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THE GLASS MENAGERIE By Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie is a modern drama about the Wingfield family. The overall play is about a narrator, Tom Wingfield, who tells a story that took place in his past through a series of flashbacks. The story has two major storylines: 1) that of the narrator, Tom Wingfield, who speaks to us from the “here and now” of the stage, and 2) the story he tells, a “memory play” about his life with his mother and sister in St. Louis shortly before the outbreak of WWII. So, we have two stories: the "here and now" story of Tom telling the audience about what happened years earlier in St. Louis and the "there and then" story of what happened. The “memory play” occupies most of the story and is a linear plot that unfolds chronologically. However, the “here and now” story of Tom telling the story, although told chronologically in parallel to the main plot with the narrator moving back-­‐and-­‐forth between the two, isn’t revealed as a fully developed story until very late in the play. For most of the play, Tom in the "here and now" appears to be only a narrator, a narrative device, used to guide us through the story of his past. However, we find out near the end that he tells us the story for a reason and there is a story in why he tells about what happened long ago in St. Louis. At the end, the two stories intersect. The "here and now" story begins at the top of the play when Tom enters and first addresses the audience: TOM enters dressed as a merchant sailor from alley, stage left, and strolls across the front of the stage to the fire-­‐escape. There he stops and lights a cigarette. He addresses the audience. TOM: Yes, I have tricks in my pocket. I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. (and so on) The "memory play" begins in Scene One when Tom takes us back to a dinner at the Wingfields many years earlier in St. Louis: AMANDA’S voice becomes audible through the portieres…we see AMANDA and LAURA seated at the table in the upstage area. AMANDA (Calling): Tom? TOM: Yes, Mother. (and so on) The Memory Play The "memory play" is focused on Tom getting a "Gentleman Caller" for his sister Laura, what happens when "the Gentleman calls" (which is surprising and unexpected), and the aftermath of that evening, which leads to Tom leaving St. Louis. The "there and then" story is broken into two parts: "Preparations for a Gentleman Caller" and "The Gentleman Calls." The first part will be our Act One that will end after Scene Five. The second part, our Act Two, begins with Scene Six and takes us to the end of the play. There will be an intermission between the two acts. The "memory play" is a bit complex in its structure. It is a "double-­‐build" plot with two climaxes -­‐ one story reaches its climax and that leads to a second story with an even greater climax. The first climax is the kiss between Jim and Laura (Williams calls it "the climax of her (Laura's) secret life."). Unfortunately, the story takes a downturn from the fantasy of Laura meeting “the man of her dreams” and shifts almost immediately back to reality. Jim tells her that it was wrong to kiss her and that he “can’t take down her number and say I’ll phone. I can’t call up next week and – ask for a date.” He’s engaged to be married to a girl named Betty in June. She gives Jim the broken unicorn…as a souvenir. Amanda enters, not knowing what has happened, and Jim says he has to leave. As he and Amanda talk, Jim reveals that he is “going steady” with Betty and that they are to be married “the second Sunday in June.” Amanda believes Tom has “played a joke” on them by inviting an engaged man to be the gentleman caller. And that “Things have a way of turning out so badly." Now, a second build in the "there and then" story begins After the collapse of Amanda’s and Laura’s hopes, a story that has always been bubbling just below the surface, but has taken a backseat to the gentleman caller story, now emerges. Amanda calls Tom into the living room and accuses Tom of playing “a wonderful joke” on her and Laura by bringing an engaged man home as the “gentleman caller.” Tom says he simply didn’t know and the confrontation that has been brewing throughout the play – the confrontation over whether Tom is to give up all of his hopes and dreams and stay in St. Louis or leave like his father – finally comes to a head. In order to avoid an argument that could lead to that final confrontation, Tom says that he’s going to the movies. However this time, Amanda doesn’t let him go until she’s finished with her condemnation of his selfishness. It is a step that she has avoided taking and Tom has forestalled by leaving – to smoke or go to the movies – because it may lead to a conclusion that neither of them want to face or can take back once it arrives. The confrontation moves very quickly to its climax. Amanda reveals the ultimate secret – the secret never before spoken until now – that Tom is tied to Amanda and Laura as they really are: “a mother deserted” and “an unmarried sister who’s crippled and has no job.” Tom responds with the ultimate threat “The more you shout about my selfishness to me the quicker I’ll go, and I won’t go to the