The Glass Menagerie, a play written by Tennessee Williams, tells a story of a broken family of three - Amanda Wingfield, the mother, and Laura Wingfield and Tom Wingfield, her children. Amanda "continues to live vitally in her illusions (993)" and her grown-up children are seemingly lost souls in need of direction. Crippled from birth, Laura is painfully shy and has an obsession with her collection of glass animals while Tom longs to find adventure and freedom from his mother's domineering paranoia and Southern charm in the household.
In a sense, the relationships and the events that transpired in the play gave a sense of everything being fragile, with the possibility of everything crashing down at any moment, like a glass house. Indeed, this is what happens as things unfold in the play. Amanda Wingfield lives in illusions of grandeur and seems unwilling to part with her past glory days when she was young and beautiful, and had seventeen gentlemen callers. She obviously fancied herself to be the popular young girl she once was. This is evident from the way she carried herself - in one part, she "flounces girlishly toward the kitchenette (999)." Her sole purpose was to find Laura a suitor, a quest that proved futile in the end.
I chose to focus on Amanda Wingfield because she is a complex character with many layers to her. I admire her vivacity and persevering attitude, especially because Laura and Tom are difficult people, and completely unlike their mother. Amanda's intentions were all good, although she is so child-like and bossy that she often provoked her children to do the exact opposite of what she wants them to. Her attitude drove away her husband (his grinning picture sat over the mantel) and it eventually drove away Tom. She is described to have "aged but childish features (1010)" and is full of "Southern charm". I find it quite sad that Amanda still loves her husband even though he left her. Her sentimental personality made her unable to let go of the fact that her husband had left her for good - she often referred to him in the play as she lectured Tom about this and that. She seems to be unaware of her attachment to her husband. For example, after telling Tom to comb his hair, Amanda said, "There is only one respect in which I would like you to emulate your father. (1015)" When Tom asked what it was, Amanda replied, "The care he always took of his appearance. He never allowed himself to look untidy (1015)."
Amanda's dream for Laura to have a suitor was close to realization for her when Tom brought home his friend from work, Jim O'Connor. However, Jim only managed to hurt Laura's fragile feelings and nothing hopeful transpired from the visit.
And so, in the end, everything shatters like Laura's glass unicorn shattered in the play - Amanda's dreams for Tom and Laura, Laura's hope that Jim could love her, and Tom's shaky relationship with his mother.
The title "The Glass Menagerie" could easily have been applied to the family instead of Laura's collection of glass animals. I looked the word "menagerie" up on dictionary.com and one of the definitions is "an unusual and varied group of people." The Wingfield family is an unusual and varied group of people. The play is almost like a tragedy except that the family was already not so well-off to begin with. As the play nears to an end, all speech is muted out. As Amanda can no longer be heard, "her silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty (1048)." Perhaps the play aimed to show that beauty is not enough to capture a man's heart, even though this is probably just a minor theme in the play. After all, Amanda was beautiful, but she had a "tragic beauty" because her outward looks was not enough to convince her husband to stay. Jim O'Connor called Laura pretty but was not charmed enough by her to stay either.
I was disappointed that the play ended with hardly any closure for the reader. There was nothing to suggest much hope for the characters. One of the closing lines of the play, when Amanda shouted to Tom, "Go, then! Then go to the moon - you selfish dreamer! (1048)" struck me as being particularly significant because a selfish dreamer is exactly what Amanda is. She made Tom give up his dream of adventure and tried to convince Laura that having a husband is the best thing there is. This makes her the selfish dreamer, the one who dreamed for her children what she once dreamed for herself, but was never able to make those dreams become reality.
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