Engendering America: Masculinity, femininity, and American Dreams

The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams

Introduction

The Glass Menagerie is a classic modern American drama. The play, largely auto-bio graphical, began as a film scenario, which was rejected by MGM when Williams was under contract to that studio in Hollywood. With the lapse of his contract, Williams left Hollywood armed with material for a play that would run for more than 550 performances on Broadway and earn its author a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Williams describes The Glass Menagerie as a "memory" play; the events are the recollections of the play's protagonist, Tom.

In an opening monologue, which occurs in present time, Tom sets the scene, while at the play's end, once again in the present; he undergoes a wrenching emotional catharsis, the result of his confrontation with the subject matter of his narrative (Babcock, 17). The play is set in the 1930s, and Tom, as narrator, quickly locates his story in the context of the Great Depression. He also remarks on his proclivity, as both poet and storyteller, to use symbols, thus encouraging us to regard the play as other than strictly realistic (Bloom, 23). This paper presents an analysis of The Glass Menagerie with respect to components of masculinity, femininity, and American dreams.

Depression Era and American Dreams Development

The play is cradled in the playwright's recall of the Depression years when he worked in the warehouse of the International Shoe Company by day and wrote by night. The faded belle as doting mother derives from Miss Edwina. The absent father who fell in love with long distance alludes to C.C. during his happy days as a Delta drummer. Rose William's short-lived business studies, disappointing relationships and withdrawal from life inform the character of Laura as the predestined spinster with a lost love (Bell, 2011a, 41). Even the title refers to the collection of little glass animals that Rose and Tom kept in her room in St Louis, tiny figurines that came to represent for him all the softest emotions that belong to the remembrance of things past (Bell, 2011a, 44).

The theme of this gentle confessional work is aspiration and disappointment. The action is contained in the dashing of Laura's hope for romance, anticipated in the break-up of Amanda's marriage, and echoed in the failure of Tom's effort to become a writer. The plot centers on Laura's non-Cinderella story. A shy, crippled girl encounters in the flesh the very man she loves, who leads her on and quickly lets her down. The exposition of Amanda's ideal girlhood in Blue Mountain and unfortunate middle age in St Louis is like an organ point that sounds the play's nostalgic note (Bell, 2011c, 69). She was once the belle of the ball, surrounded by suitors, and is now a deserted housewife, struggling for survival. As the disillusioned narrator, Tom looks back to a time when adventure and success seemed possible. Even Jim, although not discouraged, finds life after adolescence disappointing (Bell, 2011d, 51).

The historical setting provides an ...