Westmount High School
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The Glass Menagerie
Notes & Analysis
Download the play here: http://www.pval.org/cms/lib/NY19000481/Centricity/Domain/105/the_glass_menagerie_messy_full_text.pdf
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-In the Production Notes, Williams describes this work as a “memory play” that is unhindered by convention (xix).
-To preserve the atmosphere of memory, the lighting is always dim and dream like (xxi)
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Scene One
-The vivid opening describes the setting and context of the play thusly, “[t]he Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building,” part of the “vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers of lower middle-class” populations that make up the largest “enslaved section of American society,” (3). This vivid description evidently intends to have readers view the inhabitants of such neighborhoods in general, and the Wingfield family in particular, as enslaved convicts, clinging desperately to their social status.
-Readers are informed that the narrator of the play, Tom Wingfield, is an “undisguised convention of the play,” and takes dramatic license whenever it is convenient for his purposes (4). In other words, he should be scrutinized and not automatically accepted as a source of truth and facts in this play.
- Addressing the audience directly, Tom explains, “I have tricks in my pocket, […] I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,” (ibid).
-Continuing his message to the audience, “[t]he play is memory, […] it is sentimental, it is not realistic,” (5).
-Interestingly, Tom explains that the fifth character in the play, his father, only appears in a “larger-than-life-size photograph,” but never in person (ibid).
-Despite being an adult, Amanda, Tom’s mother, feels it is necessary to instruct him concerning how to eat. Amanda pays meticulous ‘hawklike’ attention to detail to the extent that she ruins meals, among other things one suspects (6).
-Here a fixation that will arise for the remainder of the play surfaces for the first time. Amanda is fixated on Laura, her daughter and Tom’s sister, receiving ‘gentlemen callers’ (7).
-Gentleman: a man of chivalric manners and good breeding; a man of good social position; a man of wealth and leisure (https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=english_diss)
-Gentleman Caller: an old-fashioned way of describing the social custom of a man visiting a lady’s house to inquire as to her ‘datability’. The intent is to become acquainted, and discover if there might be some mutual interest (https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-gentleman-caller).
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-Amanda insists on recounting the aged anecdotes of her many gentlemen callers to (her adult children) Tom and Laura (7). At one point she apparently had 17, which is a sizable number of suitors (8).
-Given that Laura has no callers, and Tom is not calling on anyone, Amanda’s insistence on continually retelling these stories to her grown children seems aimed at making them feel inadequate, or at least inferior to her. The other possibility, of course, is that Amanda is not being truthful and she’s simply being indulged.
-Scene One ends with Amanda expressing her shock that Laura hasn’t one gentleman caller. Laura suspects that Amanda fears she will end up an ‘old maid’ (10).
-Old Maid: Is a derogatory term most often used in reference to “a single woman regarded as too old for marriage,” (https://www.google.ca/search?ei=S0ehW-O8LM2P5wKss5awBA&q=old+maid+definition&oq=old+maid+definition&gs_l=psy-ab.3...11115.14213.0.14452.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.bJqi3MhpSVQ)
Scene Two
-The narration at the beginning of this scene describes Amanda as wearing “imitation velvety-looking cloth,” with an “imitation fur collar,” (11). This is notable because it reveals a great deal about the character; she is not nearly as classy or elite as she pretends. In other words, it suggests that Amanda herself is an imitation or a fake. In other words, she is not the Southern Aristocratic Belle that she pretends.
-Amanda reveals she has discovered that Laura has been deceiving her. For 6 weeks Laura has pretended to be attending school when in fact she has dropped out (13).
-Rather than attending school (post-secondary studies), Laura has been simply going out and walking (14).
-Laura spends her days going to the zoo, the movies, the museum, and visiting a place called the Jewel Box, a “big glass house where” tropical flowers are raised (15). When visiting the Jewel Box Laura essentially becomes a living version of one of her prized glass figures housed in her glass menagerie. While this is horrifying to Amanda, it could also be said that Laura is providing herself with a cultural education that is nonetheless valuable, and perhaps even more valuable than studying at ‘business college’.
