Amanda Wingfield Essays

  • Glass Menagerie and Streetcar Named Desire - Comparing Amanda Wingfield and Blanche Dubois

    1439 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Comparison of Amanda Wingfield And Blanche Dubois In today's rough and tough world, there seems to be no room for failure. The pressure to succeed in life sometimes seems unreasonable. Others often set expectations for people too high. This forces that person to develop ways to take the stress and tension out of their lives in their own individual ways. In the plays "The Glass Menagerie" and " A Streetcar Named Desire" written by Tennessee Williams, none of the characters are capable of living

  • Amanda Wingfield Struggles

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    which can cause us to ignore the problems going on in our lives. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the play suggests that when life becomes too difficult for individuals thet long to escape their reality. The character, Amanda Wingfield is able to find an escape

  • Comparing Reality and Illusion in Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman, and A Raisin in the Sun

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    Salesman, and A Raisin in the Sun All three stories are centered on lower income families in urban settings. Each story has one main dreamer with other characters being in various states of reality. Amanda Wingfield, Willy Loman, and Walter Lee Younger are all living on pipe dreams. Amanda dreams of her days on the front porch surrounded by her gentleman callers. Willy is the all time king of pipe dreams bouncing from past to future with imagining how everything would have been different

  • Futile Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    1964 Words  | 4 Pages

    in Depression-era St. Louis, the overbearing Southern ex-charmer, Amanda Wingfield is the de facto head of the household. A former Southern belle, Amanda is a single mother who behaves as though she still is the high school beauty queen. Williams' still-resonant study reveals her desperate struggle with the forces of fate against her dysfunctional relationship that looms and grows among her adult children. (Gist) Laura, Amanda, Tom, and Jim resort to various escape mechanisms to avoid reality

  • The Portrayal of Women in the Work of Tennessee Williams

    2373 Words  | 5 Pages

    experiences during childhood. The apartment that Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield share is in the middle of the city, and it is among many dark alleys with fire escapes. Tom and Laura do not like the dark atmosphere of their living conditions, and their mother tries to make it as pleasant as possible. This apartment is almost a mirror image of one of the apartments that the Williams family lived in St. Louis, Missouri (American Writers IV). Amanda Wingfield is a typical Southern belle who fantasizes about

  • Essay on Stagnant Lives in Streetcar Named Desire and Glass Menagerie

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    in Streetcar Named Desire and Glass Menagerie The Stagnant Lives of Blanche DuBois and Amanda Wingfield    "All of Williams' significant characters are pathetic victims--of time, of their own passions, of immutable circumstance" (Gantz 110). This assessment of Tennessee Williams' plays proves true when one looks closely at the characters of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Their lives run closely parallel to one another in their respective

  • Tennessee Williams: Author and Playwright

    3045 Words  | 7 Pages

    the daughter of a minister and very over protective of Thomas. She began to be over protective after he caught Diphtheria when he was five years old. His mother was also an aggressive woman caught up in her fantasies of genteel southern living. Amanda Wingfield, a character in his play The Glass Menagerie, was modeled after Williams' mother. Cornelius Coffin Williams, Tom's father, spent most of his time on the road. Cornelius came from a very prestigious family that included Mississippi's very first

  • The Glass Menagerie - Amanda Wingfield

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Glass Menagerie - Amanda Wingfield If there is a signature character type that marks Tennessee -Williams’s dramatic work, it is undeniably that of the faded Southern belle. Amanda is a clear representative of this type. In general, a Tennessee Williams faded belle is from a prominent Southern family, has received a traditional upbringing, and has suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune at some point in her life. Like Amanda, these women all have a hard time coming to terms

  • Character Analysis Of Amanda Wingfield In The Glass Menagerie

    1827 Words  | 4 Pages

    Far She Has Fallen At first glance, Amanda Wingfield from Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie seems like a selfish women stuck in her past. In some ways this observation is correct; however, she is much more than that. Her kind and caring nature, and her insatiable love for her children has been overshadowed by her brash and insensitive dialogue. Her character is extremely complex and each one her actions reveals more of her overwhelming personality. Amanda loves her children and tries her best

