the suddenness of it, for all the characters occurring in the final scene of the play, serves as a wake-up call for the audience as well, to start examining the various areas in which their nostalgic dreams of the past are clouding their perception of the present or the future and preventing them from truly and effectively addressing the issues of the day.
Works Cited
Williams, Tennessee. “The Glass Menagerie.” The Theatre of Tennessee Williams. Vol. 1. New York: New Directions Books: 1971.