About the work
Tennessee Williams's „The Glass Menagerie" was premiered in Chicago in 1944 and on Broadway in 1945. It was Williams's first great success and is largely autobiographical — Williams himself called it a „memory play".
Plot
St Louis in the 1930s. Tom Wingfield, the narrator, looks back on his family: his domineering mother Amanda, a faded Southern belle who lives in memories of her many gentlemen callers, and his shy, lame sister Laura, who has retreated into a fragile world of glass animals. Their father has long since walked out. Amanda pressures Tom — who works in a shoe warehouse and dreams of being a poet — to bring home a „gentleman caller" for Laura. Tom invites his colleague Jim O'Connor. Amanda prepares an elaborate evening. Jim turns out to be Laura's old high-school crush. In a tender scene he dances with her and accidentally breaks the unicorn — Laura's favourite glass figure. He kisses her, only to confess immediately afterwards that he is engaged. The illusion collapses. Tom leaves the family for ever, but is haunted by his sister's memory.
Cultural significance
The Glass Menagerie made Williams famous and set the template for his later plays. The drama's poetic-symbolic technique — memory, projections, glass animals as symbols of fragility — became style-forming for American theatre. Famous Lauras include Julie Haydon (premiere), Jessica Tandy, Sally Field; famous Amandas include Laurette Taylor, Cherry Jones, Sally Field. The play is required reading in American schools.