-Laura tells Amanda, “Mother, when you’re disappointed, you get that awful look on your face, like the picture of Jesus’ mother in the museum!” (ibid)
-In a lengthy monologue, Amanda addresses Laura, “[…] What is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position […] spinsters […] stuck away in some little mousetrap of a room […] birdlike women without any nest—eating the crust of humility all their life. […] Of course—some girls do marry,” (16).
-Laura once had a on a boy named Jim in high school (ibid). Apparently Jim sang opera, and was a champion debater. Jim also nicknamed Laura Blue Roses because he misheard her explanation concerning her bout with pleurosis (17).
-Pleurisy: is an inflammation of the membrane that surrounds and protects the lungs (the pleura). Inflammation occurs when an infection or damaging agent irritates the pleural surface. As a consequence, sharp chest pains are the primary symptom of pleurisy (https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Pleurosis).
-Amanda, “Girls that aren’t cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man. Sister, that’s what you’ll do!” (ibid)
-We learn an essential detail about Laura during her conversation with Amanda when she exclaims “I’m—crippled!” (ibid). Amanda’s reply seems to indicate that she is in denial about this fact, “[…] you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect—hardly noticeable, even! […]” (ibid).
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Scene Three
-The scene opens with Tom narrating, addressing the audience directly. We are informed that Amanda has become obsessed with finding gentlemen callers, and ultimately a husband for Laura (19).
-An argument erupts between Tom and Amanda. Tom is upset for several reasons:
1. “I’ve got no thing […] in my life here that I can call my OWN!” (21)
2. Amanda confiscated his books because they were created by ‘diseased minds’, and she considers them to be ‘filth’ (ibid).
3. Amanda refers to the apartment they share as a family as her home, despite the fact that Tom pays the rent and all of their expenses (ibid).
4. Tom is upset over being forced to constantly censor himself due to Amanda’s fragile temperament (22).
5. Tom is upset about the fact that he has been forced into supporting the entire family on his own. His anger is compounded by the fact that Amanda has the nerve to accuse him of selfishness. “[Y]ou say self—self’s all I ever think of. Why, listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I’d be where he is—GONE!” (23) The ‘he’ in that quote is their long escaped father.
6. The argument is punctuated by two events; first, by Tom calling Amanda an “ugly—babbling old—witch…”, second, as he leaves, Tom accidentally breaks some of Laura’s glass collection, causing her to cry out as if she has been wounded (24).
-Amanda, during the argument, makes an insinuation about Tom, though she refuses to qualify it with specifics. “I think you’ve been doing things that you’re ashamed of. […] I don’t believe that you go out every night to the movies. […] People don’t go to the movies at nearly midnight, and movies don’t let out at two A.M. […]” (23). At the very least Amanda is insinuating that Tom has a secret life that may include the consumption of intoxicating substances, though one must at least speculate if she is also suggesting that he is closeted and secretly living a gay lifestyle.
Scene Four
-The scene opens with Tom arriving home late after another excursion that appears to have included movies and alcohol consumption (26).
-Laura greets Tom, and he recounts that his favorite performance of the evening was that offered by Malvolio the Magician. Tom most liked a trick that involved the magician escaping from a nailed coffin. This is noteworthy for several reasons:
1. In the previous scene Tom essentially wished to be dead and/or gone. This trick is thus quite similar to the disappearing act his father pulled off earlier in his life.
2. This magic trick also brings to mind a thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat. The 1935 thought experiment asks that we imagine a “cat, with a Geiger counter, and a bit of poison in a sealed box. Quantum mechanics says that after a while, the cat is both alive and dead,” (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat). The cat is at once living and dead because without seeing it, one cannot with any authority claim that it is either, thus it is both until confirmation occurs. This can be seen as a metaphor for Tom’s life; Tom is at once living and dead in his present life. He is a slave to his mother, and to a lesser extent, his sister. His life is not his own and is not being lived in pursuit of what matters to him. Thus, the idea of appearing dead to some (his mother and his sister), while actually being alive and living life (for himself) is not only the perfect metaphor, it’s essentially what his father did.
