The Glass Menagerie

by Tennessee Williams

Set in St Louis during the depression, the glass menagerie is one of Tennessee Williams' most powerful and moving plays. Abandoned by her husband when he 'fell in love with long distances', Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious, life in blue mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace. Laura, her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romantic illusions are finally crushed. Mirroring the quiet despair of the thirties, the "Glass Menagerie" in its nostalgia for a past world and its evocation of loneliness and lost love celebrates, above all, the human need to dream.

• ISBN10: 0140106391
• ISBN13: 9780140106398
• Publish Date: 14 January 1988 (first published 1 December 1948)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 26 March 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 96
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

Plays are a little outside of my usual purview, but my book club was reading this so I wanted to give it a shot. It’s short and sweet, and beautiful in its simplicity. There is a lot of symbolism, and Williams attempted things that really weren’t done at the time, such as the use of projected images. There is also a probable autobiographical component to the story. It’s not a happy story, but it definitely has something to say. A play I would enjoy seeing in person.