Character constellation and characterization in Tennessee Williams "The Glass Menagerie"

Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Veranstaltung: Einführung in die anglistisch-amerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft

Character constellation and characterization in Tennessee Williams "The Glass Menagerie"

Maria Fernkorn

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Mainpart

2.1. Amanda
    2.1.1. Amanda`s Relationship to her absent Husband
    2.1.2. Amanda`s Relationship to Laura
    2.1.3. The Relationship between Amanda and Tom
2.2. Tom
    2.2.1. Tom`s Relationship to his Father
    2.2.2. Tom`s Relationship to Laura
    2.2.3. Tom`s Relationship to Jim
2.3. Jim
    2.3.1. The Relationship between Amanda and Jim
2.4. Laura
    2.4.1. Laura`s Relationship to Amanda
    2.4.2. The Relationship between Laura and Jim

3. Conclusion

“At the age of fourteen, I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable. It immediatly became my place of retreat, my cave, my refuge.“¹

This quotation by Tennessee Williams mirrors his inability to cope with the challenges and strokes of fate of his real life. For example, he felt responsible for the lobotomie of his sister Rose although he had no knowledge about this operation. Furthermore, he could not cope with his social environment, especially with his father`s incapability to handle his introvert son.
With his first success, the play “The Glass Menagerie“ (1944), Williams holds up the mirror to the Broadway audience of the 1950`s who is not willing to face the reality of the postwar period or to digest it`s experiences with the Second World War. In the same way as this generation flies from their war recollections into a problem repressing fictious world and as Williams escapes from his personal reality through writing, the figures of the drama fly from an unsatisfying life into their dreamworlds.
The play deals with the Wingfield family (Amanda, Tom and Laura), who “share[s] a small apartment in a poor section of St. Louis.“<sup>2</sup> The family members have, through the visit of a gentlemen caller for Laura (Jim), the chance to realize their dreams. But “the friend Tom brings home to meet Laura [...], although he happens to be the boy she secretly admired in high school, turns out, unfortunately, to be already engaged.“<sup>3</sup>
Tennessee Williams`s breakthrough “The Glass Menagerie“ is respected to be one of his best plays, with Broadway performances exceeded only by “A Streetcar named Desire“
In this paper it is to point out the character presentation and character constellation in Tennessee Williams`s “The Glass Menagerie“. Firstly, I am going to analyse the character and then comment on his or her relationship to the other characters and so on. The first character to analyse is Amanda, then follow Tom, Jim, and last but not least, Laura.

Amanda

One main figure in the drama is Tom and Laura`s mother Amanda, whose husband, a telephone man, “fell in love with long distances“ [19, 3-4] and left the Wingfield family. Only an overdimensional portrait of him over the mantel in the living room remembers the family of his existence. His last sign of life was a “picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words:`Hello-Goodbye!´and no adress.“ [19,7- 10].
“That the father does not appear directly in the play suggests that Tennessee Williams could not view him with sufficient objectivity to portray him.The photograph apparently represents the standard view the outside world caught of the gay, soldierly C.C. Williams, whom his son hated so much that the sweetness would have gone out of the play if he had been included.“⁴ So Amanda was forced to bring her children up on her own. She is the head of the family now which is not an easy job, just because she was a former, spoilt `South American beauty`. Amanda`s life is filled up with taking care of her grown-up children and worrying about the extra money the family needs. Therefore, she spends hours on the telephone to sell “those magazins for matrons called The Homemaker`s Companion“ [37,6-7]. Furthermore, she is going to meetings of the D.A.R., the Daughters of the American Revolution,which is a national-political community, whose members are exclusive descendants of American freedomfighters of the War of Independence. These are the only activities Amanda proceeds with in her real life.

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1 Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, ed. Bernhard Reitz, ( Stuttgard:Phillip Reclam Jun. GmbH&CO.,1984 ) 136. “All page reverences within the text refer to this edition.“
2 Roger Boxill, Macmillan Modern Dramatics (Hongkong:Macmillan, 1994) 62.
3 Ibid., 62.
4 Tischler, Nancy M. “The Glass Menagerie:The Revelation of Quiet Truth“, Harold Bloom.(New York:Chelsea House Publishers,1988) 24.