Category: The Glass Menagerie

Introduction

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams depicts the depression era and its impact on a small Southern family in St. Louis. Williams portrays that the family in financial trouble: the father has abandoned his wife and two children, both of whom are now young adults. The main problem is that the family cannot cope with economic crisis lost in dreams about prosperity and wealth. Thesis Williams portrays that false values and ideals imposed by Amanda on her children result in loosing hopes and desperation.

The plot of the play

In the play, Williams depicts people waiting for better days but unable to cope with reality and financial crisis. It is possible to say that Amanda, the mother, has a great impact on values and ideals of children. On the one hand, Amanda knows she must do what it takes to keep the bills paid. On the other hand, she cherishes the remembrances of the days back in Blue Mountain, with gentlemen callers and hoards of jonquils surrounding her: “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain-your mother received-seventeen!-gentlemen callers!” (Williams, p. 8). Williams admits that she regrets her diminished status: the fading of her beauty and the increasing harshness of her tone of voice: “a little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place” (Williams 129). Her hopes and dreams did not come true causing her emotional sufferings and desperation. It is possible to say that as her beauty fades, her desire for adulation increases, making her a harpy. Once Tom calls his mother an ‘ugly-babbling old-witch’ (Williams, p. 23). Amanda, see her life as wasteful and unhappy. She regrets her choice of the wrong suitor, one who did not become a bank president and a millionaire. The emphasis on the “hivelike” buildings of ugly colors with their fire escapes underscores the separation from nature, beauty, and human values. This is not the proper habitat for the dreamer, the poet, or the fragile cripple.

False dreams and values imposed by Amanda on her children lead to desperation and anxiety. Amanda forces her daughter, Laura, to realize her hopes and dreams. Williams depicts Laura as the gentle girl. She plays with her glass animals and enjoys dreaming but she is unable to cope with typewriters, offices, flirtations, and strangers. She is shy, withdrawn and sweet. Amanda seeks desperately to make Laura independent by enrolling her in business school, but that proves a failure. Amanda tells Laura: “Girls that aren’t cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man” (Williams 17). Losing hopes are described through personal failure of Laura and her personal weakness to oppose the mother and her influence. Williams describes Laura as “a piece of her glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf” (Williams 129). Amanda nags her son to bring home a suitor to court and marry Laura. This reveals the perennial conflicts between individual needs and perceived obligations. Laura’s pained responses to her mother’s cruel questions about her plans for the evening expose the anguish that this teasing causes the sensitive girl. Taking it as a symbol of Laura herself, Williams uses the symbol of glass menagerie and the unicorn as symbols of losing hopes. Jim accidentally breaks off the unicorn: “Laura touches her throat and clears it-turns the broken unicorn in her hands. His voice becomes softer.] Has anyone ever told you that you were pretty” (Williams, p. 87)? It is possible to say that Amanda has done the same to Laura: distorted her true nature to make her seem like all normal young woman.

The world of dreams and the world of reality

In the play, Williams contrast two worlds: the world of dreams and the world of reality. For instance, Amanda expresses eloquently the humiliation of the deserted wife and the unmarried woman in the South. Williams speaks of this lost lady, who is not suited for the marriage game, cannot earn a living in the modern world, and has no role in modern fragmented family units. “What is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position. I’ve seen such pitiful cases in the South” (Williams 16). Using this example, Amanda tries to prove her personal value and importance.

Tom is lost in his dreams about independence and personal freedom. The son is working in a warehouse to support his mother and sister. Williams portrays Tom as a man trapped by economic pressures, forced to work at tasks that will emasculate him over time. Unlike his friend Jim, Tom is not interested in success and is not willing to spend a lifetime trapped in mechanical and meaningless chores. He must escape to find his truth. In his role as central character and objective commentator, he portrays his frustrations, his anger, and his sorrow. In his final sad meditations he reveals his own conflicted love for these people. Williams states that independence must be purchased at a significant price. To achieve his own potential as a poet, he must be a free man. To behave like a good son and loving brother, he must remain in bondage. Amanda says: “Most young men find adventure in their careers. Tom responds: “Then most young men are not employed in a warehouse” (Williams, p. 33). The decision to escape the “tender trap” is a necessity. Losing hopes and desperation forces Tom to escape his sister’s tragedy by transferring the responsibility onto his mother. In the narrator’s voice, we hear the poetic, ironic tone of the outsider who has managed to transform this individual situation into a universal commentary on being true to one’s self.

