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Character List
Amanda Wingfield - Laura and Toms mother. A proud, vivacious woman, Amanda clings fervently to memories of a vanished, genteel past. She is simultaneously admirable, charming, pitiable, and laughable.
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Laura Wingfield - Amandas daughter and Toms younger sister. Laura has a bad leg, on which she has to wear a brace, and walks with a limp. Twenty-three years old and painfully shy, she has largely withdrawn from the outside world and devotes herself to old records and her collection of glass figurines.
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Tom Wingfield - Amandas son and Lauras older brother. An aspiring poet, Tom works at a shoe warehouse to support the family. He is frustrated by the numbing routine of his job and escapes from it through movies, literature, and alcohol.
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Jim OConnor - An old acquaintance of Tom and Laura. Jim was a popular athlete in high school and is now a shipping clerk at the shoe warehouse in which Tom works. He is unwaveringly devoted to goals of professional achievement and ideals of personal success.
Mr. Wingfield - Amandas wife and Laura and Toms father. Mr. Wingfield was a handsome man who worked for a telephone company. He abandoned his family years before the action of the play and never appears onstage. His picture, however, is prominently displayed in the Wingfields living room.
Plot Overview
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is also a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 17. 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 gentleman 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 newspaper 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 the word for Lauras medical condition, pleurosis. 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 fianc e. 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.
Key Facts
Full title - The Glass Menagerie
Author - Tennessee Williams (born Thomas Lanier Williams III)
Type of work - Play
Genre - Tragedy; family drama
Language - English
Time and place written - 141 14; a number of American cities, including New York, St. Louis, and Los Angeles
Date of first publication - 145
Publisher - Random House
Narrator - Tom Wingfield
Point of view - Tom both narrates and participates in the play. The older Tom remembers his youth, and then becomes a younger Tom who participates in the action as scenes from his youth play out. The point of view of the older Tom is reflective, and he warns us that his memory distorts the past. The younger Tom is impulsive and angry. The action sometimes consists of events that Tom does not witness; at these points, the play goes beyond simply describing events from Toms own memory.
Tone - Tragic; sarcastic; bleak
Tense - The play uses both the present and past tenses. The older Tom speaks in the past tense about his recollections, and the younger Tom takes part in a play that occurs in the present tense.
Setting (time) - Tom, from an indefinite point in the future, remembers the winter and spring of 17.
Setting (place) - An apartment in St. Louis
Protagonist - Tom Wingfield
Major conflict - In their own ways, each of the Wingfields struggles against the hopelessness that threatens their lives. Toms fear of working in a dead-end job for decades drives him to work hard creating poetry, which he finds more fulfilling. Amandas disappointment at the fading of her glory motivates her attempts to make her daughter, Laura, more popular and social. Lauras extreme fear of seeing Jim OConnor reveals her underlying concern about her physical appearance and about her inability to integrate herself successfully into society.
Rising action - After Laura admits to leaving a business course that would have allowed her to get a job, her mother, Amanda, decides that Laura must get married; Tom tells Amanda that he is going to bring Jim OConnor to dinner; Amanda prepares extensively, hoping that Jim will become Lauras suitor
Climax - Each characters struggle comes to a climax at different points. Jims decision not to pay the electric bill and to use the money instead to leave his family in search of adventure reveals his initial, decisive break from his family struggles. When Jim breaks the horn from Lauras glass unicorn and announces that he is engaged, the possibility that he will help her overcome her self-doubt and shyness is also destroyed. When Amanda discovers that Jim is engaged, she loses her hope that Laura will attain the popularity and social standing that Amanda herself has lost.
Falling action - Laura gives Jim the broken unicorn as a souvenir; Jim leaves the house to pick up his girlfriend; Amanda accuses Tom of not having revealed that Jim was engaged. Addressing the audience, Tom explains that not long after that incident he left his family but was never able to emotionally leave Laura behind in his later travels, he frequently felt a connection to her.
Themes - The difficulty of accepting reality; the impossibility of true escape; the unrelenting power of memory
Motifs - Abandonment; the words and images on the screen; music
Symbols - Lauras Glass menagerie; the glass unicorn; blue Roses; the fire escape
Foreshadowing - Toms departure is foreshadowed by his frequent retreats to the Fire Escape and the image of a sailing vessel on the screen; the music from the Paradise Dance Hall across the street foreshadows Laura and Jims dancing; Jims breaking of the unicorn foreshadows his breaking of her heart.
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