Tag Archives: Tennessee Williams

This Property is Condemned

Cram’s railroad & township map of Mississippi.

  • Play Title: This Property is Condemned 
  • Author: Tennessee Williams 
  • Published:  1946 
  • Page count: 11 

Summary

On a perfectly clear-skied Mississippi morning, a young girl plays on a railway track. Her name is Willie. Orphaned, thin as a stick, and soon-to-be homeless – life seems to offer her little more than empty promises. Yet she laughs and dresses up and dreams ahead. Tom, a local boy, watches her and asks a few innocent questions that serve to reveal the full extent of her tragic tale. Willie wants to follow in the footsteps of her party-loving sister Alva, who used to be ‘the main attraction’ at their boarding house. She talks of movies, beaux and ‘choc’lates’ while she balances precariously on the railway line that leads to all sorts of exciting places.

This Property is Condemned is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. It’s part of his anthology of short works named 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. Southern Gothic best describes the style of the piece, and the sentiment of the work will cloy pleasantly to its reader. Williams uses brief but potent descriptions of the landscape, the girl’s clothing and her memories. The chief themes of the play are hope, parental neglect, precocious sexuality, and death.

Ways to access the text: reading

It is not particularly easy to find any of Williams’ short plays when one searches for them by their individual titles. It’s better to search for the anthology name, in this case, it’s 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. This text is available for free via the Internet Archive and it’s also on Scribd (free trial).


The 1966 movie entitled This Property is Condemned is based on Williams’ play but it’s an adaptation. The screenplay writers used Williams’ work as the inspiration for a full-length movie – that bears only a passing relation to the original text.

Why read This Property is Condemned?

Williams’ one-act plays are a solid introduction to his style. Willie’s story in This Property is Condemned is quite affecting. Less like a full play and more like a finely sketched characterisation, the playwright introduces us to a 13-year-old girl whose life is all kinds of wrong. Her obvious innocence blends awkwardly with a sexual knowingness that promises to doom her very soon. The harsh sounds of the jet-black crows in the background as Willie dreams of starting anew – a clean sheet – these impressions feel almost indelible after first reading the piece.

Post-reading discussion/interpretation
A Condemned Childhood

Tennessee Williams’ short play about a girl named Willie is unexpectedly haunting. The playwright draws upon the well-known phenomenon that young children are usually unfiltered and innocent about what they say. Even when a child is being cautious or reticent, it’s flagged by their facial expressions, pauses and unsophisticated attempts at subterfuge. This is also the case with Willie. When she meets Tom, he is quite curious about this scruffy little girl with a boy’s name. It is through Tom that Williams gradually opens up the story. This inquisitive, slightly cynical, opportunistic boy asks all the right questions for us to see Willie’s predicament. However, she sees only normality. The dilapidated house where Willie lives has already been condemned by the authorities, but she believes “there’s nothing wrong with it” (Williams 257). Willie possesses the unconscious resilience of children who’ve adapted to their circumstances – no matter how bad. She’s blind to the hopelessness of her situation and that’s the secret dynamo inside this dark tale.

For readers, incredulity is one early obstacle to an appreciation of Willie’s story. Williams was a Mississippian himself, so he understood the reality of the crushing poverty that the state had experienced, especially in the rural areas. One learns that Willie has become invisible to the authorities since she dropped out of school, and she has also been abandoned by her parents. Such cases of neglect were not unusual, even though by today’s standards it’s practically obscene. Apart from the poverty and abandonment, another anomaly is that a 13-year-old girl claims to have had romantic relations with grown men. She even boasts of going on dates to venues like the “Moon Lake Casino” (Williams 258). One may flippantly disregard Willie’s idea of romance as a mere childish fantasy. However, the story needs to be assessed based on the historical context. For instance, the world-famous entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis, who came from the neighbouring state of Louisiana, married his 13-year-old cousin when he was 22 (Gelt). That was in 1957. Within the first year, his new wife became a mother. Marriage laws in the southern states did not have the same age restrictions that apply today. If it wasn’t illegal to marry someone so young, then dating young girls was also acceptable. Willie’s story is not so unusual, which makes the play text more complex.

The opening scene is outlined by Williams in quite a minimalist way, yet it’s impactful. It’s a flat, bare landscape under a vast, milky-white sky. Willie plays on the railway tracks and in the background is the broken-windowed, yellow house where she still lives. There’s little else except the telephone poles and a billboard advertising a brand of gin. These are signals of life elsewhere, but not here. Willie appears in the midst of this nothingness – a grotesque figure with rouged cheeks and painted lips who’s wearing a party dress and holding a blond dolly. Tom’s questions allow Willie to come to life – like a marionette in a half-broken music box – “You’re the only star / In my blue hea-ven / And you’re shining just / For me!” (Williams 255). Williams contrasts the sad animation of the little girl against the cold, bleak backdrop. The two competing forces jar against one another and only outsiders see the inequity of the battle.

Willie’s personality remains in its embryonic state, utterly delayed by the lack of proper parental care and guidance. Her biggest and most enduring influence has been Alva, now dead. Williams describes a poisoned inheritance and its vast ramifications. First, Willie’s mother and then her father abandoned the house, but they also abandoned a family including a young child. They silently branded their situation as worthless, and this feeling is absorbed by the little girl. Willie’s quip to Tom about the “Bureau of Missing Persons” (253) indicates the unmendable nature of the loss: the one-sidedness of the cruelty. Older sister Alva experienced further cruelty when her various lovers abandoned her – “like rats from a sinking ship!” (253). Yet Alva stayed living at home and that means everything to Willie. Even though the little girl must sense that her sister’s sexualised example is wholly wrong, that clarity of thought is complicated by her sister’s loyalty and their mutual love. What path can one follow except the path which has always been shown to you?

