n Tennessee William’s drama play, The Glass Menagerie, the character Amanda is mostly concerned with her children's well being. After her husband abandoned her and their two children, Tom and Laura, Amanda had to raise both of them single-handedly until they were grown ups. Williams’ drama “involving only four characters, is built around Amanda and her effect upon raising her children” (Tholl, 1337). Amanda cared for her children's health, appearance, and future while also being concerned with what they do in their free time. Being the mother that she is, Amanda wishes nothing but “success and happiness for her precious children” (Williams 1996). Although her mothering techniques can be extreme and or suffocating to some degree, she is not oblivious to all of the dysfunctional nature of her family. Amanda cares about the health of her children. A childhood illness has left her daughter Laura with a limp. Being aware of this “cripple”, Laura has developed a mental fragility and an inferiority complex that have isolated her from the outside world (Unknown, Amanda Wingfield). If Amanda was not a good a good mother she would not worry at all about Laura’s health and independence. Instead she continuously tells Laura that her limp is not something to be ashamed of. “Nonsense! Laura, I’ve told you never, never to use that word. Why, you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect. . .” (Williams 1985) Amanda was afraid that because Laura’s health problems she would never receive gentlemen callers because “she had to walk with a brace and was extremely shy” (Unknown, Amandaa Wingfield). Amanda begins to see beyond her daughter as a crippled and does not let any of her children mention it. Amanda is concerned with what her children ... ... middle of paper ... ... to encourage” (Beattie, 2). It is said that Amanda’s greatest flaw is denying reality which she would often withdraw from. She longed to be “well-off” and “wouldn’t accept that she was responsible for why her children ended up this way;” and “wouldn’t accept that she was responsible for the sorrow and flaws of her children” (Unknown, Essaylet). Amanda Wingfield cared mostly about her children's well being. Though “her foolishness makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there is tenderness in her slight person” (Fambrough, 1). Amanda cared for her children's health, appearance, and future while also being concerned with what they do in their free time. Amanda “lives only for her children for whom she sincerely wants happiness and security” (Tholl, 1336). “The key to Amanda’s character is her heroism” and had Amanda been a bad mother, she would have lived in oblivion.
Within this family is a rather troublesome and frankly a bit clichéd mother (being the husband’s in this case) whose sole issue appears to be being herself. Readers are made to see her as complaining and overall very unpleasant to the rest of the family, especially the two young parents. It is absolutely clear that Bailey very much dislikes his mother, taking a dismissive stance to her, “Bailey didn 't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children 's mother” and certainly not entertaining to her pleasure, “She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her.” However, soon readers start to see another side of this story, one which explains the situation more than what is initially offered by O’Conner. The differences in personal beliefs and ideologies between Bailey and his mother cause a major rift. It’s implied that perhaps she was not a very good parental figure to him leading up to the end as realizations dawned upon her far too late. Some of this may be attributed to the lifestyle and morals an older woman would have been raised in, but it is also strongly hinted at that she may have certain incorrigible flaws. This idea is confirmed in the ending lines of the work: “‘She would of been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her
Amanda is also well characterized by the glass menagerie. The glass sits in a case, open for display and inspection for all. Amanda try’s to portray herself as a loving mother, doing everything she can for her children, and caring nothing for herself, when in fact, she is quite selfish and demanding. Amanda claims that she devotes her life to her children, and that she would do anything for them, but is very suspicious of Tom’s activities, and continually pressures Tom, trying to force him in finding a gentleman caller for Laura, believing that Laura is lonely and needs a companion, perhaps to get married. Like the glass, her schemes are very transparent, and people can see straight through them to the other side, where ...
First, she was an bossy person. Especially when it came to her children, constantly putting them down and making them feel as if they weren’t good enough and couldn't do anything right. Secondly, she would make decisions for her children, allowing them to have little say in their own futures. Finally, she placed a large part of her responsibilities on Tom. Despite any views people may have on determining if a mother is good or bad, it was made clear that Amanda was a little more on the selfish side of things, putting her needs ahead of her children's. Amanda seemed like she cared more for herself than her own children.
Did you know that most of the plays written and performed in twentieth century America where based off of what was happening in the world at that time? The Great Depression, new inventions, and The Great War influenced the ideas of plays. The twentieth century American history takes a role in the ways of life in The Glass Menagerie which is set after the Great Depression in the late 1930’s.