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Here’s a lengthier explanation of Schrödinger's Cat:
In the hypothetical experiment, which the physicist devised in 1935, a cat is placed in a sealed box along with a radioactive sample, a Geiger counter and a bottle of poison.
If the Geiger counter detects that the radioactive material has decayed, it will trigger the smashing of the bottle of poison and the cat will be killed.
The experiment was designed to illustrate the flaws of the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, which states that a particle exists in all states at once until observed.
If the Copenhagen interpretation suggests the radioactive material can have simultaneously decayed and not decayed in the sealed environment, then it follows the cat too is both alive and dead until the box is opened (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/google-doodle/10237347/Schrodingers-Cat-explained.html)
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-Tom apologizes to Amanda for the things he said to her during their argument (30). This is especially troubling because Tom is apologizing for feelings that he’s entitled to have. He resents being forced to be the sole provider in the family, he resents being forced to fill his father’s role by working at a soul crushing job, he resents not being able to live as he chooses, free of his mother’s scrutiny, etc.
-Amanda, on the other hand, sees herself as a martyr, “My devotion has made me a witch and so I make myself hateful to my children!” (ibid) Amanda takes no ownership for how her children feel about her, nor for the circumstance in which she finds herself.
-As the conversation ensues, it unravels like an elaborate pantomime. Amanda says that Laura thinks Tom is unhappy, Tom responds as though this puzzles him (32).
-Amanda acknowledges that she is aware that Tom makes sacrifices in order to take care of them. However, she does not go into particulars at this point (ibid).
-Tom tells Amanda, “There’s so much in my heart that I can’t describe to you!” (33)
-As the exchange continues, at least part of what Tom sacrifices comes to light when he says, “Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!” (34). Tom takes on a job he hates, sacrificing his ambitions, to be there for his mother and sister. However, this sacrifice is not one he makes happily or easily.
-According to Amanda, Tom is just like his father because he “was out all hours without explanation!—Then left!” (35) As Amanda continues, she insinuates that she knows Tom fantasizes about leaving just like his father did, only she asks that Tom wait “till there’s somebody to take,” his place. Amanda is asking that Tom only leave her and Laura once Laura is married to a man who will care for them both.
-The scene draws to a close with Amanda insisting that Tom select a coworker from the warehouse where he works to be a potential suitor for Laura (36).
Scene Five
-Tom has invited a gentleman caller for Laura (41). He has given Amanda last minute notice of this fact (42).
-Tom describes the gentleman caller as no one to make a fuss over (42). Despite this fact, Amanda immediately starts planning a vastly over the top event. This is due to the fact that the gentleman will be Laura’s first gentleman caller (43).
-Amanda seems to be assuming that the gentleman caller will not only be automatically interested in Laura, but further, that their union is a foregone conclusion (44).
-Amanda: “[…] Old maids are better off than wives of drunkards,” (44). Amanda is familiar with both since she’s presently an old maid, and her absentee husband was a drunk.
-Addressing Tom, Amanda says, “You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!” (45) How can Tom plan for any of these things if he is shackled by his obligations to Amanda and Laura? His past present and future belong to them so long as he supports them.
-Amanda speaking about her missing husband, “[…] He smiled—the world was enchanted! No girl can do worse than put herself at the mercy of a handsome appearance!” (46)
-Tom lists the things about Laura that make her different from other women:
1. She’s ‘crippled’—If you read on, Laura definitely has a physical impairment. However, she seems to be emotionally or socially crippled too. Perhaps due to her suffocating mother, missing father, and drunken brother? (47)
2. She’s peculiar because she “lives in a world of her own—a world of little glass ornaments,” and listens to old records (48).
-The scene closes with Tom leaving for the movies, and Amanda instructing Laura to wish upon the moon (48-49).
Scene Six
-Scene 6 opens with Tom narrating details about Jim, Laura’s unsuspecting gentleman caller:
1. He was a star athlete
2. He sang opera
3. He was expected to achieve big things (i.e. President), yet somehow never did
4. He was a star debater
5. He nicknamed Tom ‘Shakespeare’ because he often snuck off to write poems in the closet at work
-Laura has become extremely nervous on the evening of Jim’s visit because of Amanda’s actions:
1. She is making far too big a deal out of Jim’s visit (52)
2. She is making Laura feel inadequate and unattractive. Amanda forcefully tells Laura to wear ‘gay deceivers’, which is a fancy of describing adding padding to her bra (ibid).