Willie: “This is her clothes I got on. Inherited from her. Everything Alva’s is mine.” (Williams 255)

The playwright pays particular attention to Willie’s use of language. She expertly parrots phrases that she has heard from adults. Take for example when Tom refers to Alva’s death as “pretty tough” and Willie responds, “You don’t know the half of it, buddy” (Williams 252). Or when she describes the Cannonball Express as “The fastest thing on wheels between St. Louis, New Awleuns an’ Memphis” (253). There’s an amusing incongruity when a child speaks like a grown man, but it’s a sign of her need to self-protect too. The phrases of adults are used to convey a maturity that she doesn’t have, or at least shouldn’t. The line between mimicry and reality suddenly blurs when Tom confronts Willie with the story told by Frank Waters, namely that she took off her clothes and did a special dance for him (256). Here, Willie unexpectedly takes refuge in a more innocent, childish identity and says “Oh. Crazy Doll’s hair needs washing” (256). Nonetheless, the move also indicates a certain guile because she knows how to divert the conversation. The interaction that follows shows that Willie can indeed negotiate tricky situations quite well by mixing defensive tactics with plain honesty – “I was lonely then …” (256). She proceeds to use the fiction that she’s seeing older men (“in responsible jobs” 256) to finally derail young Tom’s prurient interest and desire for a performance.

The language taught to Willie by Alva was mainly the language of etiquette. However, before addressing that issue, one needs to scrutinize a conspicuous element of Willie’s story. This goes to the heart of Willie’s level of credibility as a storyteller. When Williams wrote This Property is Condemned, he would certainly not have shared our concerns regarding the believability of Willie’s situation, namely her extreme poverty, abandoned status, and level of sexual activity. Thus, any possible twist in the story would lie elsewhere in the author’s plans. Williams could be adding a twist when he introduces the topic of an accident. Something simple, a mere passing remark, quickly takes on extra connotations. It could be a clue to solve Willie’s unusual personality. Willie tells Tom about the accident her dolly had.

“She had that compound fracture of the skull. I think that most of her brains spilled out. She’s been acting silly ever since. Saying an’ doing the most outrageous things.” (Williams 256)

First, the use of a specialised medical term by a child indicates solid familiarity. It might refer to the time her father was hit on the head with a bottle, à la Charlie Chaplin (Williams 256). On the other hand, the reference to saying ‘outrageous things’ seems much better suited to a description of Willie herself. For instance, when Willie justifies looking for an undoubtedly fake diamond in the cinders around the railway track, she tells Tom – “I might be peculiar or something” (249). She also seems to lose her train of thought at times, like when she begins retelling the story about her teacher – “Oh, but I told you that, huh?” (258). More suspicious are the stories that Willie tells of dating railroad men since these stories lack credibility. Her sullied, hand-me-down clothing and ill-applied makeup suggest that something else is happening, something more exploitative, if indeed anything at all is happening. Tom doesn’t believe her stories – “I think you’re drawing a lot on your imagination” (260). It’s not possible to fully discount the idea that the doll is a proxy for Willie since a girl who has spent years doing a balancing act on railway lines is likely to have had a serious fall at some point. A head injury may explain why this girl has become so detached from others and why she has partially receded into a fantasy world.

Even though a certain unshakeable doubt hangs over the truthfulness of Willie’s assertions, Alva’s influence is not in question. For young Willie, school was never as important as the skills her sister taught her.

“What a girl needs to get along is social training. I learned all of that from my sister Alva. She had a wonderful popularity with the railroad me.” (Williams 251)

Alva had the dubious title of “The Main Attraction” (257). Willie must already understand the negative undertones of this title because the school principal said that there was “something wrong” (257) in the home’s atmosphere since the railroad men slept with Alva. Nevertheless, Willie doesn’t know any other way to win people over. She can do the “bumps” and even imitate a blues singer with a “simulated rapture” (255). The dance moves are described with the same type of language as sexual relations, for instance, the “spasmodic jerks” (255). Willie’s dance moves even prompt Tom to ask about the incident with Frank Waters. When Willie talks about her dates with Alva’s old boyfriends, she says “I’ve got to be popular now” (255; emphasis added). But shouldn’t she say ‘I’ve gotten to be popular’ – except that it seems more of a personal command than an observation. This is the story of a girl who believes the only way to succeed is to please men. It’s the only effective technique that she’s witnessed.

It does not take a Freudian analysis to decipher the sexual overtones of Williams’ text. The “milky white winter mornings” denote a fervent sexual desire in a place where almost nothing else exists. A young, virginal teen is the only attraction since the death of her older sister. In this light, the harsh caws of the black crows, which sound like the tearing up of material (Williams 247), are symbolic of the loss of innocence, the literal ripping of cumbersome garments that impede sexual urgency. Willie’s replacement of her sister in the role of sex object signals her total loss of self. After all, Willie has a boy’s name and is a tomboy in many respects: self-reliant, skipping school, and playing in the dirt. This could be a subconscious attempt to please parents who had wanted a boy. She’s clearly unsuited to be the new Alva. Without self-confidence and a better example, Willie is sure to become the next victim of predatory males. These same railroad men will disappear once again when things go wrong. It’s the story of a girl’s inheritance enveloping her until she disappears.

