he play’s “The Glass Menagerie” written by Tennessee Williams and “For Whom the Southern Belle Tools” by Christopher Durang are both similar, but also have their difference. In fact in my opinion they are laughable towards each other and make a great parody. They are complete opposites but really they are completely the same. Durang 's play is more modern in today 's society, however; neither one of them is like society in reality. Williams play is about the daughter Laura who talks about how cripple she is and why no man would ever want her. Her mother Amanda is angered by these accusations she makes of herself, and tells her “you 're not crippled, you just have a little defect” (Williams 371). Amanda has no self confidence and also has no He claims to go to the movies, however; his mother thinks other wise of the situation and creates an uproar in the house. She asks Tom why he won 't bring any gentleman callers to the house for his sister to try and get her to move away. While showing complete love for her daughter she still wants her out of the house. Tom decides to bring home one of his friends from work to have dinner with him and his family. When Amanda finds out she is ecstatic and goes on about how she always had gentleman callers coming around and how this was going to be the best night ever. Laura was not happy at all “I 'm just not popular like you were in Blue Mountain” (Williams 367). Laura was content where she was and felt no man could possibly love her. When the gentleman arrived Laura was nowhere to be seen and had suddenly become ill. She knew the gentleman caller from school Jim, and had a crush on him during school but never said anything. Laura had a glass collection that defined who she was and her favorite was different from all the other ones just like she was different. Jim was a very smart and intelligent man that would soon have more accomplishments than most. He His play has two sons one is a hard worker in a factory the other stays at home cripple or so he thinks. In the beginning his mother is very rude towards her son Lawrence who has a collection of cocktail stirrers. She tells him “only retarded people and alcoholics are interested in glass cocktail stirrers”(Durang 411). Amanda the mother wants a lady caller for Lawrence and gives that task to her son Tom. She asks him to bring one home from the factory. When Tom arrives home with the lady caller Lawrence refuses to answer the door, and Tom ends up busting it down. He introduces Ginny the lady caller to his mother. While she was happy to meet her she found her kinda odd. She was like Lawrence a little by acting deaf. She then went in to talk to Lawrence, because he was hiding because he was crippled. She then starts talking to him and he shares his collection of Cocktail stirrers with her. Describing their names to her as she sat and listened. She was bold and straightforward with everyone. She got to the point and did not mess around while the evening was coming to an end she tells Lawrence she had a wonderful evening, but had to get home to her significant other. Lawrence was speechless when he found out and when mother found out she was angered that her son would bring a dumb lesbian into her home. In the end she realized rather than being angry with Lawrence he is all she had and was not leaving any time soon and
Henry’s mother Viola made money by prostituting herself in the backwoods community and made him sit and watch her when she brought home clients.
...Laura. If he had been what Amanda had wanted him to be, Laura would have become happy and so would have Amanda, and then Tom would have been able to go his own separate way, being freed of his duties to his mother and sister. However, as it turns out, the shelf seems to have broken, because the gentleman caller actually ignites the greatest fight of all between Tom and Amanda, and Laura is left shattered after she loses whatever she had left within her because the gentleman caller turned out to be a disappointment.
She is a shy, quiet girl who keeps herself at a distance. She loves glass figurines and prides herself on them. To her brother, she is seen as crippled because she cannot walk well and is socially awkward. This results in Laura’s reality being different than the rest of the family’s because she closes herself off into a space where it is only her. Amanda wants the best for Laura, for her to have a husband or finish business school, because she wants Laura to get out of the house and get living. However, Laura does not want to live in that world, and it is shown when she skipped her business classes and through her interaction with Jim, her high school crush. Jim is the only person who is able to take Laura out of her own weird reality, and bring her into the reality of an ordinary girl. Laura breaks through her reality when she talks about the unicorn horn that Jim broke off her glass figurine, she tells Jim that, “It doesn’t matter. . . . [smiling] I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less—freakish!” (Williams, 2009). Therefore, Laura being with Jim makes her feel a little less odd. This brings Laura out of her own reality for a bit, but then she retreats back into it when she finds out that Jim is engaged to someone else right after he kisses her. He broke her free of her own reality for a bit, just like how he broke the horn off of the
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.
He was trying to find a place to stay since it was late at night. He stumbled across a sign that said BED & BREAKFAST. He was conflicted wether or not he should stay there, but eventually he walked up to the steps and rang the door bell. A women around the age of fifty opened up the door quickly. Billy learned the stay was cheap and he began to settle in. The whole night, he became curious of the things around him. He notices that there are only two names in the guest book. He read the names, and they sounded so familiar. Bill’s landlady appeared to try and cover up who the two men were. She continued to offer him tea, and he took it. He questions the landlady, trying to sort out where he knows the names from. The landlady tells Bill that those two guests are still together on the third floor. In the end Bill asks her “ . . . haven’t there been any other guests here except them in the last two or three years?” She replies and says “No, my dear . . . Only you” (Dahl 5). Bill comes to the conclusion in his mind that the women was crazy, and was mostly likely going to kill him. He knew that something was off, searching for the answer, but finding it a little too
The unlikely pair of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams and “A Doll House” by Henrik Ibsen do share multiple similarities in their domestic situations and in the things they chose to do. . When comparing these two plays you also have to keep in mind about how that both the plays were done in different time periods. Therefore things are going to be different when it comes to the roles of the women. With the “The Glass Menagerie” and “A Doll House” all the characters have flaws, lived in different time period, felt like they were trapped in ways, and reacted to things differently.