movies!” Amanda responds to that threat, in her anger, which proves to be the final turning point: “Go then! Then go to the moon – you selfish dreamer!” Tom “smashes his glass on the floor,” Laura screams (she knows this is the end), and Tom leaves. When Tom leaves he re-­‐enters the “here and now” where the play began and we find out why he has told his story to us and, at the end, the two stories intersect. The "Here and Now" Story The "here and now" story, Tom's story, is more elusive. Initially, the audience has no idea why Tom tells us this story about his past and the fact that it even is a story isn't revealed until very near the end of the play. I think that part of the design of the play is for the audience to think that Tom is just a narrative device until it's revealed that he has told us the story of his past for a reason. We don't know specifically what prompts Tom to tell us his story, although something has happened shortly before he enters at the top of the play that has brought back the memory of his sister: I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass – Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with tiny pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes…" This appears to be something that has happened many times before and this time it prompts Tom to tell the story of his leaving St. Louis to the audience: “I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles out!” This time, the audience is that "nearest stranger." One could also reasonably say that Tom tells us the story of what happened in St. Louis in hopes that doing so will "blow her candles out" or, put another way, exorcise the memory of his sister. However it's clear that memory of his sister keeps returning and he has told – and perhaps will continue to tell – the story over and over again until the memory of his sister finally leaves him. The End of the Play At the end of the play the two stories intersect. The final denouement of the “then and there” story of the past and the build to the climax of the “here and now” story of Tom as the narrator occur simultaneously. Amanda leaves and Laura is left alone with her candles. Tom tells us what happened after that night in St. Louis and how he is haunted by his sister’s memory. At the end, he begs his sister to “Blow out your candles, Laura – and so good bye…” And she does. Laura's blowing out her candles ends the "there and then" story" and, simultaneously, is the climax of Tom's "here and now" story. Whether this means that the memory of Laura is gone forever or just this time is hard to tell. I suspect that it's the latter. In the short story that the play comes from, "Portrait of a Girl in Glass," which is essentially the same as the play, Tom's final line is different and I rather like it better than the last line in the play. In the short story Tom says, "Blow out your candles, Laura...and the night is yours." The Characters Amanda is from Blue Mountain in the Mississippi Delta. It is near Moon Lake, Mississippi. “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain,” Amanda received “seventeen gentlemen callers.” Among her callers were “some of the most prominent young planters of the Mississippi Delta – planters and sons of planters.” Now she takes care of Laura and solicits subscriptions for The Homemaker’s Companion on the telephone to make a little extra money to “properly feather the nest and plume the bird” for the arrival of a gentleman caller for Laura. Laura is twenty-­‐four, walks with a brace on her leg, didn’t finish high school, and is terribly shy and withdrawn. She once enrolled in a course at Rubicam’s Business College, but only attended classes for a few days…and then deceived Amanda into believing she was still attending class by going alone to the park for six weeks. Other than that, she has only her collection of glass animals as a focus in her life. She once had a crush on a boy named Jim O’Conner in high school…a boy she had no more than a passing speaking relationship with in a music class. Tom is likely 22, two years younger than Laura, and is described by the playwright as “a poet with a job in a warehouse.” He is the sole support of the family and longs for adventure. He escapes to the movies and dreams of joining the Merchant Marines…and has joined the Union of Merchant Seamen shortly before Jim O’Conner comes to dinner. Jim is described by the playwright as a “nice, ordinary, young man.” In high school, Jim was “a star in basketball, captain of the debating team, president of the senior class and sang the male lead in the annual light operas.” In high school, Jim “seemed to move in a continual spotlight,” but “six years after he left high school he was holding a job that wasn’t much better” than Tom’s at the warehouse of the “Continental Shoemakers.” Unbeknownst to Tom, Jim is engaged to be married. Style The play is, obviously, very theatrical. However, I think that it plays best with fewer of the obvious theatrical and expressionistic devices that William's suggests in the published version. I think that the "memory play" doesn't need those instances of Tom "controlling" the theatricality in the early scenes of the play (e.g. "Tom motions for music and a spot of light on Amanda" when