The alternate reading of the colour white is provided by Willie herself. For her, white is linked to the idea of a clean, white sky that’s been swept with a broom (Williams 249), or “white as a clean piece of paper” (250) like the ones Miss Preston used to give her to draw upon (256). Willie imagines new starts, a clean slate upon which she can outline her future. Problematically, this future is intertwined with Alva’s past. Yet Williams doesn’t let the story’s hero lose hope. Although all the world would view Willie as a lost cause, she has an energy and defiance that makes her magnetic. Her perpetual game of balancing precariously on the railway line is the story of her future. The rigid, fixed line is either her road to doom or it could equally be the route to escape.

Works Cited

Gelt, Jessica. “Jerry Lee Lewis’ teenage bride speaks out.” Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2022, Myra Williams talks about marriage at age 13 to Jerry Lee Lewis – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com).

Williams, Tennessee. “This Property is Condemned.” 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, New Directions, 1953.

The Strangest Kind of Romance

  • Play title: The Strangest Kind of Romance
  • Author: Tennessee Williams
  • First performed: 1942
  • Page count: 23

Summary

The Strangest Kind of Romance: A Lyric Play in Four Scenes is a short work by Tennessee Williams. The subtitle suggests a play that captures a particular emotional state, which it does. The setting is a boarding house presided over by a Mizz Gallaway. One Autumn day, an Italian man of quite a small stature arrives looking for a room. He is also seeking work in the locality as a labourer. Upon being shown a room vacated by a previous tenant, a Russian, the Little Man makes his acquaintance with the Russian’s recently orphaned cat named Nitchevo. The pair soon form a special bond, which amuses all those who later witness it. The Little Man quickly finds work at the local factory and makes friends with his landlady’s father-in-law, but he mostly just keeps to himself. Williams’ play is a character study of loneliness. Solitary, fragile people are shown to be especially vulnerable to the whims of fate.

Ways to access the text: reading/listening

The text of the play is available via Scribd, which offers a free trial. The playscript is quite short and is reader-friendly thanks to Williams’ free-flowing dialogue.

It is also possible to listen to an audio recording of the play on Mixcloud. It is listed on the site as “Short Play 25: The Strangest Kind of Romance by Tennessee Williams.” The recording is 42 mins long and stars Kathleen Turner as the landlady and Michael Stuhlbarg as the Little Man.

Why read/listen to The Strangest Kind of Romance?

A friendship between a lonely man and a cat is a strange idea upon which to construct a play. However, Williams does just that in this imaginative and enigmatic work. The charm of the piece is that nothing is quite as simple as it appears. The Little Man is an unskilled factory labourer, and yet he is a fragile soul in a world that does not understand him. The local factory is a vital source of labour but also a symbol of heartless capitalism. Mizz Gallaway’s father-in-law is a senile, drunken, old fool. However, he is also kindness personified, and incidentally, a look-alike of Walt Whitman. Overall, the play communicates far more than one would expect. At the centre is a little man who has somehow been emotionally damaged and has subsequently retracted almost completely from the world. A stray cat becomes his only friend and a lifeline too.

Post-reading discussion/interpretation

Living a Boxed-In Life

The Strangest Kind of Romance is an odd, little play with a diminutive, foreign-looking, vagabond-type figure at its heart. The Little Man arrives in a boarding house with a suitcase that is so old and battered that it falls apart, and everything tumbles onto the floor in his soon-to-be new room/home. It is a play about an emotional state, let us call it loneliness – but it is somehow more tragic than a single word can accommodate. Williams returns one to a bygone era of American boarding houses and the transient workers who occupied their confining, often soul-destroying, little rooms. The play is out of date, far too reflective of its author’s own struggles with his sexuality, and worst of all – it is uneventful. Unless one considers a depiction of crushing self-doubt to be a full story (?). Like Philip Larkin once wrote, “Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf.” That particular poem entitled “This Be the Verse” is famous as it humorously tackles the progeny of bad parenting, but the Little Man will unlikely ever parent a child or even be remembered after he dies. He does, however, carry the burden of some old hurt, or secret, which progressively wears him down, like the attrition elegantly described by Larkin. The play is engaging for the very reasons that one would not typically like it; it is about the sad, tragic side of life. It is also the study of a character that seldom takes the lead in any story – the almost invisible loner. Unboxing the Little Man requires one to contemplate the pressures, both past and present, which have led him to his final predicament in the coffin-like space of his rented room.

There is a homosexual subtext to the Little Man’s story. This is a salient yet not defining element of Williams’ play. The risk is that by focusing on the Little Man’s sexuality, one may, albeit unintentionally, tie him a little too closely to his creator, Williams, and thereby reduce the character to a revelation by proxy of Williams’ own demons about his sexuality. Nonetheless, an exploration of the Little Man’s hinted-at sexual preference lends itself to a better understanding of his life including the apparently celibate time he spends in Mizz Gallaway’s boarding house. Misaligned with the flow of normal society, the Little Man is the essence of queerness, but sexuality is just one façade of that label.

The play’s title is the first signal of the protagonist’s divergent life. The use of the superlative ‘strangest’ places the romance at the very edge of what can be considered acceptable: while still technically qualifying as a romance. Williams wrote the play in 1941 so whether one imagines the romantic partner as being a much-loved cat or another man is unimportant, since either would have been spoken of derogatorily, even with a little disgust. The title assumes a level of justified moral unease and a healthy measure of related condescension. A man who chooses a pet cat to the exclusion of human relationships is an oddity. Loving Nitchevo is branded “the strangest kind of a romance” (144) by Mizz Gallaway, the red-blooded, heterosexual woman who runs the boarding house. She had an intimate relationship with the room’s former tenant, the Russian, but she felt excluded from his full affection due to his pesky pet. The Little Man adopts the cat yet has no interest in performing the Russian’s other duties. For Mizz Gallaway, the cat becomes a barometer of a man’s sexuality. The Little Man’s love of the cat evolves into an excuse to avoid Mizz Gallaway’s amorous attentions, but it may also be a clear indication of the romances he formerly pursued, namely with men.

