The glass menagerie by Tenesse Williams

2. Tennessee Williams
■ BornThomas LanierWilliams III
■ March 26, 1911 at Columbus, Mississippi
■ Leading playwright of his age (post-WorldWar
II)
■ Had won prestigious awards such as Pulitzer
Prize and NewYork DramaCritics’ Awards
(Streetcar Named Desired & Cat on a HotTin
Roof)
■ His works seemed to be preoccupied with the
extremes of human brutality, and sexual
behavior: madness, rape, incest,
nymphomania, violence, deaths
■ Died on February 25, 1983 at the age of 71.

3. The
GLASS
MENAGERIE

4. Introduction
■ Published in 1944 by theTenesse Williams
■ The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of
the narrator.
■ TomWingfield, tells the story from his present time (1940s) about his life in the
1930s
■ The play revolves around the escapistTom, who is responsible to look after his
crippled sister and nagging mother.
■ The play is set against the background of depression where the characters struggle
with the past, the future and with each other.

6. ■ Glass Menagerie is autobiographical
■ Was born “Thomas LanierWilliams III,” but changed his name to “Tennessee” at
the age of 28. Different sources report various reasons for the new moniker. Some
claim he received the name from a college roommate, others argue that he picked it
to pay tribute to his ancestors who lived in the state ofTennessee, and some think
he simply wanted to break with his past and conceal his age.
■ WhenWilliams’ older sister Rose first became infatuated with a certain boy,Williams
soon realized that he was also attracted to the same boy and his own sex.
■ Two Hollywood movie versions of The Glass Menagerie have been produced.
■ The Glass Menagerie has had a number of Broadway revivals
May 4, 1965 to October 2, 1965 at the BrooksAtkinsonTheatre
December 18, 1975 to February 22, 1976 at the Circle in the SquareTheatre
December 1, 1983 to February 19, 1984 at the Eugene O'NeillTheatre

7. 1989 at the Royal Exchange, Manchester directed by Ian Hastings
November 15, 1994 to January 1, 1995 at Criterion Center Stage Right
March 22, 2005 to July 3, 2005 at the Ethel BarrymoreTheatre
April 2008 at the Royal Exchange, Manchester directed by Braham Murray
Off-Broadway at the RoundaboutTheatre Company, March 24, 2010 to June
13, 2010
The 2013 Broadway revival began previews on September 5 with an official
opening on September 26, 2013 at the BoothTheatre and closed on February 23,
2014. his production received seven 2014Tony Award nominations

8. GLASS MENAGERIE
CHARACTERS

9. • Laura and Tom's mother.
• A proud, vivacious woman who clings
fervently to memories of a vanished,
genteel past.
• Simultaneously admirable, charming,
pitiable and laughable.

10. • Amanda's daughter and Tom's older sister.
• Laura has a bad leg, on which she has to
wear a brace, and walks with a limp.
• Twenty-three years old and painfully shy.
• She has largely withdrawn herself from the
outside world and devotes her time to old
records and her collection of glass figurines.

11. • Amanda's son and Laura's younger brother.
• An aspiring poet.
• Works at a shoe warehouse to support the
family.
• He is frustrated by the numbing routine of
his job and escapes from it through
movies, literature and alcohol.

12. • An old acquaintance of Tom and Laura.
• A popular athlete in high school.
• A shipping clerk at the shoe warehouse in
which Tom works.
• He is unwaveringly devoted to goals of
professional achievement and ideals of personal
success.

13. • Amanda's husband, Laura and Tom's father.
• A handsome man who worked for a
telephone company.
• Abandoned his family years before the action of
the play and never reappears onstage.
• His picture is prominently displayed in the
Wingfields' living room.

