Amanda Wingfield

Characters Amanda Wingfield

If there is a signature character type that marks Tennessee Williams’s dramatic work, it is undeniably
that of the faded Southern belle. Amanda is a clear representative of this type. In general, a Tennessee
Williams faded belle is from a prominent Southern family, has received a traditional upbringing, and has
suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune at some point in her life. Like Amanda, these women
all have a hard time coming to terms with their new status in society—and indeed, with modern society
in general, which disregards the social distinctions that they were taught to value. Their relationships
with men and their families are turbulent, and they staunchly defend the values of their past. As with
Amanda, their maintenance of genteel manners in very ungenteel surroundings can appear tragic,
comic, or downright grotesque. Amanda is the play’s most extroverted and theatrical character, and one
of modern American drama’s most coveted female roles (the acclaimed stage actress Laurette Taylor
came out of semi-retirement to play the role in the original production, and a number of legendary
actresses, including Jessica Tandy, have since taken on the role).

Amanda’s constant nagging of Tom and her refusal to see Laura for who she really is are certainly
reprehensible, but Amanda also reveals a willingness to sacrifice for her loved ones that is in many ways
unparalleled in the play. She subjects herself to the humiliating drudgery of subscription sales in order to
enhance Laura’s marriage prospects, without ever uttering so much as a word of complaint. The safest
conclusion to draw is that Amanda is not evil but is deeply flawed. In fact, her flaws are centrally
responsible for the tragedy, comedy, and theatrical flair of her character. Like her children, Amanda
withdraws from reality into fantasy. Unlike them, she is convinced that she is not doing so and,
consequently, is constantly making efforts to engage with people and the world outside her family.
Amanda’s monologues to her children, on the phone, and to Jim all reflect quite clearly her moral and
psychological failings, but they are also some of the most colorful and unforgettable words in the play.

Laura Wingfield

Characters Laura Wingfield

The physically and emotionally crippled Laura is the only character in the play who never does anything
to hurt anyone else. Despite the weight of her own problems, she displays a pure compassion—as with
the tears she sheds over Tom’s unhappiness, described by Amanda in Scene Four—that stands in stark
contrast to the selfishness and grudging sacrifices that characterize the Wingfield household. Laura also
has the fewest lines in the play, which contributes to her aura of selflessness. Yet she is the axis around
which the plot turns, and the most prominent symbols—blue roses, the glass unicorn, the entire glass
menagerie—all in some sense represent her. Laura is as rare and peculiar as a blue rose or a unicorn,
and she is as delicate as a glass figurine.
Other characters seem to assume that, like a piece of transparent glass, which is colorless until light
shines upon it, Laura can take on whatever color they wish. Thus, Amanda both uses the contrast
between herself and Laura to emphasize the glamour of her own youth and to fuel her hope of re-
creating that youth through Laura. Tom and Jim both see Laura as an exotic creature, completely and
rather quaintly foreign to the rest of the world. Yet Laura’s crush on the high school hero, Jim, is a rather
ordinary schoolgirl sentiment, and a girl as supposedly fragile as Laura could hardly handle the days she
spends walking the streets in the cold to avoid going to typing class. Through actions like these, Laura
repeatedly displays a will of her own that defies others’ perceptions of her, and this will repeatedly goes
unacknowledged.

Tom Wingfield

Characters Tom Wingfield

Tom’s double role in The Glass Menagerie—as a character whose recollections the play documents and
as a character who acts within those recollections—underlines the play’s tension between objectively
presented dramatic truth and memory’s distortion of truth. Unlike the other characters, Tom sometimes
addresses the audience directly, seeking to provide a more detached explanation and assessment of
what has been happening onstage. But at the same time, he demonstrates real and sometimes juvenile
emotions as he takes part in the play’s action. This duality can frustrate our understanding of Tom, as it
is hard to decide whether he is a character whose assessments should be trusted or one who allows his
emotions to affect his judgment. It also shows how the nature of recollection is itself problematic:
memory often involves confronting a past in which one was less virtuous than one is now. Because The
Glass Menagerie is partly autobiographical, and because Tom is a stand-in for the playwright himself
(Williams’s given name was Thomas, and he, like Tom, spent part of his youth in St. Louis with an
unstable mother and sister, his father absent much of the time), we can apply this comment on the
nature of memory to Williams’s memories of his own youth.

Even taken as a single character, Tom is full of contradiction. On the one hand, he reads literature,
writes poetry, and dreams of escape, adventure, and higher things. On the other hand, he seems
inextricably bound to the squalid, petty world of the Wingfield household. We know that he reads D. H.
Lawrence and follows political developments in Europe, but the content of his intellectual life is
otherwise hard to discern. We have no idea of Tom’s opinion on Lawrence, nor do we have any
indication of what Tom’s poetry is about. All we learn is what he thinks about his mother, his sister, and
his warehouse job—precisely the things from which he claims he wants to escape.

Tom’s attitude toward Amanda and Laura has puzzled critics. Even though he clearly cares for them, he
is frequently indifferent and even cruel toward them. His speech at the close of the play demonstrates
his strong feelings for Laura. But he cruelly deserts her and Amanda, and not once in the course of the
play does he behave kindly or lovingly toward Laura—not even when he knocks down her glass
menagerie. Critics have suggested that Tom’s confusing behavior indicates an incestuous attraction
toward his sister and his shame over that attraction. This theory casts an interesting light on certain
moments of the play—for example, when Amanda and Tom discuss Laura at the end of Scene Five.
Tom’s insistence that Laura is hopelessly peculiar and cannot survive in the outside world, while Amanda
(and later Jim) claims that Laura’s oddness is a positive thing, could have as much to do with his jealous
desire to keep his sister to himself as with Laura’s own quirks.

Jim O’Connor

An old acquaintance of Tom and Laura. Jim was a popular athlete in high school and is now a shipping
clerk at the shoe warehouse in which Tom works. He is unwaveringly devoted to goals of professional
achievement and ideals of personal success.

Mr. Wingfield

Amanda’s husband and Laura and Tom’s father. Mr. Wingfield was a handsome man who worked for a
telephone company. He abandoned his family years before the action of the play and never appears
onstage. His picture, however, is prominently displayed in the Wingfields’ living room.