The second word of interest in the title is ‘kind,’ which may be defined as a group with similar characteristics: a particular type. What type is the Little Man? Although not published until 1976, gay writer Christopher Isherwood’s memoir entitled Christopher and his Kind is a helpful reference point for a definition of who is being referred to here. The strangest kind of romance by 1940s standards is unquestionably one that excludes women. For a man, this most typically means homosexual. The title can mean the disproportionate love of a pet but only ever in a humorous way. Suspicions arise if the man subsequently shows no interest in the opposite sex. Dean Shackelford states that “Of course, the relationship to which Williams’s title refers is clearly encoded as a metaphor for gay romances” (127). Thus, the play title is the first, easily solvable clue to the Little Man’s story. The first burdensome truth that must not be revealed.

The room

The “furnished room” (Williams 135) that the Little Man rents from Mizz Gallaway is an uncomplicated symbol of refuge. Shackelford argues that while the play “discloses homosexuality only indirectly,” the room “symbolizes the protection of the closet” (120). He writes that “As long as the Little Man is in his room with Nitchevo, he can feel secure and invulnerable. He can find the protection of the closet” (120). Although sexuality is a crucial theme in the play, the Little Man’s problems encompass wider issues. Williams deliberately provides a detailed description of the meagre room. For instance, the room has two windows with one overlooking the manufacturing plant while the other offers a view of a tree. The room’s occupant looks out upon either nature or industry. The Little Man cowers before the demands made on him by his new factory job (capitalism) and by Mother Nature (the demand to be normal). Thus, the room is a refuge from various demands encircling his life, not just a homosexual hideaway.

Another salient point about the room is that it is not fashioned to suit the Little Man. It is a basic room in a boarding house that serves the plant’s need for fresh, unskilled labour. Williams explains that the occupants of the room are “the itinerant, unmarried working-men of a nation” (135). In this regard, one is speaking about a large, diverse community of lone men who are tragically disconnected from one another. The room is a mark of the men’s failures in society in myriad ways. Robert Skloot highlights the fact that Williams uses the potent motif of single rooms in his plays and explains the relevance as follows:

“With good reason do Williams’ plays, stories and poems take place in motels, hotels, rooming houses, whorehouses, or decrepit and crumbling houses, for it is in these environments that his transients are most vulnerable and most desperate to touch another wandering creature before they are evicted, committed, or destroyed, all the while contesting to the limits of their fragile strength the demons of greed, drink, bad luck, disease, and death.”

(Skloot 202) 

Conversely, Mizz Gallaway chooses to explain the plights of the working men as somehow natural. She dismissively comments on the various signatures adorning the room’s wall: “Birds of passage. You ever try to count them? Restlessness – changes” (139). The tale of the illiterate Russian gives the lie to this description. He was not merely a large man but “tremendous!” in stature (139), and yet the strain of working at the factory resulted in his poor health and eventual death from tuberculosis. He vacated the rooming house as a broken man. Rather than face reality, Mizz Gallaway shares her theory that the Russian’s “bad run of luck” (136) was on account of the cat. In truth, she rents the room to hard-up, unskilled labourers, who are often foreigners, and then she facilitates their speedy introduction to Mr Woodson at the plant. The room is the first cog in an exploitative system.

It is subsequently surprising that from the Little Man’s perspective, “the room is home” (145). The antithesis of homeliness becomes a home out of sheer necessity. A consideration of this point leads one to consider the intimacy of the space too. The room is furnished including bed linen, so a succession of single men has slept in the same bed with the same old, washed-out sheets. These men would have looked out of the same two windows onto the same scenes. They likely even had similar thoughts concerning the plant’s working conditions, money, and their futures. There is an accidental intimacy to the space on account of all the past and even prospective future male occupants. Within the privacy of this small room, the men dress and undress, bring back sexual partners, or sometimes masturbate alone at night. The room encloses each man’s life in a tiny space for a fleeting period. It is a doomed space that constricts lives that will, in many cases, soon expire. The room is a false friend since it facilitates the Little Man’s further exploitation as opposed to his rehabilitation or recovery.

The sole record of the room’s numerous tenants is the list of signatures, x’s, and drawings on the wall. Mizz Gallaway tells the Little Man of her plans: “Some day I’m going to take me a wire scrubbing-brush an’ a bar of Fels Naphtha an’ leave them walls as clean as they was before the first roomer moved in” (140). The ease with which Mizz Gallaway may cleanse the room of the traces of its many inhabitants strikes up connotations of washing away filth, dirt, or possibly guilt. Her father-in-law hears her words and chastises her, saying, “These signatures are their little claims of remembrance. Their modest bids for immortality, daughter” (140). The empathic old soul, who is said to resemble Walt Whitman, defends the dignity of the transient workers. Total anonymity becomes both a threat and a grievous insult.

The Little Man

The Little Man is a mystifying character. It is far easier to classify him as a loner and societal outsider than to decode his inner motivations and worldview. Williams’ depiction of this strange character is all surface. Society generally casts a dispassionate eye on such people. Therefore, an audience is enrolled in the same subtle game of devaluing him. Yet Williams is sympathetic to his protagonist. Williams highlights this through his depictions of cold-hearted and selfish people like Gallaway and Woodson. Of course, the Little Man has a past, a family, possibly old loves, stories, and experiences; but we learn none of these essential elements that are a basic requirement to understand any man.

