Introduction to The Glass Menagerie|Why is The Glass Menagerie Called a Memory Play?
Tennessee Williams Started to implement the draft of this play from the year 1943 when he signed the six months contract as a writer at MGM. It was entitled The Gentleman Caller . The play is inspired from Williams own life where his sister’s memories used to haunt him constantly. The characters are based on his own family members, where they live in their own constructed fantasy world in order to escape reality.
Tennessee Williams and the Concept of Memory
William introduced the term “memory play” in scene one of the play. Since the play is from the memory of the character Tom, he is also the character in it.
“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” – Oscar Wilde. Matthew Arnold once suggested that, “the pursuit of perfection is a pursuit of sweetness and light.”
In many ways this is exactly what the characters of The Glass Menagerie seek in the play – perfection. They look for it in their future, as they search for a way to find security and hope. Although they find glimmers of hope throughout the story, each time is it extinguished like the candles at the end of the play.
Definition by Oxford Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary states memory as, “to commemorate; to preserve a record or memorial of; to record, mention,” But even though Tom is recollects “that quaint period, the thirties” to commemorate his family and their tragic existence, he does so with the “appearance of truth” and “illusions” that proves how fragile and deceitful memory can be. All the characters are unable to accept and relate to this reality.
As a result each of them withdraws into a private world of illusion where they find the comfort and meaning that the real world fails to offer. In the post World War II backdrop of trauma and disillusionment and equipped with the heritage of Freud’s psychoanalysis theory, the functioning of the memory became an important theme in theatre as well as in other arts.
The characters are anti-heroes; family is dysfunctional and the narrative is an exploration of the psychology of people living at the marginal fringes of society and champion the depictions of the breakdown of the American dreams.
American Dream Influence
The Glass Menagerie exists within the post-war form of “domestic realism” In which the family as the representative of the American society is portrayed as one disintegrated or even as a failed institution. Although the term “memory play” was coined by Williams, it was not completely a new genre. Indirectly the term referred to the connection between theatre and memory extend from the beginning of stagecraft.
Theatre was defined by the Greeks being as one of the arts where it acts as a daughter of Mnemosyni, the personification of memory. In medieval culture remembering also occupied an important position for the oral modality of the arts went hand in hand with the training of memory. During the Renaissance, Shakespearean plays also toyed with the theme of memory as in Hamlet for example the protagonist asks himself “Must I remember?”
The Glass Menagerie reshapes the tradition by shifting attention from the simple recollection of memories to a reconstruction of them. In psychotherapy Freud has illustrated the fluid nature of characters and memory that can be adapted to fit the self image. As a critic in the essay The Fragility of Memory in The Glass Menagerie comments, “
From the writer himself, full of misery, memory and dark dreamy lighting and music, The Glass Menagerie, is one of America’s most brave, and yet poignant plays. Memory is by far the most dominating theme in the seven-scene play. Followed by fragility and the result of turmoil on the Wingfield family, the play shows the damage of American culture as well as a dramatic interpretation with the “only valid aim” of getting “closer to the truth”.
Tom Wingfield as Narrator and Rememberer
The play opens with a scene setting narration from the story teller Tom, who comes out of the shadows as the stage magician, promising to explain the tricks in his pocket. Tom is dressed as a merchant sailor as if suggesting to us the idea of his being a merchant who deals in dreams, in whose bag we may find dreams and strangely recognize them as our own. Analysing the switching between monologue and scene, King comments in Irony and Distance in The Glass Menagerie that the playwright includes both non realistic and meta-theatrical elements in the opening scene to underline the mnemonic structure.
Tom makes it clear that the play is a nostalgic portrayal of his “emotions recollected in tranquilities”. The timeless appeal of The Glass Menagerie lies in the fact that the play presents neither villains nor victims but characters who all are seeking in their own way “to do the right thing”. This is also what makes the play sentimental and moving for desperate-the irony of the situation is that the individual seeking purposes lead them inexorably to create their own individual tragedy.
