The Glass Menagerie Research Paper

Amanda becomes a woman bent on finding her daughter either a job or a husband and finding out why her son disappears every night. To help her appear strong and willful, Amanda escapes to her own days as a young girl, finding more than seventeen gentlemen callers, and allows herself to believe her life is stable enough that her daughter and her will be financially taken care of. These facades crumble when she realizes her daughter has never been capable enough to find either a job or a husband. While these expectations of Laura hurt her, they allow her mother to escape to her days of being flaunted over and adorned by men. Once she does see her daughter is struggling, Amanda has to face the fact that her daughter will always be dependant upon her mother. These realities continue to affect how her children act and the results of the

First, there is Mr. Peters’ interpretation of his wife’s preference of having a female accomplice when she is to gather things for Mrs. Wright; the reader is given insight to this when Mr. Peters asks Mrs. Hale to come along with them because “…he guessed [Mrs. Peters] was getting scared…” (Glaspell). This symbol represents the fragility men in the nineteenth century associated with their wives, daughters, and women in general because of their rank in the social system. Second, is the way in which the men speak to or down to the women in general, almost as if they were children. For example, on multiple occasions Mr. Hale makes a mockery of the women by belittling them without the slightest intent to take them seriously. The first occasion is in response to the attorney’s remark over Mrs. Wright having more significant things to worry about other than her fruit jars: “’Oh well…women are used to worrying over trifles’” (Glaspell). With this remark, Mr. Peters is ultimately invalidating the logical worries Mrs. Wright had over her fruit jars. The second occasion he does this is after the county attorney asks the women to keep an eye out for clues, to which he responds, “’But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?’” (Glaspell). By doing this once more, Mr. Peters brings attention to himself through his underestimation of the women’s capabilities, thus rendering himself of the superior sex. The final noteworthy occasion where the

   Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world.  The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present.

Additionally, in “A Jury of Her Peers,” women and men have distinctly different gender roles and the story demonstrates the different opportunities available to both men and women in terms of the division of labor and in society. The men control this world because social rules restrict women’s ability to move about, to choose their own interests, or to exist as separate beings from their husbands. Minnie Wright and Martha Hale are continuously defined as housekeepers. The responsibilities of caring for a house, and a kitchen, are in line with women. Martha Hale still thinks of Minnie Wright as Minnie Foster, underlining the identity change each woman experiences when she marries and takes her husband’s name as her own, when she becomes distinct from her husband’s identity and her own separate personality is lost. One aspect of this social subjugation of women in the story is the loneliness that results from being stuck in their homes. Men have each other’s company, but women must remain at the house by themselves. The women don’t often get out much. “Women are used to worrying over trifles.” (572) A childless woman, like Minnie Wright, would’ve felt this loneliness even more emotionally. The subjugation of women in the story is not confining to the economic and the social. The male characters contribute to these social rules and expectations with a more personal form of oppression: by belittling

The sexism of this setting and time period of this story is showed even at the very beginning of the story. Mrs. Hale must follow the men’s instructions to come along on the trip, even though she was busy and hade more important things to do she left her house half a mess and left. Since she did not make a fuss about it in front of the men it shows this is routine that she doesn’t have much say on what she can and can not do, even at her own home she still has to get up and go at the call of a man.

Nonetheless, the author includes it to provoke the reader to look at the situation from both Mrs. Hale’s and Mrs. Peters’ points of view. It’s meant to make the reader as frustrated and uncomfortable as the women are, for it’s an unfair judgment to make. By assuming that women only care about nominal aspects, it shows a downright disrespect for women, and proves that these men think nothing of the women’s intellect. Yet in everyday life, this kind of thing still happens. Our society is still

One of the big motivations shown through the characters in The Glass Menagerie is the yearning of escape from the real world. One example shown through Laura’s character is she finds a way to escape reality through her glass menagerie and the old records she plays that once belonged to their father. The mother, Amanda, tries to escape her current life as a deserted wife who must constantly scramble for money by retelling stories of when she was young. Her favorite story to retell regards one day when she received the attentions of seventeen gentleman callers. For her, those gentleman callers represent what her life was and what it could have been if she had not married her husband, “the telephone man who fell in love with long

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters whose lives seem to consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Amanda lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his glorified old memories. This essay will examine how Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from the real world through their dreams.

As the story progresses, the characters engage in dialogue that clearly conveys a belief in male superiority, or, better put, a sense of women inferiority and ignorance. Every time Martha hears a sexist remark, she becomes enraged within; by contrast, Mrs. Peters blindly agrees with everything the men say and embodies the “ideal” model for a wife. Martha herself only pretends to be soft-spoken. In reality, Martha is an intelligent woman who is forced by social convention to be submissive and to wed a sexist and somewhat stupid man. Even when Mr. Hale is recounting what had happened, Martha listens closely to make sure he does not say more than what he should.

Each character in the Glass Menagerie is living in their own fantasy world, which reflects that during the period of World War II and the Great Depression, the U.S. working people in lower middle class worked hard in different ways in face of cruel reality. Whether live in the past, hide themselves from others, walk out bravely, or even completely escape from the result, they all struggled between the real and were unable to escape the tragic fate. The beautiful fantasy is as beautiful and fragile as the glass menagerie.

The human eye observes glass as transparent, but, when light hits it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and lackluster in the presence of strangers, is a source of strange, multifaceted delight to those of who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself—a world that is colorful and enticing yet based upon fragile illusions. She hopes she can find her a gentleman to take care of her and the family. In this play, Amanda, just as any mother would, wants the best for her children.

The Glass Menagerie In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams places his characters in difficult situations throughout the play. Laura Wingfield is a very shy person with an illness that has left her crippled. This illness makes Laura fearful and it causes her to think less of herself. Amanda Wingfield (laura's mother) fancies laura to marry a man that will care for her, since she is young and dependent.

The Glass Menagerie, like a curve-ball, can be thrown with many surprises. One important character is Laura, and she has many problems with her mother throughout the play. There are many standards of a fictional society within Laura. She can respond to those standards at anytime during the play. An inanimate thing in the play is her glass collection.

While the play develops you may see Mrs. Hale’s act of empathy toward Ms. Wright due to the fact that she knew her and knew how hard It was to be a stay at home wife and how hard it was to run a farmhouse. In a moment where Mr. Henderson inside is sexist mind judges Mrs. Wright as to failing in her performance to keep a clean and good working farmhouse, Mrs. Hale defends Minnie against his judgment demonstrating how women are united by common experiences and men fail to understand their

The gentleman caller was Amanda’s fascination and great hope for the Wingfields to attain financial security. With a husband, Laura will be provided for and the two women will no longer depend on Tom. Amanda’s ambition for Laura showed the level of disconnection from the real life and fragility of her dreams. Even if Laura could find a husband, it was strange that Amanda should have so much faith that a husband for Laura would mean security for their family. In spite of everything, Amanda’s husband was unfaithful, and his choice to leave the family led to their current dilemma. Amanda was fixating on the idea of the gentlemen caller; she proposes a switch for Tom’s freedom in exchange for a husband to Laura. She was trying to make plans for Laura because she knows that she is getting older. Laura needs a husband to support her. Amanda was still putting her safety into the hands of men; perhaps she sees