Williams acquaints us with one of life’s silent losers. The obvious defeat is not necessarily on account of any flaw in the Little Man’s character but rather because of the circumstances and job opportunities with which life has presented him. The mismatch between the man and his lot in life is succinctly outlined by Mizz Gallaway’s first impressions of him. She describes him as “dark and more delicate and nervous in appearance than laborers usually are” (135). These three distinct markers, namely the darkness of skin colour, the delicacy of physical build, and nervousness are all negatives. They instantly brand the Little Man as a foreigner, a weakling unsuited to hard labour, and a person with a social impediment in the form of low self-esteem. Nonetheless, Gallaway directs the Little Man to the factory to get work, which shows her insensitivity. A lack of options seals the Little Man’s fate. Skloot gives a summation of the kinds of characters Williams specialises in, and one can immediately recognise the Little Man in the following description.

““Freaks” is the harsh word which inspires Williams to create his most troubled characters. The word is organized society’s term for the incomplete people whose presence irritates and disturbs the vulgar and insensitive “normality.” These “freaks” become victims of the world’s cruelty, cruelty which often is manifested in the destruction of individual freedom, often seen in the denial of sanctuary or rest.”

(Skloot 200)

What is apparent is that the Little Man is fragile. A closeted homosexual, he may be, but there are numerous other hypothetical reasons for his inability to deal with the quotidian demands of life. He may have experienced trauma, physical illness, or mental illness in the past. Whatever the reason, the Little Man no longer feels like a real person and describes himself instead as “A kind of a – ghost of a – man” (145). He explains the situation to Mizz Gallaway.

“The body is only – a shell. It may be alive – when what’s inside – is too afraid to come out! It stays locked up and alone! Single! Private! That’s how it is – with me. You’re not talking to me – but just what you think is me!”

(Williams 146)

Mizz Gallaway makes the facile summation of his predicament as one of loneliness. Skloot explains Williams’ aim when depicting such damaged characters.

“A state of incompletion, then, is the state of the oppressed people who inhabit Williams’ world, and their struggle to overcome their condition is the action which his art describes. The unique part of his vision is that it is infused with a compassion for the plight of his characters which reaches to the deepest part of our understanding; it gives his early work a brooding often melancholic texture which no other American playwright possesses. But rather than detracting from the quality of his art, this compassion enriches it because it is based on an indomitable belief, an insistent faith in the worth of the most fragile and broken human soul.”

(Skloot 201)

The only person with whom the Little Man bonds is the landlady’s father-in-law. The old man is another broken individual: unemployment, old age, and alcoholism. As Skloot writes, Williams’ “fragile people seek each other out; whatever anguish they feel they know that the pain of life can be softened in the presence of others who are similarly pained” (202). The Little Man’s active search for completeness and healing is most evident when he accepts the companionship of a sympathetic friend. The bond is not sexual or even romantic. It is merely about the kindness that one person can lend to another. The Little Man is a victim of a harsh world, but his salvation is not entirely hopeless.

Nitchevo the cat

The Russian most likely gave the cat its unusual name. John Foster Fraser explains the word nichevo (without a t) as “Russia’s motto of don’t care.” If one insists that it be spelt with the ‘t,’ then one may refer to the Bulgarian word nitchevo, which means threadbare. Thus, the cat’s name sums up the generally apathetic disposition of the broken Little Man in his cheap, shabby accommodation.

One need not doubt the Little Man’s affection and reliance on Nitchevo and still comprehend that the cat acts solely as a protective shield. Williams employs the cat to serve two quite distinct roles. First, the cat is a substitute for a romantic relationship with a member of the opposite/same sex. Second, the cat is a metaphor that communicates the kinds of trysts gay men had when homosexuality was still illegal and taboo. To begin with the substitute relationship – it is clear that the Little Man is too fragile to engage in a full, healthy relationship. He chooses an animal over a human since the cat is reliant on him for food, and therefore unwaveringly faithful to him. Additionally, the cat is a vital sounding board for his own inner dialogue. The Little Man chats with the cat, like when he explains the horrible incident at the factory, and he thereby enacts the illusion of never being alone. Despite his youth, the Italian never goes out except to work at the plant (143). When he is at home in his room, he is usually “Carrying on a one-sided conversation with a cat” (144). The cat stands in for a real partner whose profile we may only guess.

Williams presents the cat as the partner of last resort while simultaneously layering the story with sexual innuendos. The cat is a metaphor that describes forbidden homosexual trysts. For instance, Mizz Gallaway thinks at one point that the Little Man has brought home a woman when she hears chatter in his room. Gallaway cautions about the risks of picking up women on the street since they “aren’t likely to be very clean,” and she goes on to refer to “feminine hygiene” (144). The insinuation here is that prostitutes (or easy women) carry disease and therefore should be avoided. One may compare this to the tale of how the Russian found the “stray alley cat” and “let ‘er sleep in his bed,” which Gallaway calls “a dirty practice” (137). The alley is the taboo spot where lonely men may find companionship of one kind or another. If the Little Man did not have a cat for a companion, then maybe he would have to entertain his own troublesome questions about whom he is attracted to and where to find such company.

Sex

Mizz Gallaway makes what she believes is a deal with the Little Man to fulfil the duties of the late Russian, which included domestic and other (read sexual) duties too. She scolds the Little Man, advising that “Men that – live by themselves – get peculiar ways. All that part of their lives that was meant to be taken up with family matters is all left over – empty” (139). One may assume that she is not actually referring to the importance of parenthood, but rather the necessity of releasing pent-up sexual energy. When the Little Man shuns her numerous sexual advances, she unsubtly reveals her true desires – “Quit dodging the issue! … I thought I explained things to you. My husband’s a chronic invalid” (145). Sex becomes a test of normality that the Little Man utterly fails. Gallaway succeeded in initiating intimate relationships with the Russian and the newest tenant, the Boxer, so she undoubtedly possesses a particular sexual allure. In a later burst of anger, Gallaway tells the Little Man: “You’re not a man at all, you’re a poor excuse” (152).