-Amanda tells Laura;
1. “to be painfully honest, your chest is flat,” (ibid).
2. “All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be,” (ibid).
3. “This is the prettiest you’ll ever be!” (ibid)
-Amanda is simultaneously placing a great deal of pressure upon Laura, while tearing her down and diminishing her. It seems at least plausible that Laura is not ‘crippled’ physically, so much as emotionally.
-Amanda’s outfit for Jim’s visit is unveiled; a decades old, ostentatious dress from when she was a teen being courted (53). She thinks she looks impeccable, but in reality she’s making a spectacle of herself.
-Jim O’Connor, from Tom’s workplace, is the same Jim who called Laura ‘Blue Roses’. She’s been in love with him since high school (55).
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-Laura is mortified to answer the door for Tom and Jim upon learning Jim’s identity (57).
-Jim informs Tom that his job is at risk due to his lackluster work ethic (60).
-Tom speaks cryptically to Jim, “I’m planning to change. […] I’m right at the point of committing myself to a future that doesn’t include the warehouse […]" (60-61).
-Tom’s next statement is far more direct, “I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!” (61)
-Tom explains to Jim, “I’m like my father. The bastard son of a bastard!” (62)
-Amanda describes her missing husband thusly, “A telephone man—who fell in love with long-distance! Now he travels and I don’t even know where!” (64)
-Laura doesn’t want to join everyone for dinner, she seems mortified by the entire situation (64-65).
Scene Seven
-30 minutes have passed and Laura has remained on the couch, in the den, sick (67). She did not eat with everyone. Has Amanda made her sick? Is she mortified to have Jim over, seeing the state of her life?
-The lights have been shut off during the dinner because Tom chose not to pay the electric bill (68-69).
-Jim and Laura converse as Tom helps Amanda with the dishes (70-89).
-Early in the conversation Jim finally realizes that he knew Laura in high school (73).
-In high school Laura wore a leg brace that made her late for class. Jim never noticed her brace (74-75), which is significant because it means that he did not see Laura as disabled, he simply saw her as a person. Laura’s experience with her physical impairment has mostly been that people cannot look beyond it—to the extent that it’s all they see. In other words, Jim is different from everyone else she knows.
-Jim: People are not so dreadful when you know them. That’s what you have to remember! And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are (76). In this passage Jim is basically telling Laura that she is not different from anyone, but is rather completely average in the best sense. Laura has spent her life isolating herself and viewing herself as a defective person that nobody would ever want to spend time with. Ultimately, Jim’s point is that everybody is handicapped in some way, it’s simply that Laura’s is physical and thus more visible.
-Laura admits to having a crush on Jim in high school (78).
-The narration describes Jim as “smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles,” (79). Note that she is also playing with one of the figurines from her class collection.
-When asked about her activities since high school, Laura can only claim to have dropped out of college, and to have maintained a glass collection, which is “something you have to take good care of,” (80).
-Jim tells Laura that she has an inferiority complex in his opinion, an affliction that he too struggled with (ibid). “You don’t have the proper amount of faith in yourself. […] You dropped out of school, you gave up an education because of a clump, which as far as I know was practically non-existent! A little physical defect is all you have. Hardly noticeable even! Magnified a thousand time by imagination! You know what my strong advice to you is? Think of yourself as superior in some way!” (81) Jim may be the first person in Laura’s life to suggest that she is not defective, but indeed superior in some ways.
-Laura is opening herself in a vulnerable way to Jim by sharing her glass collection with him (82). In essence by sharing the collection with him, she’s essentially sharing a piece of her most intimate and guarded self with him—a facet of her life and character that nobody outside of her family has ever been exposed to. Thus, the significance of this gesture should not be overlooked.
-As she hands one of the glass ornaments to Jim she cautions him, “be careful—if you breathe, it breaks,” (83). If we look at these glass figures as a symbolic extension of Laura, she is really telling Jim, ‘I’m offering you a piece of myself, but please be careful, because I am fragile and I break easily.”