Tom Wingfield is a poet and not satisfied with the job in the shoe warehouse. “His nature is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity” (The Glass Menagerie). The description of Wingfield apartment in which the family is living is itself the representation of the way lower-middle-class families were living after the year of great depression. As described in the play, “those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular livingunits…”(The Glass Menagerie).
Amanda Wingfield and Her Nostalgic Past
The father of Tom and Laura has left them and only a photograph of him is hanging on the wall.This concept is particularly true of Amanda Wingfield, mother to Tom and Laura. Amanda is a strong yet pathetic woman living in a world of sentimental illusions while stubbornly refusing to accept life with its drabness and absence of hope. She is the most obviously complex and multifaceted of all the characters and Williams acknowledges as much in his initial character notes. His description of “A little woman of great but confused vitality” immediately indicates some of her obvious contradictions as he notes that “there is much to admire in Amanda as much there is to love and pity as to laugh at
” She is not paranoiac but her life is paranoia” (The Glass Menagerie).
She has preserved her past in her mind and whenever she feels that her present is not going as per her will, her mind moves towards her past and she loves to narrate the things from her past.
Laura Wingfield’s World of Fragile Dreams
Laura Wingfield has failed to establish contact with reality and is like a piece of her own collection of glass menagerie “too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf” (The Glass Menagerie). Her crippled body has left her in a situation where she feels that she cannot move with the external world and has created a world of her own.
Amanda wants her “to stay fresh and pretty ̶for gentlemen caller” (The Glass Menagerie). Laura is shy and is not able to socialize with the people outside. She knows that she is crippled and she is not going to have any gentleman caller, as said by her, “I’m not expecting any gentlemen callers” (The Glass Menagerie).
The Glass World providing a releif
She is having low self-esteem and wants to live always in her world of glass animals. As said by Freud in his book, ‘personal happiness is often ignored in the interests of social unity and cohesion’ (Civilization and its Discontents). In order to unite socially and to see her mother happy, Laura has to act against her will.
She would be content in her own world, willing to admit anyone such as the gentleman caller – Jim O’ Connor whose interest in her glass collection results in a passionate reply – “My glass collection takes of a good deal of time. Glass is something you have to take good care of… most of them are little animals made out of glass, the tiniest little animals in the world. Mother calls them a glass menagerie!” Perceptive of others feelings, Laura senses her mother’s need to romanticize her own past.
When Amanda is about to talk of Blue Mountains and seventeen gentlemen callers, tom is exasperated – “I know what’s coming!” And Laura snubs him gently “Yes, but let her tell it.” She stands in between her mother and Tom and suffers in their ugly wrangling.
Symbolism and Memory in The Glass Menagerie|The Glass Animals|The Unicorn
Laura is her own self with Jim and as he enters her world of glass, she journeys into his. Jim response to her differences causes her to forget her disability. When the young man breaks the horn of the unicorn – the one element that had made it unique – she is not disturbed.
Symbolically, her calmness represents her desires to be normal and not remain unique individual – distinct from others. As Jim is about to leave, Amanda requests him to come back soon for other good times. But Jim turns down the suggestion, explaining his engagement to another girl whom he plan to marry soon. This dismantled Laura’s newfound confidence, as she sends forth the broken unicorn with Jim before relapsing in her former dream world.
Laura emerges pitiful in her failure brought about by the malignant and implacable fate. For her there is nothing to be done and there is only ‘nothing’ to be done. Wang Ning in Memory Colour in The Glass Menagerie comments,
“Although Laura put them out, the powerful memory would still haunt in Tom’s mind and continued to exert some influence upon him. The Glass Menagerie, beginning with memory and ending with memory, leaves readers an abundant imagination.”
Conclusion
Memory operates through transformation and selection and Williams, well aware of the schematics, uses non verbal metatheatrical elements to emphasise these operations. He takes the subjectivity of the process of remembering as the basis for the drama by taking the entire play as a reconstruction of the protagonist Tom’s memories. Psychoanalyst Kris terms it a personal myth for the protagonist and narrator Tom presents the audience with his memories which are but plastic and may be reshaped in degrees of psychological necessity.