Gallaway speaks with all the authority of a designated spokesperson of Mother Nature: “Nature says – “Man take woman or – man be lonesome!” (144). The Little Man’s response indicates a deep level of sexual repression or the possibility of asexuality.

“Nature has never said anything to me. …Oh, I listened. But all I ever heard was my own voice -asking me troublesome questions!”

(Williams 144)

One subtle clue provided by Williams at the opening of the play suggests an explanation for the Little Man’s sexual dilemma. When his tattered suitcase disintegrates in front of Mizz Gallaway’s eyes, various objects fall to the floor, including a rosary (135). Given that the Little Man is Italian, a once staunchly Catholic country, then his sexual repression may be interlinked with old-fashioned feelings of sinfulness and shame. One witnesses his fastidiousness, and his undisguised repulsion to any talk of sanitary matters (140) or female sexuality/hygiene (144). He is even embarrassed to be seen shirtless by his landlady (143). His apparent sexual repression is a key obstacle to any potential relationship. It is noteworthy that he welcomes the comforting, motherly embrace of his landlady while shunning her numerous sexual advances on him. Based on this example, he may see women only as nurturers and carers but not as sexual partners. If Nature says nothing to the young man, then it may be that he does not understand the ‘natural’ sexual urges that prompt men like the Russian or the Boxer. The ‘troublesome questions’ indicate a deviation from what was considered normal and acceptable, which could denote homosexuality or the complete lack of sexual urges. The repercussions for the Little Man are negative, stigmatizing labels like unmanly and odd. Nature, as represented by the tree outside his window, is strangely no less of an oppressive taskmaster than the factory bosses.

The Plant (factory)

The Little Man is an insignificant worker caught in the heart of the capitalist system maelstrom. Unfair transactional relationships define Williams’ play. There are oppressive forces that push down on the Little Man to perform according to conventional, external demands. If Mizz Gallaway is the representative of Mother Nature, then Oliver Woodson stands in for the God of Industry. Woodson represents the unceasing demands of the free market for cheap, disposable labour. In the Little Man’s room, “The window in the right wall admits the flickering ruddy glow of the plant and its pulse-like throbbing is heard faintly” (141). The throb of the machinery has an undeniable hint of sex to it, but the juices are oil and diesel, and the progeny are market products.

In the factory, the Little Man experiences demands to perform beyond his capacity. He has problems with his hands and as a result, he cannot work the machines efficiently. One day he causes the machine to jam and the production line to grind to a halt. Mr Woodson grabs him and humiliates him on the factory floor, saying, “You clumsy Dago! Jammed up the works again, you brainless Spick!” (142). The Little Man is overwhelmed with shame and breaks down in tears. This is a turning point. The landlady’s father-in-law is an ex-worker from the plant, and he is a foreshadowing of the Little Man’s future: broken and alone. Reminiscent of a Christian martyr, the old man describes how he was nailed to the cross of “Cupidity and Stupidity” (150). David Radavich describes the enormous influence of industry in The Strangest Kind of Romance: “In the one-act set in Saint Louis, the [plant’s influence] … permeates the boarding-house where anonymous workers pass through, get used up as expendable human resources, and go away to die” (141). All the key relationships (work and personal) that the Little Man becomes entangled in merely exhibit the many ways in which he can be and is exploited.

Conclusion

After the incident at the factory, the Little Man has a mental breakdown and is temporarily committed to the care of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. He cries when he returns to Mizz Gallaway’s after his hospitalisation and finds that the cat is gone and his room is newly occupied. A man named Bill now sleeps in what was once his bed, and the cat that was his only friend in the world has disappeared. The disposable nature of the Little Man’s life is emphasised by Mizz Gallaway’s final words to him – “Your stuff, your few belongings, are packed in the downstairs closet. On your way out you may as well pick them up” (155). The season has changed as attested to by the new leaves on the branches outside the window. The Little Man must now join the lengthy line of those who had bad luck and moved on. Williams presents a character whose problems may be summed up as a general sensitivity to the pressures of life. The complexity of his personal back story is never revealed but the effects are apparent.

“Turn out the light. I’ve lived too long in a room that was nothing but windows and always at noon and with no curtains to draw.”

(Williams 152) 

Yet a glimmer of hope appears right at the conclusion of the story. The old man finds Nitchevo in the alley, so the Little Man is reunited with his friend. The alley, which was previously stigmatized as a dubious location, is now transformed into a place of redemption. The landlady speaks of “The funniest pair of lovers” (158), but the statement is ambiguous in the context. Has the young Italian found a soulmate in his friend the old man, or is it simply that he and Nitchevo are together again? What is ultimately important is companionship and mutual sympathy. Williams depicts a man on the edge of society and yet hope is never lost.

Works Cited

Foster Fraser, John. “Nichevo!”–Russia’s Motto of Don’t Care.” The New York Times, 17 March 1918.  

Larkin, Philip. “This Be The Verse.” Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse 

Radavich, David. “Regional Tensions in Tennessee Williams’s Candles to the Sun and Spring Storm.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 72, no. 3, 2007, pp. 38–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784724. Accessed 15 April 2023. 

Shackelford, Dean. “‘The Ghost of a Man’: The Quest for Self-Acceptance in Early Williams.” The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, no. 4, 2001. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/48615476. Accessed 17 April 2023. 

