The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
How many of us live in a Glass Menagerie?
What does The Glass Menagerie stand for?
This is what I think about, now that I try to figure out what this play gave me and how to make sense of it all. One way to look at it may be to consider the fragility of Laura Wingfield and her family as an exception. The other possibility would be to see Amanda, Tom and Laura- mother, son and daughter respectively- as representing all of us. We all feel weak, if not always at least some of the time.
If we do not have a slight handicap, or “challenge” as is the rule of addressing it today, we do come short in one department or another. I get angry very quickly, you could be shy and so on.
Shyness is the feature that comes to mind when we speak of Laura, who has a problem with one foot and considers herself handicapped.
This is an example of what a negative mindset can do: if we condition ourselves to fail, we will, or in the words of Henry Ford:
“Whether you think you can or you cannot- you’re right”
Studies of positive psychology show that people with a negative attitude and without goals are very likely to fail and when they do, they will not stand up and continue until things look up for them. Optimists on the other hand, learn to fail, continue and sooner or later succeed.
All the four characters present in the play are interesting and they all have issues.
Amanda keeps talking about her glorious past and the many, seventeen it was (?), gentlemen callers that attended her parties or came to her house. Those days are over but her attitude seems to be stuck in the past. That is not necessarily bad. If we refer again to the psychological research- this shows that reminiscing about the good days in the past is good for our mental health, morale and our level of satisfaction. Some psychologists even recommend writing about it and writing in general- as a good boy, I follow their advice and write every day about what I have read recently and many years ago.
Tom is trying to escape the fate which has dumped him in a warehouse, with a life he doesn’t like and wishes to change. The trouble is that the change he envisages is of the kind his father made: take off and abandon the family…The family is the most important source of happiness, or unhappiness for that matter, and running away from it will make no one happy, unless the relationships are very tense: married people are happier than unmarried ones, but being in a couple with a spouse you quarrel with will reduce your level of satisfaction dramatically…you’d be better off alone.
Things get a strange twist, when tom invites for dinner a friend of his from work- Jim O’Connor. Destiny, already kind of cruel with Laura, arranges so that Laura had already been infatuated with Jim, in high school. Jim doesn’t even remember her and the situation becomes very tense when foul play, even a bad joke is suspected.
I will not delve into the details, even if the strength of the play does not reside in some incredible happening, a murder or scandal.
It is a cliché, but it seems we can see the mirror when Tom keeps going to the movie to fantasize about another life, with adventure not just a damn warehouse and dull life. It may be the same for us, readers or listeners of the play: we want to be entertained and maybe feel uneasy with what we have on stage.
This is changing the perspective on “American” productions, which are frowned upon in Europe, where most of the time an American production means a Hollywood blockbuster with silly cartoon-characters, from the manga- X men, Vampires and more of them in the never ending sequels.
Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Albee play a very different note, with heroes that are far from being Supermen. Their heroes have flopped, drink too much, suffer from anxieties and inferiority complex…are more European, French than Californian.
A film version of this play was directed by Paul Newman, starring his wife, Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich. Alas, I did not see that, but maybe one day.
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