The Glass Menagerie

Scene 2 begins as Laura is polishing her collection of glass animals, but when she hears Amanda on the fire escape, she gasps and hides them, extracting a diagram of a typewriter keyboard. Amanda is distraught as if something upsetting has just occurred. Nervously, Laura asks about the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) meeting that she left to attend. Dramatically, Amanda responds, “No–No. I did not have the strength to go to the DAR. In fact, I did not have the courage! I wanted to find a hold in the ground and hide myself in it forever!” (755). When Laura questions her, Amanda scolds her, “I thought you were an adult; it seems that I was mistaken” (755). Amanda tells Laura that she was meant to be inducted as an officer at the DAR today, but she stopped by Laura’s Business College to inform them that Laura had a cold. When Amanda asked the typing instructor about Laura’s performance as a student, the woman informed Amanda that Laura had dropped out of the school after attending for only a few days. Appalled, Amanda insisted that Laura had been attending daily for six weeks, but the instructor revealed that Laura had broken down during a typing test, vomited, and left without returning. 

Amanda asks Laura where she has been during the hours she was meant to be in school, and Laura admits that she goes for walks, often stopping at places like the art museum and the zoo. Laura tells Amanda that she lied because she couldn’t face her mother’s disappointment. Amanda asks Laura what will become of them if she has no career and doesn’t marry. She then reminds Laura that she might still marry, asking if she has ever had romantic interest in a boy. Laura tells Amanda about Jim, a boy she knew in high school. Laura offers to show her mother Jim’s picture, and Amanda’s interest is piqued until she realizes that Laura means to show her a yearbook picture. Laura tells a disinterested Amanda that Jim called her “Blue Roses” because he misheard her after she missed school due to a bout of pleurosis. Laura notes that Jim probably married the girl he was dating in high school, and Amanda replies, “Girls that aren’t cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man” (757). Suddenly, Amanda becomes inspired, insisting that Laura could get married too. Terrified, Laura reminds her mother: “I’m – crippled!” (757). Amanda dismisses this excuse, calling her disability “hardly noticeable” and asserting that “when people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other thing to make up for it–develop charm–and vivacity–and–charm!” (757).

Scene 3 opens on the fire escape as Tom narrates, describing Amanda’s growing obsession with finding a gentleman caller for Laura. She began to save money to “properly feather the nest and plume the bird” (758), and Amanda appears, fervently selling subscriptions to a ladies’ magazine over the phone. The lights dim, and before they rise, Tom and Amanda begin to argue. Lights come up and they are still hidden, but Laura stands listening, frozen and panicking. Yesterday, Amanda took Tom’s book, a novel by DH Lawrence, back to the library, announcing: “I WON’T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT IN MY HOUSE!” (759).Tom begins to remind Amanda that he works to pay the rent, but Amanda shuts him down. Mother and son appear, and Amanda is dressed in an old bathrobe with her hair in curlers. A typewriter is on the table and a chair has been thrown onto the floor. Tom walks away, refusing to listen to Amanda until she demands that he stop. Amanda claims: “I think you’ve been doing things that you’re ashamed of. That’s why you act like this. I don’t believe that you go every night to the movies. Nobody goes to the movies night after night” (759). 

Angrily, Tom tells Amanda that he hates his job and that when she wakes him up every day, he wishes he were dead. He starts to walk out, telling his mother that he is going to the movies. Amanda refuses to believe him, and Tom sarcastically lists the illicit things he might be doing instead such as frequenting an opium den, working as a hit man, or becoming a gambling kingpin. Tom calls Amanda an “ugly–babbling old–witch”(760).Furiously, he puts his coat on and rips it. Tom throws it across the room in frustration, and the coat hits the shelf where Laura keeps her collection of glass. Distraught, Laura “cries out as if wounded” (760) but Amanda, shocked by Tom’s insult, doesn’t hear Laura shrieking: “My glass!–menagerie…” (760). Amanda tells Tom that she will not speak to him unless he apologizes. Amanda storms out, leaving Tom, who goes to his sister. Tom “drops awkwardly to his knees to collect the fallen glass, glancing at Laura as if he would speak but couldn’t” (760).