Skloot, Robert. “Submitting Self to Flame: The Artist’s Quest in Tennessee Williams, 1935-1954.” Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 25, no. 2, 1973, pp. 199–206. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3205870. Accessed 12 April 2023. 

Williams, Tennessee. The Strangest Kind of Romance. 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays, New Directions, 1953.  

The Glass Menagerie

  • Play title: The Glass Menagerie  
  • Author: Tennessee Williams   
  • First performed: 1944     
  • Page count: 116 

Summary 

The Glass Menagerie was Tennessee Williams’ first big theatrical success. It is a play about the Wingfield family who live in a small apartment in St. Louis during the 1930s. The family unit consists of an abandoned, middle-aged mother named Amanda and her two adult children: Tom, a budding writer, and Laura, a mildly disabled and ultra-shy girl. Williams gives this play a solid historical context by referencing hardship and poverty in the American lower-middle classes in the 1930s. He also notes specific international events like the bombing of Guernica in Spain. However, this is not a work of realism but is described instead as a “memory play.” Tom is the main narrator, and the events described are his recollections of his family. While Tom is headstrong and independent, Laura is socially awkward and does not thrive. The central story is about how Amanda, an old-fashioned Southerner, becomes increasingly desperate to find a suitable “gentleman caller” for Laura in the hope of an eventual marriage. The glass menagerie of the title is a collection of delicate glass figurines owned by Laura.

Ways to access the text: reading/listening  

There are multiple online sources for this text. For example, there is a PDF file of the play text on the educational website http://www.pval.org. Alternatively, you may source the text via the Open Library (registration needed). The Open Library version is more reader-friendly due to the page formatting.

There is a full audiobook version of the play on YouTube. The recording is divided into two files with a total running time of 1hr and 46mins. However, please note that these have been recorded from an original vinyl record and there is, at times, a distinct scratching sound on the 2nd file. The file names are listed below.

“Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie (Act One)” 

“Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie (Act Two)”  

Why read/listen to The Glass Menagerie? 

A Dependent Daughter.  

Amanda Wingfield’s daughter Laura is quite a distinctive character but primarily for what may be seen as negative characteristics. She is mildly disabled on account of a permanent limp, but shyness is her overriding disability. Tennessee Williams is said to have based Laura on his own sister Rose, and it may explain why this character holds such a significant role in the play. Williams explores, from a mother’s perspective, the problem of having a reclusive daughter. Although Laura sometimes goes out in public, her social ineptitude means that she is known by very few people. This makes her ever more vulnerable to the influences within her family especially since she is accommodating and generally passive. One of the key dilemmas of the play is Laura’s uncertain future. The socio-economic backdrop of 1930s America serves to exaggerate the pressures on this already struggling family. Williams explores how someone as loved as Laura is by her family, may still be subjected to certain cruelties by her apparent protectors. In the opinion of Mrs Wingfield, a dependent daughter has only two choices: a career or marriage. Laura is pushed towards both solutions respectively.

A Play Made of Memory.  

In the opening scene, the play is presented as a memory of Tom. Tom is essentially the narrator of, and a character in, his own story. This frames the play in a most self-conscious manner; it is the theatrical staging of the personal and therefore wholly subjective memory of one single character. This is intriguing for at least three reasons. For instance, Tom secretly functions as a mouthpiece for the playwright who is processing the Williams family history. As a memory, the play’s action is also curiously located in the past even though it happens before our eyes on stage. Finally, the nature of memory calls into question the truth/reliability of the events depicted. Indeed, Williams highlights many of these issues in the play’s introduction.

One witnesses the replaying of an extended personal memory of Tom. One should therefore attune one’s focus to the subtle differences between generic events (mealtimes or habitual arguments) and standout scenes involving life-changing events. The first is the reel tape of home life but the second category involves memories charged with high emotion and thus branded into the mind’s vaults. Is Tom even present in all the scenes he describes? What level of artistic licence is being employed by Tom? Finally, why is the protagonist so obsessed with this memory? The answers to these questions lurk within the text.

Post-reading discussion/interpretation

A Pawn in a Game.  

Even though Laura is the chief focus in the play, she is contradictorily just a pawn in a game. The game is a battle for dominance between Amanda and Tom: each in pursuit of quite contrasting individual wishes. In the absence of Mr Wingfield senior, Amanda expects Tom to continue financially supporting the family, and Laura’s dependence makes this arrangement appear unending. Laura’s prospects directly impact the lives of her mother and brother. Tom pessimistically describes Laura as “terribly shy” and a girl who “seem[s] a little peculiar to people,” whereas Amanda optimistically says that her daughter is “lovely and sweet and pretty.” Each stakeholder in Laura’s future expresses a bias based on their own underlying fears. The family is generally protective of Laura, but specific familial actions are not devoid of cruelty. Laura’s shyness and reserve make it difficult for her to express any contradictory views, despite witnessing decisions being made on her behalf. Williams fills the text with subtle hints concerning Laura’s predicament. The sources of hurt in Laura’s life are varied: economically depressed societal conditions, unending mother-daughter comparisons, escalating family resentments, and Laura’s exclusion from decision making. Tom as narrator restricts an audience’s focus to his perspective, but Laura’s story is clearly one of disempowerment. Indeed, the strongest evidence that Laura is wronged is Tom’s unquenchable guilt. The play is a merging of his memories, but he is incapable of abandoning these hurtful episodes to the past.