  • Comparing the Life of Tennessee Williams and Glass Menagerie

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    those dreams. In The Glass Menagerie, the fire escape symbolizes the way for Amanda Wingfield to bring a man into the house to save her and her daughter. To Tom, the fire escape is a means of escape from the house that traps him- a path to the outside world (Susquehanna. "New Critical"). Rainbows in The Glass Menagerie symbolize hope and are associated with hopeful situations (Susquehanna. "New Critical.) When Tom Wingfield receives a rainbow-colored scarf at the magic show, he is amazed at the fact

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Characters

    2168 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

  • Appearance Versus Reality in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie

    3114 Words  | 7 Pages

    in their own world of reality. Even the characters themselves are symbols of a deeper meaning; for example, Amanda Wingfield's name itself is revealing. Amanda contains the word man, and she has to play the role of the man and the woman of the house since the father deserted the family long ago. Close examination of the last name Wingfield gives the reader additional clues. The Wingfields are actually taking life as it comes to them, or, in... ... middle of paper ... ...orks Cited Demastes

  • Comparing The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    the parents. Due to Willy Loman and Amanda Wingfield's lack of coping skills, as well as their inability to let go or accept their past, their children are ill-equipped to deal with the future. Willy and Amanda are parents who love their children very much. They can't accept the mistakes they've made in the past. This inability to deal with the past leaves them living in it. Their children are seldom given the example of how to work for the future. Amanda and Willy don't set goals for their children

  • Illusions of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    3150 Words  | 7 Pages

    talking out their differences, they resort to desperate acts.  The desperation that the Wingfields embrace has led them to create illusions in their minds and in turn become deceptive.  Amanda, Tom, and Laura are caught up in a web of desperation, denial, and deception, and it is this entrapment that prevents them, as it would any family, from living productive and emotionally fulfilling lives together. Amanda Wingfield's life has not ended up as she would have wished.  She states, "I wasn't prepared

  • Exploring Amanda of The Glass Menagerie

    2049 Words  | 5 Pages

    Exploring Amanda of The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams has a gift for character. Not many playwrights do, and even fewer possess the unique ability to craft a character as paradoxical and complex as Amanda Wingfield. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda is a very difficult character to understand because of her psychological disposition. Williams realizes this and provides the reader with a character description in hopes of making the character more accessible to meticulous analysis. AMANDA

  • Illusion vs. Reality in The Glass Menagerie

    2804 Words  | 6 Pages

    Illusion vs. Reality in The Glass Menagerie In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the roles of the members of the Wingfield family to highlight the controlling theme of illusion versus reality. The family as a whole is enveloped in mirage; the lives of the characters do not exist outside of their apartment and they have basically isolated themselves from the rest of the world. Even their apartment is a direct reflection of the past as stories are often recalled from the mother's teenage

  • Essay on the Symbolism of the Menagerie in The Glass Menagerie

    987 Words  | 2 Pages

    reality. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present. The glass menagerie symbolizes Amanda Wingfield's overwhelming need to cling to her past and her fulfilled fear of being alone.  Amanda resents the poverty-stricken neighborhood in which she lives so much that she needs to mentally escape from it by invented romance and self-deception

  • Essay on the Theme of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    1033 Words  | 3 Pages

    Escape in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family, housing Amanda Wingfield and her two children Tom and Laura. The father left many years ago, and is only represented by a picture on the living-room wall. The small, dingy apartment creates a desperate, monotonous feeling in the reader. None of the Wingfields has any desire to stay in the apartment, but their lack of finances makes it impossible to move. Escape from this

  • Essay on Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and Amanda in Glass Menagerie

    1166 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Characters of Willy in Death of a Salesman and Amanda in Glass Menagerie In "Death of a Salesman", Willy Loman believes the ticket to success is likeability. He tells his sons,  "The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead." In "The Glass Menagerie", Amanda Wingfield has the same belief. Girls are meant to be attractive and they are meant to be attractive in order to entertain gentlemen callers. As she tells Laura

  • The Complex Character of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie

    2006 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Complex Character of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie furnishes an excellent example of a carefully crafted, complex character whose speech and action arise from the "psychological" being created by the playwright. In his character description, Tennessee Williams starts his reader on the road to discovering Amanda's complexity. AMANDA WINGFIELD the mother. A little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place