14. Setting of The Glass Menagerie
SETTING OF
THE GLASS
MENAGERIE

15. Wingfield
Apartment in St.
Louis
1937

16. Continental Shoemakers
Warehouse

17. THE
GLASS
MENAGERIE:
A SUMMARY

18. SCENE I

19. • Tom Wingfield, the narrator, explains directly to the
audience that the scenes are “memory,” therefore
nonrealistic.
• Tom reveals the historical and social background of
the play.
• Tom describes his role in the play and the other
characters. One character, his father, does not
appear on stage.
• Amanda begins describing all her gentleman-callers
from her southern Blue Mountain days, and Laura

20. SCENE II

21. • Amanda tells Laura that she visited Laura’s business
college and now knows that she has been lying to
her.
• Amanda whines to her daughter about her terror of
what will happen to the two of them if Laura remains
untrained for work, and that the only alternative is
marriage.
• Laura tells her mother about Jim, her high school
crush.
• Laura says marriage will not be possible because
she is “crippled.”

22. SCENE III

23. • After the fiasco of the business college,
the idea of a gentleman caller for Laura
becomes an obsession with Amanda.
• Tom and Amanda quarrel after she has
sent back his library books without telling
him.
• This results to a fight which ends with Tom
leaving.

24. SCENE IV

25. • Tom went home drunk and loses his keys at the
middle of the night. He just went home from
watching a movie.
• The next day, Laura went to him and beg him to
apologize and make up for their mother. Then,
she went outside.
• Tom speaks and apologizes to Amanda.
• Amanda gave him few lessons and make him
promise not to become a drunkard.

26. • Amanda asked him how he feels about his
life in their apartment and shared how
Laura feels toward him.
• Amanda started talking about Laura’s
attitude and future. She also promised to
Tom that he can leave the house if Laura
got herself a husband.
• Amanda asked Tom to find Laura a
“gentleman caller” in the warehouse where

27. SCENE V

28. • Amanda is giving instructions to Tom
about his smoking.
• Tom narrates about “Paradise Dance
Hall”.
• Amanda and Tom made a wish upon
seeing the moon.
• Tom tells Amanda that he got Laura a
gentleman caller. And was expected to

29. • Amanda was very excited upon hearing
the news and wanted to make
preparations for tomorrow.
• Amanda asked Tom about the name of the
gentleman caller and his work and life.
• Tom however is much worried about Laura
being different and peculiar woman.
• Amanda brushes it aside and called Laura

30. SCENE VI

31. • Tom is speaking about Jim O’Connor who
was “the most likely to succeed” during
their high school years.
• Amanda gave her best for the upcoming
dinner and prepared everything by her
own. Laura was well-dressed and so do
Amanda.
• Amanda showed Laura the dress that she
worn during her youth days.

32. • Laura found out about the identity of the
gentleman caller who is coming for dinner.
She knew that it was her crush during her
high school year.
• Laura after knowing it was too nervous to
open the door but she doesn’t have the
choice because Amanda command her to
do it.
• Jim and Tom came inside and talk about

33. • Jim told Tom that Mr. Mendoza their employer
is telling Jim that Tom will lose his job if he will
not change.
• Tom told Jim that he paid his dues instead of
the light bill to become a member of The Union
of a Merchant. (He was planning to leave and
become a seaman.)
• Amanda went over and started talking nonstop
to Jim.

34. • Amanda built-up Laura to Jim and called
Laura to join them for supper.
• Laura knowing the identity of the ‘caller’,
she hides in the kitchen and becoming
faint and ill with a fever.
• Amanda told her to just stay in the living
room and Jim, Amanda and Tom blessed
the food.

35. SCENE VII

36. • The lights go out in the apartment so
Amanda lit a candle.
• Amanda realizes that Tom didn’t pay the
light bill so as a consequence she asked
him to wash the dishes with her.
• Jim went to Laura. They talk for a short
time until Laura asked him if he still sings.
• Jim suddenly remembered that he met her

37. • Jim tried to cheer up Laura and gave him
an advice about being confident.
• Laura told Jim her great interest- glass
collection and she showed a unicorn glass
menagerie.
• Jim asked Laura to dance with him and so
they did it. The unicorn fell and broke its
horn.