Summary

In sum, apparently nurturing, Amanda thwarts and hobbles her children, dominating not only their eating habits but their entire lives, keeping them safely in the nest with her. Portraying herself as a martyr to their needs, she actually requires their submission to feed her pride, crippling Laura by her outrageous expectations. On the one hand, losing hopes and desperation are caused by the effects of the industrial revolution and its impact on the family. Although Williams emphasizes that personal values of the mother dominate in the play. Amanda has distorted Laura’s childish nature to make her seem like all the normal young ladies being courted by nice young gentlemen. Through the character of Tom, Williams portrays that his loosing hopes and dreams are caused by constant pressure and false morals imposed by Amanda. The unique vision of reality and events can be seen as personal style of writing in which the author acknowledges that he is selecting his characters, scenes, and moods from his individual perspective at a precise moment in time. Thus, glimpses give the viewer the fleeting impression of a moment through the selective use of details, just as the individual eye chooses images for the mind to consider.

References

Williams T. The Glass Menagerie. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1999.

The revivals of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie regularly draw the audience’s attention and make the public refer to Tom’s memories, as it is stated in the play, many times. The American Repertory Theater produced a new version of the classic play and presented it at the Booth Theater during the first months of 2014. The audience received the opportunity to meet Amanda, Tom, and Laura one more time, while focusing on their inner drama and while understanding their inner pain because of impossibility to accept the reality or escape from it. These themes and emotions were not only revealed but also significantly accentuated by John Tiffany as a director of the live theater production.

Tiffany’s production of Williams’ play should be discussed as the tribute to the classic The Glass Menagerie because of valuing the traditional approach to interpreting the play; thus, the director’s voice can be discussed as limited, and the characters’ real emotions, which were described by Williams, play the most significant role to emphasize the theme of impossibility to accept the reality.

In his production, Tiffany intends to balance the voice of the playwright and the personal director’s vision of the plot and idea. Williams’ voice seems to be observed in all the events presented on stage, and this detail can be discussed as important for the public interested in viewing the play as Williams’ product instead of focusing on the director’s impressive ideas. In The Glass Menagerie, Williams tries to represent the individual’s inner world as a fragile construction which cannot be harder than a glass unicorn. Furthermore, Williams states that people often try to find the shelter in their dreams, ideas, and the glass menagerie. Tiffany’s production can be perceived as the illustration to these ideas.

Referring to the characters and actors, it is important to note that Amanda performed by Cherry Jones, Laura performed by Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Tom performed by Zachary Quinto are extremely real because their feelings and actions are not exaggerated, but highly vivid. The characters’ words sound persuasively and produce the definite effect on the audience. Thus, Amanda as a former Southern belle is strict and rather tyrannical, but she is still vulnerable because her dreams did not come true.

Cherry Jones’s acting allows the viewer to think that her Amanda is really that woman about whom Williams wrote in his play. Celia Keenan-Bolger’s Laura is not a victim of her mother’s tyranny, but she is a vulnerable girl who lives in the world of her fantasy. In this case, Tom performed by Zachary Quinto can be discussed as the most dramatic character because his emotions seem to be on the verge because he is lost in his tries to find the ways to escape from the reality.

The whole mood of the live theater production can be described as lyrical and even elegiac because of the focus on the characters’ emotions. There are no features on stage to distract the public’s attention from the characters’ feelings. Much attention is paid to music, for instance, Amanda’s dancing can be perceived as dramatic rather than eccentric. The lyrical tone is in all the characters’ actions, without references to their words, behaviors, or reactions because they suffer from the inner drama.

Tiffany’s production of Williams’ The Glass Menagerie can be discussed as the good attempt to represent Williams’ ideas with little personal interpretation. As a result, the play’s strengths are in the intention to accentuate the problematic topic of the people’s relations with the reality and to make an emphasis on their real and deep emotions and feelings.