Laura Wingfield Glass Menagerie

The British colonies in the 17th century were afflicted by many strenuous periods of tension that boiled over resulting in violent rebellions. Bacon’s Rebellion and the Stono rebellion are two such rebellions that rocked the colonies. These conflicts rose from strain between the governance of the colonies and those who they ruled over. The Stono Rebellion and Bacon’s Rebellion both displayed the mounting tension in the colonies through defiance, Independence, and brutal bloodshed.

“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, was written in the early forties but could be misconstrued as a present-day play, because of the family dynamic that has changed since the forties but has not been completed replaced. In this play, we are introduced to Tom Wingfield who is the breadwinner for the family, which consists of his mom and sister. Amanda Wingfield who is an overbearing mother that knows no boundaries, and Laura Wingfield who is the sweet, and embarrassingly shy daughter of Amanda. Their family dynamic is like most of ours. The mother loves her kids dearly but struggles with letting go of her old identity, the daughter who allows her disability to determine her happiness and the brother who is obligated to work but would rather drink and party his money away. I’m sure many of us can relate to this family in some form. My favorite character in “The Glass Menagerie” is Laura. I love Laura because I can relate to her in more than one way. I was a shy individual most of my life, but once people got to know me they realized I was no different from them. In the following paragraphs, I will share Laura’s character with you, the similarities between Laura and the glass unicorn and I’ll tell you how the glass unicorn represents Laura.

The Glass Menagerie symbolizes Laura. Tom really cares about his sister Laura. He is motivated by anger. Tom goes out to drink and watch movies just to get

Tom ends the argument by calling Amanda an "ugly- babbling old -witch"(Williams 1875), and struggles to put his coat on, intent on leaving.  When he cannot put the coat on properly, he becomes frustrated with his clumsiness and flings it across the room, breaking some of the glass collection. Laura "cries out as if wounded"(Williams 1875).  This shows how fragile Laura really is and how she reacts when even the small balance of her apartment is shifted.  The most prominent use of this symbol comes at the crisis of the story, when Jim is left alone with Laura. The conversation turns to Laura's glass collection, when she remarks "glass is something you have to take good care of."(Williams 1900), again showing her fragility. More parallels are drawn between Laura and the glass collection with the introduction of the unicorn. Jim says, "Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome"(Williams 1902) to which Laura replies, " He stays on a shelf with some horses that don't have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together"(Williams 1902).  The unicorn becomes a symbol for Laura because just like the unicorn she is different.  When Jim and Laura dance, and Jim accidentally knocks the unicorn off the table and its horn is broken off, it loses its uniqueness. Similarly, when Jim kisses Laura and then shatters her hopes by telling

On the other hand, Laura's desire to interact with others is limited to her glass menagerie, which represents the private world that she escapes to throughout the play. Her disability and lack

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Laura is a static character, like every other character in The Glass Menagerie. From beginning to end, she is described as “terribly shy” by two people—Tom and

In The Glass Menagerie, Laura lives in her own illusion of what she feels like is reality. Laura is a girl with no motivation to pursue a career or relationship. She lives in a world of delicate and fragile glass animals, a lot like herself on the inside. For example, the book says “Whereas fabricating an idealized past becomes Amanda’s compensation for her present existence, Laura’s retreat

The glass unicorn in Laura’s collection, is her favourite figure, it represents her individuality and uniqueness. As Jim points out, unicorns are “extinct” in present times and are lonely because they are different from other animals. Laura is lonely because she feels like she is not well adapted to the real world. In scene seven, the fate of the unicorn is also a scaled down version of Laura’s fate. When Jim dances and kisses Laura, the unicorn’s horn breaks off, and it becomes just another regular horse. This shows that Laura is starting to become normal and adapting to reality. Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a “souvenir.” Without its horn it blends into society. The broken figurine is shown to represent everything that Jim has taught Laura and also that she has changed into a normal well-adjusted

     Laura is shown in the play as a shy and sensitive person. Laura is like this because she possesses a limp. She magnifies this limp to an extent where it affects her whole personality. Her oversensitive nature makes her think that people notice the limp and thus, she cannot live normally. Her inability to overcome the limp causes her to remove herself from the real world and live in a world of illusions. An imaginary world of glass animals provides Laura’s refuge from reality. But, her illusion is dangerous for her glass menagerie serves as a substitute for life rather than an escape. Her favorite animal in the menagerie is the unicorn, which she calls “freakish.” In one scene, she and Jim are looking at the unicorn. The scene shows freakish breaking and this presents Amanda with a revelation.

By far, of the three Wingsfields members, reality seems to have the weakest grasp on Laura. Because of the private world that she continuously withdraws to, populated by illusive animal characters made out of glass. For instance, “Oh be careful-if you breathe It breaks!... Hold him over the light, he loves the light! You see how the light shines through him?” shows how Laura gives a glass figure male characteristic by saying that he likes the light (Williams 801). To add on, this also symbolizes how incredibly delicate Laura’s inner life is just like the glass

Laura Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality in the play The Glass Menagerie. She seems to live in a world of her own, and hides from everything and everyone outside of the apartment. Laura is terrified of anything new or different. Her mother sent her to business college, but Laura was so afraid that ‘The first time [they] gave a speed-test, she broke down completely – was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the wash –room.’ (p 243). Laura uses her limp as an excuse to hide from the world. She believes that her slight limp makes her crippled and that she cannot be a part of the real world because of it. Laura’s glass menagerie and the victrola act as things which protect her from the real world in the play. Whenever she is

She also wants her children to have what she never had and imposes her dreams on her children. Tom dreams to become a poet, but ends up as a traveler. Laura doesn’t have dreams to go anywhere, she lives through her glass menagerie collection. Symbols in this play is the glass menagerie and the glass unicorn. The glass menagerie symbolizes Laura’s fragility and imaginative world. The glass unicorn symbolizes the memory of Laura to Jim, when she gave him the unicorn.

The society in The Glass Menagerie is exceptionally intricate. Her own mother, Amanda, is very demanding of her and wishes her to have a gentleman caller. Amanda believes all young women should have dozens of gentlemen callers. She judges a woman’s worth by the amount of attention she receives from men and boasts about herself back then, "One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain – your mother received – seventeen! – gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t enough chairs to accommodate them all. We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house" (Williams 8). Laura lives in a society that believes a man will support a woman. However, her own father runs out on their family and leaves Amanda

She is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned. So shy that she finds ordinary human relationships almost unbearable, she is totally unequipped for the romantic role in which her mother has cast her. She takes refuge among her glass figurines, the “glass menagerie” that is the symbol of her fragility and her retreat from reality. Her collection of glass animals gives the play its title .She is extremely shy, even emotionally disturbed, and she wears a brace on her leg which makes her feel evident. Laura is painfully shy, unable to face the world outside of the tiny Wingfield apartment. She spends her time polishing her collection of tiny glass animals, her "glass menagerie." Her presence is almost ghostly, and her inability to connect with others outside of her family makes her dependent on Tom and Amanda. She does not work, and she has been unable to complete a typing class because of her nervousness. Although she says she had once liked a boy in high school, she has never had and is unlikely to have any kind of romantic relationship. Because of her apparent physical deformity, she has become sensitive to what people think of her. Her physical condition thus represents her mental distress; she is crippled both physically and mentally. In search of companionship, she builds her own fantasy world with her glass-animal friends and with a Victrola and many old records. Laura, however, is more than a prisoner of