American Theatre

CHARACTERS

main: Wingfield family, composed by 3 people + 1:

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• A W — mother; was abandoned by her husband she feels fragile and alone,

MANDA INGFIELD

and becomes selfish, trying to control her son’s ambitions: she doesn’t want him to become a

poet because she needs him and she’s afraid of being abandoned by him too. omnipresent

figure of the mother that wants to control everything. she’s a paranoid, she is not living in the

present, she’s obsessed with the past: she keeps recalling how beautiful she was in the past

and how all men would give her compliments, how she was a perfect southern lady with a lot

of gentlemen callers.

ambivalent attitude regarding Laura — she’s affectionate and protective but also cruel, as

she’s afraid she’s always gonna have to provide for her and tries to sell her off as a wife to

prevent it.

her character is to be pieties but also ridicule what she does and how she does it

T W — son, shares the same name as Tennessee and is the main character.

• OM INGFIELD

doubles as a protagonist and narrator of the play. he feels oppressed by his work at a

warehouse, which he doesn’t like and by his suffocating family life. he’s the only man in the

family and both his mother and his sister hold high expectations for and from him: his mother

wants him to work to support his family. he’s on the verge of breaking, he can’t tolerate

anymore how things are. he escapes from reality by going to the movies and by writing poems

on box lids while at work

he’s not a self assured narrator, he isn’t able to give a clear response to questions. he narrates

what is going on in the play not only from the present, but also from the past: once the

narration of the story begins, he realizes he’s fed up with the present and on the verge of

breaking up.

he feels guilty, but needs to be selfish in order to escape from his traps, work and family

L W — daughter, Tom’s sister. she’s basically Rose: pathologically shy, has

• AURA INGFIELD

developed an inferiority complex and is slightly crippled. mother and son try to send Laura to

school in order to get a job as a secretary, but she’s so shy she pretends to go but actually

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doesn’t she doesn’t want other students to see her. she never goes out and she gets

farther away from reality as days passes. she wants to live in the protectiveness of her house,

her sole consolation is her glass menagerie.

character involution — when after their mother’s insistence, Tom finally brings home one of his

colleagues in hopes he’ll take an interest in Rose, Jim kisses Laura and she thinks he’s true

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towards her. after this moment, thought, he tells her about his fiancé new trauma: no hope

for Laura in the future. the best piece from her collection, the unicorn, breaks: for a moment it

seems like a positive thing, as it finally becomes “a normal horse”, without the horn; but then,

as Jim confesses he is already engaged, we understand that the unicorns has been broken,

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just like all her hopes Laura will continue to stay home and isolate herself. Laura gives it to

Jim after she realizes he was cheating on her, symbolically telling him he’s like all the other

people in her life. — he’s present only through a portrait the family keeps in the

• ABSENT CHARACTER OF THE FATHER

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sitting room autobiographical element of the father who is never at home [and when he is

persecutes his family] →

Amanda understands that Laura will always be on her shoulders, also from an economic POV

her only way out is to find her a husband, something she wants Tom to do. when he finally

accepts and brings home Jim, things don’t work out and a quarrel between mother and son ends

the play.

Amanda is furious because Tom brought home Jim, who already has a fiancé. she spent money to make Laura

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to the moon, you selfish dreamer”

eligible and it was all for nothing. “go after the quarrel, Tom goes away, leaving his

family behind just like his father had done

all the main are lame and crippled on a spiritual and emotional POV. they feel inappropriate to the

world and his is necessary for the creation of their imaginary worlds. they are all very fragile and

shown to be victims both of their own dreams and of the forces of reality. they are victims of the

frantic rhythms of modern society

J — Tom’s colleague, described as an ordinary man

• IM

KEYWORDS

(1) — overwhelming sense of it. it’s a memory play where past and present coexist, the

STASIS

world is molded by imagination: when something negative happens, Tom goes to the movies,

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Laura stares at her glass menagerie and Amanda recalls her past they all escape reality

somehow. →

Amanda and Laura can’t live in the world, they isolate themselves and deny reality this

attitude becomes a way to protect themselves as it prevents them from coping with their

failures and shortcomings.

(2) — present everywhere in the play. Williams shares the idea of determinism with

DETERMINISM

Schopenhauer (late 90s century idea) from a social, sociological and environmental POV: if

you live in a certain environment, you can’t help but act a certain way. also influenced by

O’Neill.

