The Glass Menagerie Feminist Perspective Feminist analysis is concerned with women’s power, with the representation of female characters and character dynamics. Laura’s character in The Glass Menagerie is a clear example of a woman without power. She is constantly at the whims and wiles of other characters, submitting to their decisions and unable to wield any kind of power, even something as basic as a generating an income. Laura and Amanda’s relationship in The Glass Menagerie is one of dysfunction and hopelessness. Both women have limited power, although Amanda is head of the house, she relies on Tom to survive and she brings Laura down every opportunity she has. ‘Amanda: Not one gentleman caller? It can’t be true! Laura: ... I’m not popular …show more content…
The symbolic link between Laura and the glass, particularly the unicorn which is eventually broken, dramatically reinforces Laura’s own short comings and weakness, particularly as this is an ongoing metaphor, ‘she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light ... not lasting.’ Descriptions of Amanda in contrast to Laura show Laura’s position as the weakest member of their family. Amanda is described powerfully, ‘Amanda ... stares furiously at Laura. She points imperiously...’, however, that power is frequently undermined by the absurdity of her problems or demands. As long as Laura is accompanied by other characters there is usually some semblance of normality but once she is left alone or confronted with a problem Laura’s weakness comes to the forefront, literally, due to the use of the onscreen images, ‘Laura is left alone. Legend: Terror’. Tom, in comparison to Laura and Amanda, seems exponentially stronger, suffering through a job he hates for the good of the family and he ultimately succeeds the most, getting away from the apartment and the closeted life he hated. Tom …show more content…
Having been shoved into one of these apartments and forced to work in the factory in the place of his father who’d previously run off to pursue more than what capitalism afforded him, Tom is impatient and dissatisfied with his life. ‘Tom ... strolls across the front of the stage to the fire-escape. There he stops.’ Tom starting the play, and spending much of his time, on the fire-escape provides an ironic kind of symbolism. The fire-escape literally gets Tom out of the apartment but symbolises his longing to explore the world and stay anywhere but where he is. The irony is that Tom never truly does escape, as he is haunted by the apartment and his family, ‘I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something.’ Tom’s father is the true figure of escape from the capitalistic system: , ‘he gave up his job with the phone company and skipped... out of town,’ his photo hangs over the fireplace symbolising Tom’s way
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 ...
Laura's mother and brother shared some of her fragile tendencies. Amanda, Laura's mother, continually lives in the past. Her reflection of her teenage years continually haunts Laura. To the point where she forces her to see a "Gentleman Caller" it is then that Tom reminds his mother not to "expect to much of Laura" she is unlike other girls. But Laura's mother has not allowed herself nor the rest of the family to see Laura as different from other girls. Amanda continually lives in the past when she was young a pretty and lived on the plantation. Laura must feel she can never live up to her mothers expectations. Her mother continually reminds her of her differences throughout the play.
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The glass menagerie continually signifies Laura’s unique personality throughout the play. One of the first people outside the family to see the more vibrant side of Laura is Jim, a friend of her brother’s as well as an old high school crush of hers. While having dinner at their house, Jim takes an interest in Laura’s collection of glass animals and records. They reminisce about high school and when Jim begins to understand why she is so shy, he says, “You know what I judge is the trouble with you?
Generally when some one writes a play they try to elude some deeper meaning or insight in it. Meaning about one's self or about life as a whole. Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is no exception the insight Williams portrays is about himself. Being that this play establishes itself as a memory play Williams is giving the audience a look at his own life, but being that the play is memory some things are exaggerated and these exaggerations describe the extremity of how Williams felt during these moments (Kirszner and Mandell 1807). The play centers itself on three characters. These three characters are: Amanda Wingfield, the mother and a women of a great confusing nature; Laura Wingfield, one who is slightly crippled and lets that make her extremely self conscious; and Tom Wingfield, one who feels trapped and is looking for a way out (Kirszner and Mandell 1805-06). Williams' characters are all lost in a dreamy state of illusion or escape wishing for something that they don't have. As the play goes from start to finish, as the events take place and the play progresses each of the characters undergoes a process, a change, or better yet a transition. At the beginning of each characters role they are all in a state of mind which causes them to slightly confuse what is real with what is not, by failing to realize or refusing to see what is illusioned truth and what is whole truth. By the end of the play each character moves out of this state of dreamy not quite factual reality, and is better able to see and face facts as to the way things are, however not all the characters have completely emerged from illusion, but all have moved from the world of dreams to truth by a whole or lesser degree.
All Tom tries to do is to become his own person, form his own opinions and have a job that he enjoys. The girl is being taken and changed as if she's an ingredient in a recipe, instead of being cherished for who she already is and wants to be. The Glass menagerie contains a similar situation when Amanda takes control over Laura's love life. When Laura asks to have a say in her own love life her mother believes that “Girls that aren't cut out for business careers usually marry some nice man.
After reading “The Doll House” and “Trifles”, the idea of females being inferior to men is portrayed. Both plays, are in a much older time period. But from a feminist view, females are still sometimes given the doubtful role in today’s society. Both plays, are very different, but much alike in the ways the females are treated, never taken seriously, nor are they appreciated.
