Laura from The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams, and Miss Brill from “Miss Brill,” written by Katherine Mansfield, share many qualities that allow them to be compared as similar people living at separate stages of life. Both Miss Brill and Laura lead lives of seclusion and are very uncomfortable with people because of their own fears and problems with self-esteem. One of their main differences is their age because Miss Brill is an older woman and Laura is a young woman. What is peculiar is all their similarities. Being that these similarities are so striking Miss Brill provides foreshadowing of Laura’s life. Miss Brill’s life is like a progressed version of Laura’s current state. She is an amplified continuation of everything that makes Laura who she is.
Laura has an absent father figure so she is already predisposed to problems. Not only is her father gone though, her brother and mother are, for the most part, her only connection to the outside world. She went to high school, but was unnoticed there and kept to herself because of her shyness and leg deformity. So, since that time she has developed quite the affinity for her glass animals, the root of the title of the play. This interest has caused her to be even more estranged from society. Someone who is living their life as abnormally as Laura is a tell-tale sign the going to have not only social problems later in life but also emotional and psychological ones. Miss Brill is considerably more ill than Laura psychologically and shows what can happen to a young woman who might have not been brought up with enough care. She, unlike Laura has no people in her life currently and the reader is given very little insight into anyone she could have had in her life when s...
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Like a bad case of the flu if someone does not address an issue that has the potential to affect them in a detrimentally harmful way they are beckoning the problem to take over. Laura in her young life is not totally opposed to the idea of people but in her world of glass animals she has grown weary of social interaction. With age, views that are romanticizing not people but art and glass, coupled with self-esteem problems could easily progress. Therefore it is safe to claim that Mrs. Brill and Laura are extremely similar people facing separate portions of their lives. This is not simply a comparison but a warning of how ideas and views can mutate over time into even more self-deprecating places. If Laura does not find a way to overcome her mother’s acts of control and insecurity, she may one day reach a place as sad and pitiful as Mrs. Brill’s.
Societal expectations can command many aspects of a person’s life. Appearance, possessions, career paths, mood and behavior are all things than can be affected by social pressures. Society can also affect the way people perceive success, and in today’s economic landscape success is mostly measured by accumulated wealth and comfort. Without those things, the weight of society can become heavy and those with economic or social hardship may find solace in disregarding their reality all together. Two of Tennessee Williams’ most highly praised plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, share a common theme; escaping reality instead of confronting the adversity placed before you. Williams explores this premise through similarities and differences of two characters, Blanche DuBois and Amanda Wingfield.
"The Glass Menagerie" is a play about intense human emotions; frustration, desperation, sadness, anger, shyness, and regret. Perhaps the most intense scene in the play is when a gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor, finally does come. All of their futures hang in the balance during this scene. Laura is actually drawn out of her shyness with someone besides her family, and she actually begins to feel good about herself.
Jeannette Walls, the author of the memoir, The Glass Castle, was raised by parents whose relentless nonconformity and radical ideals were both positive and negative aspects to their wellbeing. Their names were Rex and Rosemary Walls, and they were the parents of four children. While the kids were still young, the family moved from town to town, camping in the wilderness and sleeping in the car, and sometimes even had a small place to stay. Rose Mary, who was both an artist and an author, identified herself as an “excitement addict”. As a mother who despised the responsibility of caring for her family, Rose Mary preferred making a painting that will last forever over making meals for her hungry children.
The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams. It involves a mother, Amanda, and her two children, Tom and Laura. They are faced with many problems throughout the play. Some of these problems involve: Amanda, the mother, only wants to see her kids succeed and do well for themselves. How does her drive for success lead the book?
Laura is the owner and caretaker of the glass menagerie. In her own little fantasy world, playing with the glass animals is how she escapes from the real world in order to get away from the realities and hardships she endures. Though she is crippled only to a very slight degree physically, her mind is very disabled on an emotional level. Over time, she has become very fragile, much like the glass, which shatters easily, as one of the animals lost its horn; she can lose control of herself. Laura is very weak and open to attack, unable to defend herself from the truths of life. The glass menagerie is an unmistakable metaphor in representing Laura’s physical and mental states.
