One of Tennessee Williams' first major
successful plays was The
Glass Menagerie, a dream-like piece about a struggling mother and her two children living in
St. Louis. Amanda Wingfield, the mother in The Glass Menagerie, is a
southern woman who revels in her fond memories of the past but fears for the future of her two children, Tom and Laura. On the surface Amanda might appear to be no more than a
harsh, bickering mother, but this portion of her character stems from the tragedies in her past. Amanda is a strong and hopeful woman with
traditional southern values, and she cares for her children but allows herself to
worry too much about their future.
The mother might at first appear only paranoid and frail, but she also has strength in her character. Her alcoholic husband abandoned Amanda and her children years before, and in order to live decently in an apartment in St. Louis, Amanda works as a telephone saleswoman. She also relies on her son's income to help support the three of them. Although Amanda sometimes retreats back into memories of her better days, she accepts the reality of her present circumstances and does her best to deal with them. Amanda tries to manage the bad circumstances by encouraging Tom to work harder at the warehouse and Laura to get typing instruction at "Rubicam's Business College." Although Laura is severely introverted and quits the business school, Amanda still maintains hope for her daughter's future. Laura has a very slight limp that prevents her from feeling secure with herself, and Amanda attempts to give her daughter more courage by telling her that she "just has a little defect- hardly noticeable, even." She also tries to keep hope by claiming that "girls that aren't cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man." Statements such as this seem silly and too optimistic, but in order for her strength and patience to endure, Amanda must rely on her hopes and optimism to help both her and her children. At times Amanda mentally escapes into her better days with all her gentlemen callers, however she perceives her present problems and does have the capacity to deal with them. This is certainly a quality of strength in Amanda, though often her persistence is extremely irritating to her son, Tom.
Amanda's character is greatly influenced by her traditional values and Christian morals. This personality trait is what most often causes the worst arguments between her and Tom. Tom, who Amanda remarks constantly as being "more and more like his father," drinks, smokes, and brings home books by D.H. Lawrence. All of these actions drive Amanda wild, not only because of her Christian ideals, but because her husband did the exact same things. She worries the most over Tom's drinking habits and asks him to promise to "never become a drunkard." She constantly berates Tom with remarks about how Christian adults should behave and how he should aim for "superior things, things of the mind and the spirit." However, Tom believes in instinct, and he repeatedly gets angry by Amanda's pressures on how to behave and what to believe. One of their first major arguments in the play begins with Tom swearing and Amanda "shrilly" telling him not to. Tom then yells at Amanda for "confiscating" his books, and Amanda rails that she won't allow "the output of diseased minds" in her house. This is what outrages Tom; he doesn't feel as if he has any freedom or that he truly has anything of his own. He even remarks to Laura one evening that he needs to get out of "this two-by-four situation." Tom feels as if he is caged up by his mother. Amanda tries to force Tom to act more like a Christian, but her intolerance of his actions and beliefs only anger him and encourage him to leave.
Amanda constantly frets over Laura's failures in school and Church activities because she sees a bleak future ahead of her daughter. Amanda tells Tom that Laura "just drifts along doing nothing," and that it "frightens her terribly." In the second scene of the first act, after Amanda has discovered that Laura is not attending her typing classes, she explains how worried she is by telling Laura that they will be dependent all their lives, and that she's "seen such pitiful cases in the South- barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother's wife." This speech reveals how horribly worried Amanda is and explains why she pesters her children so much about their futures. Amanda herself even claims, "My devotion has made me a witch and so I make myself hateful to my children."
Amanda has a strong personality and she is truly devoted to her children and their futures, but she cannot force her own hopes and wishes into their lives. Tom and Laura will continue to act as they are, and though Amanda cares for them and tries to maintain a Christian household, she simply cannot make her two children, who are adults, comply with everything she asks. The whole play is Tom's memory, which gives it a distant, fantasy-like feel. The Glass Menagerie offers a wonderful portrayal of a family and its differences. I performed the character of Amanda Wingfield in a school production my senior year of high school, so the play carries a lot of memories for me.