The Glass Menagerie: A Quest for a Husband

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Recommended: Themes present in the glass menagerie

The Glass Menagerie Thesis statement In this paper I have attempted to give a detailed view of what the young girl Laura (depiction of Williams’s sister) has gone through in her mother’s (Williams’s mother) quest to find a husband for her, the agony she has experienced, and Tom’s (Williams) rebellious attitude towards life. While Tom wants to live and cherish his own life, he finds it difficult to fulfill this desire. In my hypotheses Laura, the crippled girl remains the fragile piece of glass. The Glass Menagerie was an autobiographical play by Tennessee Williams about him, his mother, and sister (Falk). Launched in 1944, the play was a start of a brilliant and controversial career of this unconventional American playwright. Set in St Louis during the depression of 1930s, it is the moving drama of a family's continuous abrasion, under both internal and external pressures (Londre and Lumley). It is a story of a frustrated mother who is inclined to persuade her rebellious son to provide a 'gentleman caller' for her shy, crippled daughter. However, her romantic dreams are broken by the interference of harsh reality. According to Bloom the play is Tom Wingfield self-described "memory play" (pg. 21). The play revisits the time when his family longs to escape their insubstantial existence by making epitome fantasy worlds (O'Connor). Amanda tries to rise above the family's dejected state of affairs with the accouterments of gentility and puts all of her hopes into the expectation of Laura marrying and lifting them out of indigence. However, Laura is agonizingly prudish and can't endure the pressures of the outside world. She either spends her days in isolation in the park or tending to the glass figurines she collects. "Glass breaks...

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...like the tale of the cruel society that we dwell in and the characters that do not dwell in. Works Cited Bloom, Harold, ed. Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie (Modern Critical Interpretations). New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Ellis, Sara, Tennessee Williams' Classic 'Menagerie' At Jmu Nov. 12-16, School of Theatre and Dance, October 24, 2002, Available at http://www.jmu.edu/jmuweb/general/news/general_2002102485659.shtml, Accessed 24/06/03 Falk, Signi L. Tennessee Williams. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1961. Lumley, Frederick. Trends in 20th Century Drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. O'Connor, Jacqueline. Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie intro. Robert Bray. New Directions Publishing.1999.

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