Everybody has something about them that makes them unique, but sometimes they tend to not realize how special they are because of it. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Laura possesses a collection of glass figurines that symbolize how others see her despite her limp. She has allowed her limp to define who she is, as well as play a major part in the way that she acts around other people. Laura’s limp has restricted her life in certain ways and because of it, she has become a delicate, radiant, and unique individual.
Laura unable to survive in the outside world - retreating into their apartment and her glass collection and victrola. There is one specific time when she appears to be progressing when Jim is there and she is feeling comfortable with being around him. This stands out because in all other scenes of the play Laura has never been able to even consider conversation with a "Gentleman Caller."
Tennessee Williams is known to be a Southern playwright of American drama. Williams knew how to show haunting elements like psychological drama, loneliness, and inexcusable violence in his plays. Critics say Williams often depicted women who were suffering from critical downfalls due to his sister Rose Williams. Rose was always fighting with a mental health condition known as schizophrenia all her life. The character Laura in The Glass Menagerie is always compared to Rose, because they were both socially awkward and very quiet girls. This may be true, but one can look at Blanche DuBois from A Street Car Named Desire shadows his sister’s life and characteristics more than Laura did. In the obituary of Rose Williams that was written by Philip Hoare, he says, “She grew up outgoing, using make-up earlier than other girls, and was remembered as “very pretty and a bit standoffish” (Hoare). This parallel sounds remarkably like Blanche and does not sound like Laura’s characteristics. Laura never wore make up and her personality did not keep others distant. She was distant to others, because of her disability. Also Roses down fall is very similar to Blanche DuBois down fall in the play and end result. Laura never has a down fall in The Glass Menagerie. Laura seems to have hope in the end of the play. Laura was a tribute to show Rose’s innocence, but Blanche was to show Rose’s true colors. Tennessee Williams uses elements of appearance, age, gentleman callers, sexuality, and the fear of homosexuality to show his sisters down fall in the character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
The family in Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, faces various dilemmas. One of the most prominent is the issue of anxiety. Throughout the play, the family focuses their attention mainly on Laura and her struggle with both her physical disability and social anxiety. However, closer analysis reveals that Laura is not the only character suffering, each family member displays signs of being affected by anxiety. Their interactions with one another trigger feelings of nervousness, unhappiness, and anger. The issue of anxiety extends beyond Laura, affecting the whole family, and ultimately leads to tragedy.
When he asks what she gives it to him for, she replies, “A—souvenir.” Then she hands it to him, almost as if to show him that he had shattered her unique beauty. This incident changed her in the way that a piece of her innocence that made her so different is now gone. She is still beautiful and fragile like the menagerie, but just as she gives a piece of her collection to Jim, she also gives him a piece of her heart that she would never be able to regain. Laura and her menagerie are both at risk of being crushed when exposed to the uncaring reality of the world.
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.
This play illustrates a lot of the struggles of family life and relationships between family members. In The Glass Menagerie we get to see how a girl deals with her handicap and how it changes how she views herself and the world. The play also shows a relationship between a vastly different mother and son and how, while she is well intentioned, sometimes it is best to
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.
Without a husband to support her, Amanda tries to raise her children like upper class children. Unlike Amanda, Carrie Meeber, the protagonist of a naturalist novel Sister Carrie, starts out very poor, and after meeting two significant men, Drouet and Hurstwood, Carrie’s morals decline, but her finances increase exponentially. Amanda’s assets increase while she is with her husband, but when he abandons her, she struggles economically. Without a man like Tom to help her, Amanda and Laura would be hopeless. Following the standards of naturalism, Amanda reacts accordingly, and teaches her children to behave like members of the upper class. She strictly enforces proper manners; the importance of a well-rounded education, and the décor in her home is simulating value. In her regard, upper class members are often treated better, and she ...
At the conclusion of The Garden Party, Laura is exposed to a side of life she has never encountered before, and comes to a sudden realization that "life and death may indeed coexist and that their common existence in one world may be beautiful" (Magalaner 101). Death is not necessarily associated with ugliness, she learns, but rather it is a natural process which she likens to sound, peaceful sleep. However, her ostensible epiphany is really only astonishment. Laura’s world revolves around the finer things in life, garden parties, and flowers, and she has been surrounded by beauty her whole life. Her social class is too ingrained in her for a momentary glimpse of the contrasting life of the lower class to really affect her (Sorkin 445).