A bell tolls five am, opening Scene 4, and Tom enters in the alley outside the apartment. He “shakes a little noise-maker or rattle as if to express the tiny spasm of man in contrast to the sustained power and dignity of the Almighty” (760). Visibly drunk, Tom mounts the fire escape. Laura, in her nightgown, enters and looks at Tom’s unoccupied bed. While searching in his pocket for his keys, Tom drops a cascade of movie ticket stubs. Laura opens the door and asks where Tom has been. He tells her that the movie he saw had a long program of featurettes as well as a headlining magician. Tom gives Laura a rainbow scarf as a souvenir from the magic act. Tom describes the magician’s acts, including one called the coffin trick in which the magician escaped from a coffin that was nailed shut without removing any nails. He adds, “There is a trick that would come in handy for me–get me out of this 2 by 4 situation” (761). Laura tells Tom to be quiet so that he doesn’t wake their mother, and Tom mocks her. Then he notes: “You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in the hell ever got himself out without moving one nail” (761). As the lights dim, “as if in answer, the father’s grinning photograph lights up” (761). 

The clock strikes six, and an alarm sounds in Amanda’s bedroom. Amanda begins to call “Rise and shine!” (761). Tom agrees to rise, but not to shine. Amanda speaks to Tom through Laura, and Laura begs Tom to apologize to their mother. He refuses, asking: “Her not speaking–is that such a tragedy?” (761). Amanda sends Laura to the store, and as Laura walks outside, she cries out. Both Tom and Amanda rush to her aid, but Laura reassures them that she just slipped and continues to the store. Alone, Tom and Amanda sit in silence. Tom drinks his coffee, and the noises they make—his intake of breath when the coffee is too hot, her cough—are more pronounced. Finally, Tom apologizes, claiming that he didn’t mean what he said. Amanda breaks down, weeping: “My devotion has made me a witch and so I make myself hateful to my children!” (762). Tom comforts her, and Amanda expresses her fear that Tom will become an alcoholic since she relies on him. 

Amanda admits that she sent Laura to the story because she needed to speak to Tom alone about her daughter. Amanda tells Tom that Laura is “so quiet but–still water runs deep! She notices things and I think she–broods about them” (762). Recently, Amanda discovered Laura crying because she thinks Tom is unhappy at home. Tom denies that he is unhappy, and Amanda presses, claiming: “However, you do act strangely” (762). She acknowledges that Tom has had to sacrifice for the family by working at a warehouse, but “life’s not easy, it calls for–Spartan endurance!” (762). Amanda tells Tom that she loved his father, but that Tom is starting to adopt some of his less savory habits, such as going out late and drinking. She asks if, as Laura claims, he despises their home and stays out each night to get away. Tom replies, “No. You say there’s so much in your heart that you can’t describe to me. That’s true of me, too. There’s so much in my heart that I can’t describe to you!” (762).

Amanda asks why Tom spends so much time at the movies, and Tom answers, “I go to the movies because–I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies” (763). Although Tom claims that his desire for adventure is instinctual, Amanda insists that some men don’t need it, and that “[i]nstinct is something that people have got away from! It belongs to the animals! Christian adults don’t want it!” (763). She argues that men are better than animals, and when Tom disagrees, she shifts the discussion because what she really wants to talk about is Laura. Although he is beginning to run late for work, Tom listens as Amanda asserts that they need to “be making some plans and provisions for her” (763), since she is two years older than Tom and “nothing has happened. She just drifts along doing nothing” (763). Tom suggests that some girls simply stay at home, but Amanda contends that those women do so in their husbands’ homes. 

Amanda worries that Tom is becoming more like his father who “was out all hours without explanation” (763) before leaving altogether. She has seen a letter that Tom received from the Merchant Marines, and demands that if he must leave, he needs to find someone to marry Laura and take his place as the head of the household. As Tom prepares to leave, Amanda asks if there are any “nice young men” (764) at the warehouse. She pleads with him to “find one that’s clean-living–doesn’t drink and–ask him out for sister!” (764). He resists, and Amanda pushes until he finally agrees. Tom leaves, and “Amanda closes the door hesitantly and with a troubled but faintly hopeful expression” (764). The lights shift, and Amanda is on the phone, attempting to charm another woman into renewing her magazine subscription.