she begins to talk about her seventeen gentleman callers.). I also think the constant reminders of theatricality like the miming of eating and "She addresses Tom as though he were seated in the vacant chair at the table though he remains by the portiers. He plays this scene as though he held the book" are unnecessary and a bit distracting. I think the audience can accept the theatricality of the play and the idea that "the play is memory" without drawing undue attention to theatrical devices. Most important, I don't think the projections work and merely pull the audience's attention away from the actors. Although the language appears to be realistic, it's terribly poetic and seems to work only on the stage. The language in The Glass Menagerie seems terribly unnatural and artificial when transferred to the more realistic context of the screen. However, the dialogue writing is, perhaps, the best ever written for the stage. Story Values I think The Glass Menagerie is one of the great American plays. Most of the great American plays (Our Town, Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey Into Night, A Raisin in the Sun, Fences) are about family and The Glass Menagerie deals with the love/hate nature of the American family with greater care, tenderness, and sympathy than almost any other. Although the context of the story may feel dated, the story is, I think, as powerful and moving as it was when it was first written. It's perfectly crafted -­‐ like a fine-­‐tooled Swiss watch. Things Worth Thinking About • The play is very autobiographical. The real life story of Tennessee Williams' sister, Rose, underpins all of Williams' plays, but none more than The Glass Menagerie. Like Laura, Rose was two years older than her brother (whose Christian name is Tom) and they both attended Soldan High School in St. Louis just like Laura and Tom. In Williams' Memoirs, he wrote that Rose was a popular girl in high school, “but only for a brief while.” Rose had problems that led to her dropping out of high school, but they wouldn't be understood until ten years later when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Eventually, a prefrontal lobotomy was performed on Rose. The Glass Menagerie opened a year after her surgery. Williams supported Rose for the rest of her life and actually turned over the royalties to one of his plays to her to make sure she would be taken care of. About his efforts on her behalf, Williams told an interviewer, “This is probably the best thing I’ve done with my life, besides a few bits of work.” Amanda is drawn from William's mother, Edwina. When Laurette Taylor, who played Amanda in the original production, met William's mother on opening night she asked, "How does it feel to see yourself on stage?" And, of course, Tom Wingfield is not very far removed from Tom Williams. • As Tom says, "I have a poet's weakness for symbols" and The Glass Menagerie is loaded with symbols. Laura is "Blue Roses," which is "wrong for roses," but right for her. Laura's glass menagerie is a symbol for the fantasy world that she escapes to -­‐ a beautiful, shiny world of tiny glass animals that love the light. But it's a terribly fragile world that's easy to break. And, of course, she is the unicorn that "stays on the shelf with some horses that don't have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together." Laura warns Jim to be careful with the unicorn, "If you breathe, it breaks" and Jim says, "I'd better not take it. I'm pretty clumsy." When the unicorn's horn is broken, Laura says, "I'll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was remove to make him feel less -­‐-­‐ freakish. Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don't have horns." But in the end, she gives the unicorn to Jim as "a souvenir." • I think that the play is often undercut by a sense of impending doom from the beginning, which I think is a mistake. I think that it works better if the audience arrives at the kiss in Scene Seven and believes that we are going to have a happy ending -­‐ just like Laura. Consequently, the impact of the happy ending turned into tragedy makes the impact of the play greater. So, I think it's important not to telegraph the ending and play up the possibility that things can and should work out...until, of course, they don't. In this play the tragedy should come as a surprise and not a foregone conclusion. •
I think that the play has great comic potential that should be played up in order to prevent the mood from turning dark. I think it should feel more like a comedy that goes horribly wrong than a tragic story waiting to play out. •
I think the characters need to be handled with care and allowed to be as fully dimensional as possible. I think Amanda is too often treated as a villain, which robs her of her grace and humanity. At the end, Williams writes, "Now that we cannot hear the mother's speech, her silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty." Too often, Laura is treated as a very young, naive, and innocent girl rather than a 24-­‐year-­‐old woman who has never been kissed. •
I wonder whether, at the end, if Laura and Tom can look at each other and see into each other's eyes in that moment just before she blows out her candles.