Playwrights Christopher Durang and Neil Simon parody Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire in their respective plays, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls and Brighton Beach Memoirs. The plays by Durang and Simon were transformed enough that they “pose little risk” to Williams’s plays (Preska). Durang’s play, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls transforms the characters of The Glass Menagerie; Durang changes the names and sexes of half of the characters while completely satirizing their traits.
Amanda Wingfield is mother of Tom and Laura. She is a middle-aged southern belle whose husband has abandoned her. She spends her time reminiscing about the past and nagging her children. Amanda is completely dependent on her son Tom for finical security and holds him fully responsible for her daughter Laura's future. Amanda is obsessed with her past as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of that " one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when she once received seventeen gentlemen callers" (pg.32). The reader cannot even be sure that this actually happened. However, it is clear that despite its possible falsity, Amanda has come to believe it. Amanda also refuses to acknowledge that her daughter Laura is crippled and refers to her handicap as " a little defect-hardly noticeable" (pg.45). Only for brief moments does she ever admit that her daughter is crippled and then she resorts back into to her world of denial and delusion. Amanda puts the weight of Laura's success in life on her son Tom's shoulders. When Tom finally finds a man to come over to the house for diner and meet Laura, Amanda blows the situation way out of proportion. She believes that this gentlemen caller, Jim, is going to be the man to rescue Laura. When in fact neither herself nor Laura has even met this man Jim yet. She tries to explain to Laura how to entertain a gentleman caller; she says-talking about her past " They knew how to entertain their gentlemen callers. It wasn't enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure although I wasn't slighted in either respect.
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.
As Winfield 's wife, Amanda is worthy of love and respect. Amanda is a southern lady, when she was young, she had an attractive appearance and graceful in manner, and her families were also quite rich. These favorable conditions made her the admiration of many men. Still, her final choice was a poor boy. She did not hesitate and bravely to choose her own love. Though her marriage was not as good as she had imagined the happiness of life, and the husband, Winfield meager income also drinking heavily, finally abandoned Amanda and two young children, but she still remembered and loved her husband. Her husband 's weakness did not make Amanda fall down; instead, she was brave enough to support the family, raising and educating of their two young children. Daughter Laura was a disability to close her fantasy world, and she was collection of a pile of glass small animals as partners. Amanda knew Laura sensitive, fragile, she was always in the care and encourages her daughter. Because of her shortcomings, Laura sometimes frustrated and Amanda immediately replied that "I 've told you never, never to use that word. Why, you 're not crippled, you just have a little defect". Amanda for the care of the children was more reflected a mother 's strong from the play that Amanda paid money to send Laura to typing school. She hoped daughter have a better future and married a good man to take care of the family, and encouraged her daughter, prompting her to go out of the glass menagerie to experience her real life, but Amanda placed more expectations for his son Tom because her husband left home, Tom is the only man and the mainstay of the family. She wanted Tom to realize that is a kind of family responsibility, also is a kind of essential social
For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls is Christopher Durang's hilarious 1994 parody of The Glass Menagerie, a 1945 play by Tennessee Williams. In both plays, the main characters must deal with several serious problems, including isolation, fear of the outside world, and the need for understanding. Whereas the characters in The Glass Menagerie handle their problems in a relatively serious manner, those in For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls take a more farcical approach. For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls offers an alternate view of the situations in The Glass Menagerie, and it comments on how the American society has changed since the 1940s. Durang's parody accomplishes its humor by developing extreme versions of the characters in The Glass Menagerie through magnification of their faults and idiosyncrasies: Laura's shyness toward the world, Amanda's lack of understanding for her children, Tom's anger with his family, and Jim's partial deafness (however minor in Williams' play).
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a touching play about the lost dreams of a southern family and their struggle to escape reality. The play is a memory play and therefore very poetic in mood, setting, and dialogue. Tom Wingfield serves as the narrator as well as a character in the play. Tom lives with his Southern belle mother, Amanda, and his painfully shy sister, Laura. The action of the play revolves around Amanda's search to find Laura a "gentleman caller. The Glass Menagerie's plot closely mirrors actual events in the author's life. Because Williams related so well to the characters and situations, he was able to beautifully portray the play's theme through his creative use of symbolism.
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.
She always wanted good things for her son and daughter which makes her heroic as a mother. For Laura, she wanted to get her education for her to get a job without thinking her disability. Amanda wanted to make sure that Laura lives a wealthy life with one or other way: she finds good education and then a good job or a wealthy husband. Because of Laura’s shyness, they didn't have as many as “gentleman callers” that Amanda would like to have. So, she finds the solution of asking to Tom “Find out one that’s clean living—doesn’t drink and ask him out for sister!”