In Williams, Tennessee’s play The Glass Menagerie, Amanda’s image of the southern lady is a very impressive. Facing the cruel reality, she depends on ever memories of the past as a powerful spiritual to look forward to the future, although her glory and beautiful time had become the past, she was the victim of the social change and the Great Depression, but she was a faithful of wife and a great mother’s image cannot be denied.
By hanging out on the fire escape, Tom finds a temporary safe haven from Amanda. With Amanda nagging Tom about every minute action, like mastication, Tom needed to find somewhere to escape. Perhaps, even more, the fire escape shows various things about Tom's personality. Since Amanda and Laura have their illusionary worlds inside, Tom can easily escape these worlds by going out on the firescape. He does not desire to be part of an imaginary world, which only proves to be the downfall of Amanda and Laura. He realizes that the world is not what Amanda has made it seem inside the house. Also, during his reflections on the firescape he is not really separating himself from the imaginary world because that metal frame is still anchored to the apartment wall. This shows that no matter how hard Tom tries to escape he will always be 'bounded' to the apartment. His emotional attachments to Laura would permantly k...
The Glass Menagerie reflects Williams's own life so much that it could be mistaken as pages from his autobiography. The characters and situations of the play are much like those found in the small St. Louis apartment where Williams spent part of his life. Williams himself can be seen in the character Tom. Both worked in a shoe factory and wrote poetry to escape the depressing reality of their lives, and both eventually ended up leaving. One not so obvious character is Mr. Wingfield, who is the absent father seen only by the looming picture hanging in the Wingfield's apartment. Tom and Williams both had fathers who were, as Tom says, "in love with long distances." Amanda, an overbearing mother who cannot let go of her youth in the Mississippi Delta and her "seventeen gentleman callers" is much like Williams own mother, Edwina. Both Amanda and Edwina were not sensitive to their children's feelings. In their attempts to push their children to a better future, they pushed them away. The model for Laura was Williams' introverted sister, Rose. According to Contemporary Authors "the memory of Rose appears in some character, situation, symbol, or motif in almost every work after 1938." Edwina, like Amanda, tried to find a gentleman caller for Rose. Both situations ended with a touching confrontation with the caller and an eventual heartbreak
The three family members are adults at the time of this play, struggling to be individuals, and yet, very enmeshed and codependent with one another. The overbearing and domineering mother, Amanda, spends much of her time reliving the past; her days as a southern belle. She desperately hopes her daughter, Laura, will marry. Laura suffers from an inferiority complex partially due to a minor disability that she perceives as a major one. She has difficulty coping with life outside of the apartment, her cherished glass animal collection, and her Victrola. Tom, Amanda's son, resents his role as provider for the family, yearns to be free from him mother's constant nagging, and longs to pursue his own dreams. A futile attempt is made to match Laura with Jim, an old high school acquaintance and one of Tom's work mates.
For Laura, it represents what she will never be able to do, because of her severe social anxiety and physical disability. Tom sees the escape as a choice, he freely uses it to come in and out of the apartment and it is up to him to choose to escape, his mother, Amanda, will not freely give him the opportunity to. The fire escape plays a major role within the plot of The Glass Menagerie and is symbolic to the characters within the novel.
Laura has a physical handicap with one leg being shorter than the other. With this handicap Laura was picked on and led to having high anxiety and stress. The anxiety and stress led to her not going to business college as stated when Amanda went to Laura’s class and talked to Laura’s teacher. To escape from the stress, Laura has a collection of glass sculptures. This is stated in the scene information of Scene II with “She [Laura] is washing and polishing her collection of glass” (Williams 1251). In Scene III when Tom and Amanda are fighting Tom through his jacket and broke a sculpture “With an outraged groan he [Tom] tears the coat off again, splitting the shoulders of it and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, there is a tinkle of shattering glass. Laura cries out as if wounded” (Williams 1257). Laura has one piece in her collection that wasn’t broken till later and means the most to her and that is the unicorn, Laura states this with “I shouldn’t be partial, but he is my favorite one” (Williams 1282). The unicorn represents her because the unicorn is different from a normal horse just like how she is different from other women, she then allows her gentleman caller Jim O’Connor to hold the unicorn and saying “Go on, I trust you with him”
The delicacy of the glass unicorn reflects the fragility of Laura, emotionally and physically. Laura describes the unicorn as being the most fragile out of the group, indicating how she feels about herself in a world with normal people. Laura can be broken both literally and figuratively as easily as glass. "If you breathe[on glass], it breaks." (101)
The fire escape is mentioned in the first scene which shows its importance to the play. Williams describes the fire escape as a “structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation” (Williams 27). This depiction of the fire escape is exactly what it means to the Wingfield family. The fire escape symbolizes a tendency to escape to illusion when reality is not wanted. Of the Wingfield family members, none like living in the apartment. The only reason that they must live in this cramped apartment is because of their poverty. Their apartment does not even have a door which conveys their desire to escape and the way that they are held captive in their own apartment. The concept of escaping their own lives and retreating into an illusion world has entered each of the character's minds. Escaping from this lifestyle, this apartment, and these relationships is a significant theme throughout...