-Laura urges the reluctant Jim to handle the glass figure, “Go on, I trust you with him!” (83)
-Laura hands him her favorite figure (83):
Jim: A unicorn, huh?
Laura: Mmmm-hmmm!
Jim: Unicorns-aren’t they extinct in the modern world?
Laura: I know!
Jim: Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome.
This unicorn in particular is a symbolic representation of Laura. The unicorn is a rare creature that is at once a horse, yet not quite due to its ‘deformity’, so to speak.
-Jim invites Laura to dance as the music from the dancehall across from them can be heard in their home (84). This may be the first time anyone has ever invited Laura to dance.
-The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead (Wikipedia.org).
-Laura starts, reluctantly to dance, and soon finds herself doing so relatively well with Jim (85).
-As they dance, they bump into the table, knocking the unicorn to the floor, breaking off its horn, rendering it just another regular horse (85-86). This seemingly banal event is far more significant than it may seem initially. For most of her life Laura has basically seen herself as the human version of a unicorn; she’s a mutation of a species that she belongs to, but different enough to stand apart. Since Jim’s arrival Laura has begun to feel normal because of how he is speaking to and treating her. Thus, when the glass unicorn falls, causing its horn to be severed, it becomes a 'normal' / 'regular' horse in the same way that Laura has become, thanks to Jim, a 'normal' / 'regular' woman.
-Laura is totally fine with the fact that her unicorn was damaged, rendering it a regular horse (86).
-Laura: […] The horn was removed to make him feel less—freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns…” (ibid). Again, Williams clearly intends for this dialogue to apply equally to Laura—she no longer feels freakish or different from other people.
-Jim begins to express a fondness for Laura because she is:
1. Funny (86)
2. Different from everyone else he knows (87)
3. She makes him speechless
4. Unique
5. She is not common (ibid)
6. She is pretty (88)
-Jim tells Laura, “Somebody needs to build your confidence up and make you proud instead of turning away. […] Somebody—ought to—kiss you, Laura!” (88) Then he kisses her.
-After kissing Laura, Jim seems to have regret. Almost immediately after he offers her a Life Saver (candy)—not a coincidence! (89)
-Jim explains to Laura that he cannot date her because he is in love with another woman, and therefore cannot pursue a relationship with her (89-90). This news ‘snuffs out’ the light that had been illuminated in Laura by Jim (90).
-Amanda is upset with Tom for not informing her that Jim is engaged. She seems to suspect it was intentional (94-95).
-Tom flees to ‘go see a movie’ (95), while Amanda shouts after him, “Don’t think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who’s crippled and has no job!” (96)
-The play ends with Tom offering a speech to the audience summing up the events that followed. He was fired from his job, fled his mother and sister, and traveled (96-97).
-Here’s how sparknotes.com explains the close of the play:
Each character in The Glass Menagerie is trying to escape from reality in his or her own way: Laura retreats into her imagination and the static world of glass animals and old records, Amanda has the glorious days of her youth, and Jim has his dreams of an executive position. Only Tom has trouble finding a satisfactory route of escape. Movies are not a real way out, as he comes to realize. Even descending the steps of the fire escape and wandering like his rootless father does not provide him with any respite from his memories of Laura’s stunted life and crushed hopes. Yet, in one way, he has escaped. A frustrated poet no longer, he has created this play. Laura’s act of blowing out the candles at the play’s end signifies the snuffing of her hopes, but it may also mark Tom’s long-awaited release from her grip. He exhorts Laura to blow out her candles and then bids her what sounds like a final goodbye. The play itself is Tom’s way out, a cathartic attempt to purge his memory and free himself through the act of creation.
Even so, when one considers the trajectory of Tennessee Williams’s life and writings, one senses a deep ambivalence in the play’s conclusion. The rose image continued to show up in Williams’s writings long after The Glass Menagerie, and the ghosts haunting Williams would eventually lead him to drug addiction and a mental hospital. For Williams and his character Tom, art may be an attempt to erase all pain. But although Williams’s world includes some survivors of deep pain and torment, they invariably bear ugly scars.