The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams rightfully takes his place as one of the premier playwrights in the history of the American theater. He relentlessly turned out of high quality pieces (and other short literary expositions) on subjects that in an earlier day before the 1950's would have not found nearly so receptive an audience. Here Williams, studying a willfully dysfunctional family, relies on a seemingly autobiographical presentation of the life of a faded Southern Belle mother and her two captive children who are fodder to her dreams of renewed grandeur and style when things `get better'. The gist of the better is a suitable husband for her distracted daughter. That those `things' do not get better drives the dramatic tension of the work, as it almost always does in a Williams play.

Williams has a magic knack for getting to the core of human relations, unpretty as they are some times. The mirror, in many cases, may be harder to take than the reality. Here the son's desire to `help' his obviously unworldly sister at the arm twisting behest of Mother by bringing a co-worker to dinner triggers a trail of events that make Sis fall further and further in the battle with reality. Someone once said that in a Williams's production no good turn ever gets rewarded. And that is the case here. While this is not the most compelling of his plays it is well worth looking at or better, reading.

After reading the numerous 5 star reviews about this play, I must say that I was a bit disappointed. I am still glad that I read it but it would be a stretch for me to consider it a true classic. I found the story and the characters to be a bit ordinary. Very quick read though.

Unfortunately, for too many students, literature is only as good as the professor who is teaching it. Some students of literature end up studying it on their own, for their own pursoses - with no time deadlines and no required 'number of words' essays. If you have never seen this play, I encourage you to read it and underline it at your own pace. "Quality literature is not intended to be immutable Truth sent down from the mountain; rather, it is a conversation to be continued with future generations."

In the beginning of the text of the play, each character is described. The playwright's description of the key role of Tom, the son, sets the stage for unavoidable tragedy. The playwright himself suggests the only solution to the social problems raised in the play is: "to escape from a trap he has to act without pity." This foregone preclusion is nonsense.

The words of this play are beautifully and thoughtfully chosen. The play clearly displays tragedies of the female characters, who make their personal success dependent on executing a perfect traditional marriage - an objective the mother, the daughter, and the son are not likely to achieve any time soon - if ever. The play shows what often happens to people who frame their mental success or measure the quality of their soul on whether they can obtain and maintain an absolute, singular intimate relationship with only one other person. And as with many Tennessee Williams plays, the drama is not so much a result of defective people trying to succeed in healthy social environments and constructs; rather, the drama (the stuff that "the theater" was created to show) is created more when ordinary, complex & fragile people try to fit into narrow social molds that few people are likely to prosper in.

Amanda, Laura, and Tom are worthy of lasting love. The tragedy is they have each defined love in different, seemingly small but devastating ways. And as a result, they have blinded themselves to their potential to love each other and find love in others. A tragedy in any relationship would be to be with someone who, for whatever "good" reasons, stops learning & adapting - they become someone from whom little new can be learned or expected. Tom senses those trends in his mother and sister and concludes that neither of them are capable of reconsideration. Thinking he cannot reason with either of them, he incorrectly assumes he is trapped. He knows of no method of education to change their mindsets, and he tragically abandons them, like his father before him.

Tom says, "I didn't go to the moon, I went much further - for time is the longest distance between two places." And his abandonment, leaving them not only for a period of time, but more accurately for an indefinite and possibly never ending period of time is a level of insensitivity I doubt he fully conceives. Because as the playwright says, "His nature is not remorseless;" rather more likely he is lacking either the education and/or human experiences that would give him a better understanding of the harms his abandoment could cause. Leaving a poor mother and handicapped, hard to employ sister during the depression is not an act that (as the playwright himself incorrectly asserts) warrants him acting without pity. His mother and sister do not need pity. They need support, education, and a determined, dogged willingness to find new ideas, perceptions, and possible solutions.

