Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie

A Dysfunctional Family

Families are supposed to be there for each other and what have you. The families of today are more or less normal, but in the book The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams the Wingfield family is very dysfunctional. What makes this family dysfunctional are the members of it, such as Amanda, Tom, and Laura. Amanda was a very talkative mother.

Amanda Wingfield was how the book called her, “A little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place.” (p. 5). This is very true on top of that Amanda was loquacious and always bragging about how many gentleman callers she had. By doing this Amanda made her daughter Laura feel bad. An example of such is “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain- your mother received – seventeen - gentleman callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t chairs enough to accommodate them all.” ( i, p. 26). Tom on the other hand took care of his family.

Tom Wingfield was the man of the house because his father had “fallen in love with long distance” and he was caring for the girls. When Amanda gets in the way or tries to make things even more difficult for Tom he decides to go out to the movies or rather drinking. Tom finally flipped at Amanda one day and told her how he felt about her and the warehouse. He said, “You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that – celotex interior! With – fluorescent – tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn “Rise and Shine!” “Rise and Shine!” I say to myself “How lucky dead people are!” But I get up. I go!” ( iii, p. 41). Laura can’t really handle all that much.

Laura Wingfield is Amanda’s daughter. She is a very shy girl who does not take a well to meeting new people. Laura’s problem is she has “A childhood illness that has left her crippled, one leg slightly shorter than the other, and held in a brace.” (p. 5). Laura was attending Rubicam’s Business College. Her mother had went to the business college to see how Laura was doing and to her surprise the teacher had told Amanda, Laura was not attending anymore.