Amanda seems to be a devout Christian, however the reality to this false appearance is that she is used to mock religion. Amanda seems to be very concerned with being religious, she often reprimands Tom, saying that “Christian Adults don’t want it” (34) when he complains about the lack of adventure in his life. She seems to be a good, religious person who wishes to improve the grim situation her family is in. However, it is quickly obvious that she is not the religious person she seems to be, and is even used to mock religion. When she speaks of her gentlemen callers, she mentions that they visited her “one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain” (8). If she was truly the good Christian adult she imposes on Tom, she would be at church, or at least make a mention of going to church. Instead she entertains her gentlemen callers. After the fiasco at Rubicam’s Business college, Amanda starts to make calls. She describes her potential buyers as “Christian martyr(s)” though they have minor ailments such as a “sinus condition” (20). Normally Christian martyrs go through great suffering, and she...
The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.
First, some readers feel Amanda Wingfield is the best choice as the protagonist. It is very possible Amanda is the main character because of her ability and reasons to act. Amanda is a flat character trying to ensure that her daughter, Laura, has “plans and provisions” to keep her from “[drifting] along doing nothing” (34). Amanda may be the main focus because she has the most to lose and the most to gain. Amanda is nostalgic for her past, when men catered to her every need. Amanda wants to rely on a man to care for Tom’s “unmarried sister who’s crippled and has no job” (96)....
Amanda, Tom and Laura’s mother, lives in her own fantasy world most of the time. Her mind is constantly going between the real world and a false world she has made up in her head. Amanda often does this when her life becomes too difficult to deal with. She reminisces on the years when she was younger, and had many gentlemen callers. Amanda uses this old memory as her new reality. “In The Glass Menagerie, there are enormous differences between Amanda's memories of her girlhood in Blue Mountain and her current life in a Depression-era tenement in St. Louis. Her attempts to ignore these differences can make her look ridiculous, for example when she goes overboard on the dinner for Jim, but they can also create sympathy as you realize how far she has fallen from her glory days in the Mississippi Delta”
Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie”, depicts the life of an odd yet intriguing character: Laura. Because she is affected by a slight disability in her leg, she lacks the confidence as well as the desire to socialize with people outside her family. Refusing to be constrained to reality, she often escapes to her own world, which consists of her records and collection of glass animals. This glass menagerie holds a great deal of significance throughout the play (as the title implies) and is representative of several different aspects of Laura’s personality. Because the glass menagerie symbolizes more than one feature, its imagery can be considered both consistent and fluctuating.
Moreover, Amanda remains stuck in her past glories and remains unable to move forward and support her children attain self-sustainability and happiness.
In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters whose lives seem to consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Amanda lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his glorified old memories. This essay will examine how Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from the real world through their dreams.
Amanda was a woman who lives in a world of fantasy and reality. In the past memory and the future of the fantasy made Amanda very strong, but in the face of reality she was fragile. Just like Tom used to explain “I give you truth in the
Amanda Wingfield is the mother of Tom and Laura. She is a gracefully aging Southern Belle seemingly stuck on the values and traditions of the past that she once flourished so well in. Even though she has been abandoned by her husband and left to care for two children alone, Amanda is ever resiliently optimistic – though her life is not at all what she had planned for it to be. To Tom she is a constant nag and even more of an incentive to chase the dream within his grasp. She is just as dominating with Laura, insisting Laura always be ready and pretty for her “gentleman callers.” Laura knows deep down inside that these callers will never come, but Amanda cannot let go of the idea. She forces Laura to retreat into her world of imagination even further. Jim O'Connor is by the far the most ordinary out of them all. Jim i...
...something she discovered was useless. They both put emphasis on something that had brought them nothing but pain and suffering and it is this entrapment that makes Amanda and Willy most unlikable. Rather than learning from their mistakes and teaching their children to avoid making the same ones, Amanda and Willy lead their children down the same path to failure, a path that Amanda found to have a dead end, a path to which Willy found no end at all.
Amanda Wingfield was once a well sought after Southern belle. According to her, she had "the most prominent young planters of the Mississippi Delta" competing for her hand and once had "seventeen! - gentlemen callers" in one evening (Williams 680, 681). As stated by Bluefarb, multiple times during the play she reminisces about the past and relives "every word, every gesture, every event that took place within the context of her East Tennesse girlhood"(513). She once imagined a life full of ease and comfort for herself but instead is living alone with two unpromising children. She refuses to let go of her idyllic Southern past and keeps trying to bring it back to life through Laura and Tom. She tries to "superimpose her own past on her own daughter Laura's future"(Bluefarb 514). She pushes Laura into situations Laura simply cannot handle and tries to mold her into an image of herself. She simply refuses to admit that Laura is "peculiar" and will never be what she once was (Williams 697). She criticizes Tom and tries to make him more like the men who used to call on her. She chides him for the way he eats, takes his books because she deems them vulgar, and