38. • Jim confesses that he won’t be able to
give Laura a call, text her or come again
because he’s already engaged. Jim
accepted the invitation because his
fiancée is out of town.
• Laura handed him her favorite menagerie-
the unicorn as a souvenir. Then he bid
goodbye.
• Amanda finds out about Jim’s engagement

41. The Difficulty of
Accepting Reality

42. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
Of the threeWingfields, reality has by far
the weakest grasp on Laura.The private
world in which she lives is populated by
glass animals—objects that, like Laura’s
inner life, are incredibly fanciful and
dangerously delicate.

43. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
Tom is capable of functioning in the real world, as we see
in his holding down a job and talking to strangers. But, in
the end, he has no more motivation than Laura does to
pursue professional success, romantic relationships, or
even ordinary friendships, and he prefers to retreat into
the fantasies provided by literature and movies and the
stupor provided by drunkenness.

44. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
Amanda’s relationship to reality is the most
complicated in the play. Unlike her children, she is
partial to real-world values and longs for social
and financial success.Yet her attachment to these
values is exactly what prevents her from
perceiving a number of truths about her life.

46. The play takes an ambiguous attitude toward the
moral implications and even the effectiveness of
Tom’s escape. As an able-bodied young man, he is
locked into his life not by exterior factors but by
emotional ones—by his loyalty to and possibly
even love for Laura and Amanda.

48. In The Glass Menagerie, duty and responsibility
largely arise from family.The play examines
the conflict between one’s obligations and
one’s real desires, suggesting that being true
to one may necessitate abandonment of the
other. We also see that duties are gender
specific, and arise largely from the
expectations of societal norms.

53. Laura’s Glass
Menagerie
Laura’s collection of glass animal figurines
represents a number of facets of her
personality. The menagerie also represents
the imaginative world to which Laura
devotes herself—a world that is colorful and
enticing but based on fragile illusions.

54. The Glass
Unicorn
The glass unicorn in Laura’s collection—
significantly, her favorite figure—
represents her peculiarity. Laura too is
unusual, lonely, and ill-adapted to
existence in the world in which she
lives.The fate of the unicorn is also a
smaller-scale version of Laura’s fate in
Scene Seven.

55. The Fire
Escape
The fire escape, a physical symbol, is used
symbolically to represent various aspects of
being trapped or as a method of escape. As
Williams writes, the "huge buildings are
always burning with the slow and
implacable fires of human desperation."

56. REFERENCES:
Play Summary. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/the-glass-menagerie/play-
summary
The Glass Unicorn. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=glass+menagerie&biw=1366&b
ih=638&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjdmbacjIfQAh
XHzLwKHS6NCe8Q_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=The+Glass+Unicorn&img
rc=5W5xr9Cn8Z60-M%3A
The Fire Escape. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=themes&biw=1366&bih=589&s
ource=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMwP2UoYfQAhWGxbw
KHZDyAVQQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=The+Fire+Escape&imgrc=4RQ-
vL9Ne3UakM%3A

57. REFERENCES:
The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
http://www.shmoop.com/glass-menagerie/dreams-hopes-plans-
theme.html
The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
http://debbiejlee.com/the_glass_menagerie.pdf
http://m.sparknotes.com/lit/menagerie/characters.html
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-glass-menagerie/study-
guide/summary
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/menagerie/section1.rhtml
http://tomwingfieldblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/continental-
shoemakers.html

58. REFERENCES:
https://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/cfrederic/tennesseewillia
ms.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/tennessee-williams-about-
tennessee-williams/737/
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http://www.gradesaver.com/author/tennessee-williams
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/tennessee-
williams
http://www.shmoop.com/tennessee-williams/depression-death.html
http://www.softschools.com/facts/authors/tennessee_williams_facts/1438/
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https://sussle.org/t/The_Glass_Menagerie
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http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/globaldrama/the-glass-
menagerie.html#.WBlSzON97IU
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-glass-menagerie