The Glass Menagerie and Mirrored Identities by Pragya Gupta

The Glass Menagerie and Mirrored Identities - Critical essay by Pragya Gupta

Summary of Essay


The play is about selfhood as brittle as glass
The book talks about the material meagerness of the house being a trap. But self perception as a bigger prison house. It is always thirsty about others perception and approval 
The play is seen as semi-autobiographical, Tom is the projection of Williams 
 because Tennessee William’s own sister was suffering from schizophrenia, his guilt about not being able to help, his mother who was loving and suffocating in equal measures. 

Amanda is merely the prism through which the post war discourse of social control are refracted onto Tom and Laura. She is an eminently likeable character who works hard selling subscription to magazine and arranging secretarial and self improvement course for her children. 
“ Success and happiness for my precious children! I wish for that whenever there's a moon and when there isn't a moon, I wish for it too” ( TGM , 765) 

Her Literary archetype in some ways is the Wife of Bath. Both Alisoun and Amanda, despite having no real happiness in marriage, continue to recommend it for its expedience.
She prepares Laura for the bourgeois patriarchal order. But end up reducing her to a sacrificial lamb at the altar of a cruel patriarchal order.
Was Amanda right in doing that?

All her attempts to prepare her children better only crippled them further psychically.
Amanda is unable to rescue them or herself from the crushing de- subjectivisation that is the essence of America in the 40s. 
Laura turns out to be the most unfortunate victim of this bourgeois paternalistic morality.
Laura was emotionally paralysed at the thought of social interaction. 
Unproductive both commercial and biological is the cause of her self indictment and self aversion.


The main questions raised by the play are- Is the Glass Menagerie a canvas for Laura to fashion herself as an artist? Or it is merely an alibi for beautifying and embroidering a victim complex? 
Jim is a victim of the industrial patriarchal nexus as Tom and Laura. He was multi-talented in school but we see nothing of this when we see Jim as Tom’s co-worker at the warehouse.

The crushing and leveling system has reduced Jim to yet one more brick in the wall, much like it has done to Amanda, Laura and Jim.
Meaning is not found by cleaving to self-description, nor by crossing over to the other side. It is to be found, as legends constantly remind you, in the interstices of the self and the other, Time past and Time present.





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