The Glass Menagerie
a play by Tennessee Williams
menagerie: a collection of animals
Tennessee Williams
Born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus,
Mississippi in 1911
 His family moved frequently but most of his
school years were spent in Missouri near St.
Louis
 Williams did not get along with his father, a
traveling salesman
 His mother was overbearing and somewhat
hysterical, but supported Williams’ desire to
write
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Rose Williams
Williams had a younger brother, Dakin,
but it was his older sister, Rose, that he
was close to
 Rose was beautiful, sweet and intelligent,
but suffered from schizophrenia which
worsened as she got older
 In 1937, a devastating event occurred.
Tennessee Williams’ parents authorized a
prefrontal lobotomy for Rose, who was
growing more troubled and paranoid
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Rose Williams -Continued
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A prefrontal lobotomy is a procedure that
involved inserting an ice pick through the
patient’s eye socket to sever nerves that
joined the prefrontal cortex to the rest of
the brain-it was suppose to relieve
psychiatric strain
This procedure completely destroyed Rose
mentally and she was never able to care for
herself again. This broke Williams' heart and
caused him to suffer his own mental collapse
Williams-The Glass Menagerie
To deal with his fragile mental state
Tennessee Williams would write
 He turned Rose’s suffering into a short
story and then a play, The Glass Menagerie
 Laura=Rose
 The Glass Menagerie made Williams
famous! It premiered in 1944 and
received excellent reviews and won the
New York Drama Critics Circle Award
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Williams -continued
He had difficulty dealing with his success
and moved to Mexico to escape the
spotlight and to write
 In the 1960s, Williams suffered a mental
breakdown
 Few of his later works received critical
praise, nevertheless he continued to write
 Tennessee Williams died in New York City
in 1983
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The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams called The Glass
Menagerie a “memory play.”
 It is a dramatic rendering of the memories of
the narrator, Tom Wingfield.
 He is not an objective director or narrator,
thus the play unfolds in an impressionistic,
highly symbolic fashion.
 Though not autobiographical, the play
contains characters drawn from his own life.
 Williams seeks to show how any artist can
engage mental and emotional pain through
the process of art itself
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The Glass Menagerie- continued
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Social and Historical Background
◦ Play takes place in 1937
◦ The Great Depression-The New Deal-Labor
Disputes-the plight of workers and the trend
towards unionism
◦ The Little Steel Strike –May 30,1937-protesting
steelworkers marched in Chicago and were
fired upon by police. Ten of them were killed.
continued

The Flint Sit-Down Strike-1936 & 1937-The
General Motors Corporation was crippled
by the strike, which was orchestrated by the
United Auto Workers (UAW)
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The bombing of Guernica in Spain-April 26,
1937-bombed by German and Spanish forces
during the Spanish Civil War. Revolutionaries
were trying to overthrow the leftist coalition
that had won the 1936 elections (leftist groups
generally support worker’s rights and the
organization of labor)
Themes and Motifs
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Theme- a central idea or main themes of a work
Motif- a reoccurring theme, element, or dramatic
situation
The Absent Father
The Artistic Temperament
The Decline of the Old South
The Importance of Words, Books, and Art
Magic and Illusions
Difficulty of Accepting Reality
The Power of Memory
Abandonment
Symbolism and Imagery
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Symbolism-an object, person, or event that
represents something beyond itself such as
an idea, belief, or value
Imagery-the use of figures of speech to
create vivid images that appeal to one of the
senses
The Glass Menagerie
Religious Imagery
The Victrola (Music)
The Fire Escape
Flowers
The Glass Unicorn
The Glass Menagerie Characters
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Amanda Wingfield
◦ the mother
◦ clings to another time and place
◦ part tenderness, part cruelty
Characters Continued
Laura Wingfield
 daughter, sister
 childhood illness left her crippled, one leg
slightly shorter than the other, and held in
a brace
 lives in a world of
illusions
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Characters Continued
Tom Wingfield
 son, brother
 narrator of the play
 poet that works in a warehouse
 desire to escape
his reality
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Characters continued
Jim O’Connor (the gentleman caller)
 a nice, ordinary, young man
 coworker of Tom
 went to high school
with Laura
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