At the start of Scene 5, Tom, Laura, and Amanda have just eaten dinner. Tom stands to go and smoke a cigarette on the fire escape, but Amanda orders him to comb your hair, adding: “There is only one respect in which I would like you to emulate your father. […] The care he always took in his appearance. He never allowed himself to look untidy” (764). She criticizes her son for spending so much money on cigarettes that might be spent on night school. Tom insists, “I’d rather smoke” (764), and Amanda responds, “I know! That’s the tragedy of it” (764), gazing at the portrait of her husband. On the fire escape, Tom speaks to the audience. He describes the Paradise Dance Hall, which is on the other side of the alley behind the apartment. While an orchestra “played a waltz or a tango, something that had a slow and sensuous rhythm” (765) and a mirror ball rotated to “filter the dusk with delicate rainbow colors” (765), couples would escape to the alley to kiss in “relative privacy” (765). Tom identifies their amorous activities as “the compensation for lives that passed like [his], without any change or adventure” (765). Tom adds that “adventure and change were imminent” (765) in the coming year for all of the dance hall youths in the form of World War II. He continues how for the moment, “there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, bars, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows. […] All the world was waiting for bombardments!” (765).

Amanda joins Tom on the fire escape, commenting that it “makes a poor excuse for a porch”(765). The look at the moon, and Amanda asks if Tom has “made a wish on it yet” (765). Tom remains secretive about his wish but adds that he can guess Amanda’s wish. She insists she always wishes for the same thing: “I don’t have secrets. I’ll tell you what I wished for on the moon. Success and happiness for my precious children!” (765). Tom suggests that he had supposed she would wish for a gentleman caller, since she has asked Tom for one so often. Tom tells Amanda that he has invited a young man from work to dinner tomorrow night. Distraught, Amanda laments that this doesn’t give her time to prepare. She begins to list the things she needs to do to ready the apartment and themselves, and Tom emphasizes: “Mother, this boy is no one to make a fuss over!” (766). Amanda maintains that a fuss is in order because this is Laura’s first ever gentleman caller. Tom suggests that he should cancel if it will be such a hassle, and Amanda, horrified at the suggestion, insists that she will simply work harder to pull the evening off.

Amanda makes plans aloud, stopping to ask Tom whether or not the young man drinks. Tom responds, “Not that I know of!” (766). Amanda presses him to make certain that he doesn’t. She questions Tom about the young man’s job and income, assessing his suitability as a “family man” (766), and Tom warns her not to get ahead of herself. Amanda criticizes him: “You are the only young man that I know who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!” (767). Tom responds to Amanda’s demands for information, offering his name, James Delaney O’Connor—“Irish on both sides! Gracious! And doesn’t drink?” (767). Amanda expresses her hope that Mr. O’Connor is not “too good-looking” (767), as she was taken in by his father’s good looks, and yet “not right-down homely” (767). Tom reassures that he is “just medium homely” (767) and attending night school as well, which Amanda finds heartening as it means “he has visions of being advanced in the world!” (767).

Tom inserts the caveat that he did not inform the man that he was being invited as a suitor for his sister. Amanda insists that “he’ll know about Laura when he gets here. When he sees how lovely and sweet and pretty she is, he’ll thank his lucky stars he was asked to dinner” (767). Tom warns his mother that she shouldn’t expect so much from Laura, since Laura is “in the eyes of others–strangers–she’s terribly shy and lives in a world of her own and those things make her seem a little peculiar to people outside the house” (767). Amanda takes exception to this claim, and Tom reminds her that Laura “lives in a world of her own–a world of–little glass ornaments” (768). Tom catches sight of his reflection in the mirror and abruptly heads to the door, telling his mother that he is going to the movies. Worriedly, she calls to Laura, and tells her to leave the dishes and make a wish on the moon. When Laura asks what she ought to wish for, Amanda says tearfully, “Happiness, Good fortune!” (768).