I have no problem with Tom going off and exploring the world, but he doesn't tell his mother or sister when or if he will ever return - a decision that is neither necessary nor healthy for him, his family, or the other people close to him. And I don't need to hear Tom at the end of the play trying to engender sympathy from the audience for his abandonment by saying he is still haunted by the plight of the sister he left behind. To quote the sentiment of a more recent great American playwright: "If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show His face, or His Glyph or whatever in the Garden again . . . if after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned to see . . . how much suffering His abandonment had created, if He did come back you should sue the bastard . . . Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare he. That's my only contribution to all this Theology."

Tom go home. There is great discovery, challenge, and adventure in working to reconcile the irreconcilable differences in our roots - even if you are only partially successful. The road less traveled is often the more difficult one leading us back home.

He cuts right to the core of every character's heart in his plays. And he leaves his characters so emotionally naked that you feel shattered and exposed at the end of your reading of the play.
Part of the enduring magical appeal of Tennessee Williams plays is the relatability of his characters .You see yourself in them or someone you know.
Laura reminds me very much of myself and my heart went out to her throught the whole play,especially at the end.One can only wonder what ended up happening to her for the rest of her life.
Mr. Williams plays and the people in them imprint themselves in your heart and mind and never leave.Thats why his plays will never be forgotten and are still so widely and deeply loved.

His first big Broadway success, "The Glass Menagerie" is Tennessee Williams' beautifully detailed semi-autobiographical memory play set in Depression-era St. Louis. Reading the play makes one genuinely appreciate the art of his prose in masking the self-deceptions of the four characters. I am so used to seeing this play dramatized that reading the words shows the care with which Williams nurtured each of the character arcs. Beyond the play's title, his use of symbolism becomes clearer from the fire escape to the various religious references. It doesn't have the heated melodrama of his later "A Streetcar Named Desire", but it is arguably his most poignant work as a playwright.

An aging Southern belle whose husband left her sixteen years earlier, Amanda Wingfield desperately clings to her despotic role as the matriarch of her small family. Her concerns revolve around keeping up appearances, retaining a sense of gentility and etiquette in her dilapidated house and finding a life for her daughter Laura. Amanda's narcissism stands in direct contrast to her painfully shy daughter overly sensitive to her slight limp, but it is a cause for fury in son Tom, a poet who has to work at a shoe factory to support the family. Modeled after Williams, he acts as the narrator of the play and provides insights to the characters that are not readily apparent.

Each character holds onto dreams. Amanda shares her past at every opportunity. Laura cares for her collection of glass animals and listens to her father's worn records on the vitrola. Tom dreams of joining the Merchant Marines to avoid Amanda's clutches like his father did. It comes to a head when Tom surprisingly heeds his mother's wishes to bring a gentleman caller, a co-worker named Jim O'Connor, to the house for dinner as a possible suitor for Laura. The confident Jim turns out to be Laura's crush from high school, and the play's most touching scene has Jim and Laura reminiscing by candlelight after dinner. In an ironic twist, Jim turns out to be engaged, and the family is irreparably damaged.

The play has a universal and enduring appeal because of the relevance of the dysfunctional family at the core. Tom's frustrations remain a touch point for anyone feeling trapped by obligation and using it as an excuse not to pursue one's dreams. Amanda is such a rich character, steeped in the reality of her impoverishment but maintaining illusions about her daughter's condition and returning to the wealthy lifestyle she once had in Blue Mountain. Laura is the perennial victim of her family's follies, as she cannot summon the strength to break her dependency on them.

It's no wonder this play has provided such a powerful acting showcase since its debut in 1944 beginning with Laurette Taylor's legendary performance as Amanda. Her successors are a virtual who's who of acting luminaries - Gertrude Lawrence, Katharine Hepburn, Jessica Tandy, Joanne Woodward, Maureen Stapleton, Julie Harris and Jessica Lange. Last night, I saw Rita Moreno give a monumental performance at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and the drama still resonates as clearly as it must have sixty years ago. This 1999 paperback also includes an introduction by Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, who looks at the lasting impact of the play; a brief essay by Williams, "The Catastrophe of Success", in which he describes his surprise and horror at sudden fame after the play opened; and some interesting production notes from the original staging by Williams himself.