The Glass Menagerie

Laura is “[Amanda’s] daughter. Amanda, having failed to establish contact with reality, continues to live vitally in her illusions”(751). For much of the play, Laura is extremely delicate with the constitution of a sensitive child. She becomes humiliated easily and allows those humiliations to stop her from completing high school or business school, or even introducing herself to high school-aged Jim. Like the glass figurines when held up to the light, the more dynamic characters around her treat her as if she is clear and empty, trying to fill her with their own understanding of who she ought to be. To Amanda, she simply hasn’t learned how to be a woman like her mother’s younger self. Amanda expects Laura to bloom when forced to interact with Jim. 

To Tom, she is completely helpless, and he warns his mother not to expect so much from Laura. Jim, who has no stakes in the family, refuses to treat Laura like a glass ornament and encourages her to find confidence in herself. Laura is compassionate, as evidenced by the relationship with her brother and Amanda’s report that Laura was weeping for Tom’s unhappiness. Laura’s plight becomes central to the family dynamic because Amanda places her hope for the future in Laura’s eventual husband. Although Laura has become synonymous with the helpless, fragile young woman character, she demonstrates a quiet strength and patience with her mother. She does not want to have Jim over for dinner, despite the fact that she loved him in high school but suffers the torment of her anxiety in order to please her mother. At the end of the play, Laura is not simply a weak, bloodless vessel who disappears when Tom leaves. Tom sees her everywhere, a young woman who he might have tried harder to help, who haunts him for the rest of his life.

Amanda’s “son and the narrator of the play, [Tom is a] poet with a job in a warehouse. His nature is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity” (751). Tom is essentially two characters: the narrator, who exists in a non-specific now, and the young man who left his mother and sister to seek adventure. He addresses the audience as the narrator, full of hindsight and self-reflection, but also as the young man who remains suspended in the story is angry, frustrated, and passionate. He hates his life and his job. He loves his sister but has little faith that she can stand on her own. Although Tom fights with his mother, he also gives in to her. 

Tom spends his nights at the movies in order to get out of the house and mentally escape his life. Tom is characterized by the desperation he expresses for adventure. He describes adventure as an instinctual need and expresses how watching his life pass by leads to frustration and belligerence. Tom invites Jim over to appease his mother but has no real faith that it will lead to anything. Although Amanda demands that Tom find a replacement patriarch before leaving the family, Tom seems not to believe that there is a man who would willingly take his place. When he asks Jim to dinner, it is to silence his mother. He does not even tell Jim the reason for the invitation and is therefore unaware that Jim is engaged. When he leaves, Tom does so with the knowledge that he has left his mother and sister defenseless. He makes the choice to pay his Merchant Marines dues rather than the light bill, believing that he will be gone before the lights go off. Older Tom, who narrates, is still plagued by guilt over leaving his sister alone with their mother, but he never expresses regret.