(3) — through the disintegration of the Wingfield family, he talks about the

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

disintegration of his own and of the economic and social disintegration of the South, caused

by capitalism. the imagination in which protagonist and characters find refuge is a product of

paranoia, a clear evidence of the collapse of the structure of both the southern family and the

South in general. Williams doesn’t accept it.

(4) — all characters are vulnerable and fragile in their own way.

VULNERABILITY OF THE CHARACTERS

while Laura’s is more explicit as she also has a physical one (inability to walk properly as a

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symbol to her fragility), all the family members are somehow crippled idea of being lame

makes it necessary for them to create an illusional dimension that reveals itself to be very

fragile: for Tom it’s the fact of going to the movies and to write poems on box lids, for Laura

her menagerie of glass, for Amanda her memories: all those things don’t solve their problems.

→

they’re vulnerable, show to be victims both of their dreams and of the forces of reality they

are victims of modern civilization and of the capitalistic society, where people don’t have time

to listen to their own wishes and desires.

The Glass Menagerie

1973 tv adaptation,

• movie ends like it begins, =/= from the play + during the quarrel between mother and son, Amanda tells

illusions”:

Tom he “manifacture[s] she feels like he doesn’t care about their family and so he can go away

A S N D

1947 , Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1948

TREETCAR AMED ESIRE

set in the 40s in New Orleans, 1 act play divided in 11 scenes. premieres at Broadway, New York

in 1947 in a production directed by Elia Kazan with Marlon Brando as Stanley. [in 1951 Kazan

himself decided to make a film adaptation of the play, casting the same actors used in theater and

with a screenplay written by Tennessee himself]

not an autobiographical play per se, but the characters reflects some of the attitudes and features

of Williams’ family

CHARACTERS

B D B — former English teacher, attracted to music, poetry and culture. nearly

• LANCHE U OIS

widowed, she goes to New Orleans to visit her sister Stella. figure of a neurotic, vulnerable The

woman who lives in a past condition of nobility that doesn’t exist anymore, ~ Amanda from

Glass Menagerie: doesn’t talk as much and isn’t as domineering and controlling, but she’s still

attached to her past beauty, richness and sophistication and can’t live in the present, as she’s

stuck in the past.

when they lost the family home, both sisters were forced to marry in order to survive: Blanche

marries Alan, a very sensitive and intellectual man, a poet. she feels an intellectual attraction to

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him, but their marriage doesn’t last long as Blanche discovers that Alan is a homosexual

during a public confrontation about his sexuality, he commits suicide. After this event, Blanche

feels a spiritual emptiness that she tries to fill with sexuality: she meets strangers in hotels and

has affairs with her students, reasons for which she gets fired from college and becomes a

social outcast.

at the beginning of the play she is a middle-aged woman, with her beauty fading away and her

attachment to sexuality is her way to keep in touch with life. when she arrives in New Orleans,

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she’s dressed as if she’s going to a cocktail party odd element, testimony to her

sophistication. idea of a delicate, ephemeral beauty, that doesn’t last long (metaphor of the

moth). →

she despises Stanley right away but she’s also attracted to him, and vice-versa ambivalent

relationship. after Stanley rapes her, she ends up in a hospital for mental illnesses, as nobody

believes her story. she represents sterility and past, she’s linked to a past that doesn’t exist

The Glass Menagerie).

anymore (~ Amanda,

S (D B ) K — Blanche’s younger sister, married to Stanley. she doesn’t seem

• TELLA U OIS OWALSKI The

vulnerable in her outer behavior, she’s the traditional souther passive woman, ~ Laura in

Glass Menagerie: she’s weak because she lives for the physical attraction she feels for Stanley

and has accepted to be dominated by him. she’s pregnant and, towards the end of the play,

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goes to the hospital in order to give birth when she comes back she decides to let her sister

go into madness to safeguard her marriage, making a choice projected towards the future, as

she does it to protect her newborn baby (not a moral choice, but a utilitarian once).

from a theatrical POV, she’s the balancing character between Blanche and Stanley

S K — Polish salesman, physical violent and rude man. he doesn’t care about

• TANLEY OWALSKI macho.

manners and has a strong sexual power that makes him come off as a he shows some

kind of humanity towards Stella, but doesn’t seem concerned about anything or anyone else,

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caring only about himself selfish. he dominates women because of his sexual attractiveness

and could be considered as simply the “seed bearer” of the baby. at some point he hits Stella,

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who goes to the neighbor’s house to find shelter ~ Williams’ father: both are violent, rude,

selfish salesmen →

he’s the polar opposite of Blanche [and her deceased husband Allan] he sees her as an

intruder in his house and family and thinks she k