The Glass Menagerie presents the story, told in retrospect, of a young would-be artist who breaks away from a domineering mother and a shy, introverted sister after failing to find a suitable husband for the girl. It is rooted in the author’s own family experience but is not, as his mother pointed out much later in her memoirs, a faithful portrait of it.Tom, the narrator-hero of the play, is a poet with a job in a shoe warehouse. He works as a clerk by day, and at night writes poetry in his tiny room or goes to the movies. Tom feels materially responsible for the family because, years earlier, his father deserted it, leaving behind only a blown-up photograph that „ineluctably“ smiles down on the dingy living quarters.Amanda, the mother, „a little woman of great but confused vitality“, desperately tries to reconcile her dreams of the past - her memories of a genteel South, of gentlemen callers and elegant parties - with the reality of her daily life. Amanda does not let nostalgia interfere with current circumstances, however; she is practical and knows that steps have to be taken to cope with the changed conditions of life. Amanda is much concerned about Tom’s increasingly absorbing side activities, which impair his efficiency at work and jeopardise his position at the warehouse. But she is considerably more anxious about Laura, her crippled daughter, who has given up the fight with real life and has retreated into dream world of little glass figurines is so intense that she has become like „a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf“. A first attempt to substitute reality for dreams has misfired. Laura registered for a secretarial course in a business school but dropped out shortly after the beginning of the year because she could not stand confrontation with real people. Deeply upset both by the disappointing outcome of her plan and by the financ...