The Wingfield family is enmeshed in the dire societal conditions of 1930s America. This means impoverishment and the concurrent absence of any prospects. Even though The Glass Menagerie is not a work of realism, Williams makes pointed references to the social and economic conditions of the times for reasons that soon become apparent. He describes the Wingfield family apartment as typical of the “vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living units” in the “overcrowded urban centres” of America. The inhabitants of such neighbourhoods as “fundamentally enslaved.” Slavery may be understood in two distinct ways in the play. First, there are Amanda’s derogatory references to black servants: a memory from her youth in Mississippi. On one occasion when Laura wishes to serve table in their little apartment, Amanda says, “No, sister, no, sister – you be the lady this time and I’ll be the darkey.” However, the era of slaves is long gone, as is the era of black servants for the Southern belle Amanda who must now contend with her impoverished conditions. Even though Williams refers to Amanda’s current social position in America’s lower middle class as “enslaved,” it is arguably the burden of a disabled, socially awkward child that truly enslaves Amanda and, by extension, Tom too. Enslavement indicates the loss of hope, or at best a false and always unfulfilled hope, and this is also true of the Wingfield family. Amanda lectures Tom, saying “Life’s not easy, it calls for – Spartan endurance!” It is this mindset that fuels a covert resentment towards the fragile Laura who is the only family member who does not strive for independence. For Amanda, hope lives only in her Mississippian past when everything was possible: even marriage to the “Fitzhugh boy” who had the “Midas touch.” For Tom, the future alone offers hope in the charming guises of freedom and success. Laura unknowingly cements both figures in a depressing present tense of hardship that neither of them can escape.

The pressures are not just societal; there are also household frictions that serve to hurt Laura. One of the most evident and indeed harshest examples of Amanda’s cruelty toward Laura is the implicit comparison continually made between mother and daughter. Amanda’s worn-out story of the seventeen gentleman callers in one day back in “Blue Mountain” is certainly evidence that she seeks refuge and solace in her own, once-promising past. However, the story also serves as Amanda’s cue to pose the discomfiting question to Laura regarding “gentleman callers.” An embarrassed Laura dutifully replies on one occasion, “I’m just not popular like you were in Blue Mountain.” Apart from being an ego boost to the ageing beauty Amanda, the interplay is clearly hurtful to Laura. It would be possible to dismiss Amanda’s question as just mild teasing except for her conscious insistence that no one in the house ever refers openly to Laura’s disability, not even to Laura herself. By ignoring her daughter’s obvious disability, Amanda puts significant, additional pressure on Laura to achieve the goals set for her regarding admirers and romance. According to Amanda, a girl’s two chief routes in life are marriage and career. Amanda first encouraged her 23-year-old daughter to enrol at Rubicam’s Business School, so marriage was not considered Laura’s best prospect for independence. Unfortunately, Laura’s debilitating self-consciousness, most evident in pressurized situations, causes her to drop out of education (again). Only then does Amanda decide on marriage as an alternative solution. In fact, when Amanda happens upon the idea, it is like a eureka moment: “sister, that’s what you’ll do!” A prospective marriage becomes a desperate last attempt for the family to unburden itself of a dependent daughter. Amanda’s consciousness of her daughter’s predicament reveals the sharp cruelty of the aforementioned mother and daughter comparisons.

It is relatively easy to identify the sources of Tom and Amanda’s thinly veiled resentments toward Laura. Tom is now the family wage earner in the absence of his father who abandoned them years previously. Amanda unashamedly uses Laura’s situation to force Tom to stay in a work environment that he hates. In consequence, Tom must suspend or even abandon his future dreams. Once Amanda discovers that Tom secretly plans to join the Merchant Marine, she strikes a deal with him so that he can leave home – “but not till there’s somebody to take your place,” which means a gainfully employed husband for Laura. The deal initiates an ongoing family conversation on the topic of securing a “gentleman caller” for Laura: something that becomes “an obsession” for Amanda. It is understandable that Tom, a budding writer who settles for work in a shoe factory, may come to resent the burden of his sister’s ongoing dependency. On Tom’s drunken night out, he sees the “coffin trick” performed by “Malvolio the Magician” and later remarks to Laura, “There is a trick that would come in handy for me – get me out of this 2 by 4 situation.” Tom clearly feels trapped in his current circumstances. Williams enhances the symbolism of the apartment’s fire escape by referring to the “implacable fires of human desperation.” Tom indeed exits by the fire escape in the end. In contrast to Tom, Amanda’s reason to resent Laura is, at least initially, less apparent. However, the answer lies in her envisioned shared future with her daughter. Amanda dismissively speaks of unmarried women as “barely tolerated spinsters” and “little bird-like women without any nest – eating the crust of humility all their life!” Amanda then asks the rhetorical question – “is that the future we’ve mapped out for ourselves?” If Laura is destined for impoverished spinsterhood, then it is a destiny she condemns her mother to as well. The power struggle between Amanda and Tom becomes a high-stakes game as both risk their futures. Laura is the anchor that binds both of them to an unsatisfactory, current living situation.

It is conspicuous that Laura is continually excluded from decision making by her family. Laura was likely cajoled or coerced into joining business school as this would explain her deep shame at having dropped out. If extra schooling had been Laura’s original aim, then surely her failure would not have prompted Amanda’s “awful suffering look … like the picture of Jesus’ mother.” It appears that Laura dashes her mother’s dreams rather than her own, or as Amanda puts it “all of our plans – my hopes and ambition for you – just gone up the spout.” In regard to organizing a gentleman caller, Laura is again infantilized by her mother since she is excluded from Amanda’s “plans and provisions.” In fact, Amanda sends Laura to the shops for butter so that she may discuss Laura’s future and the possibility of a gentleman caller with Tom privately. The mother and son have dissimilar characters, and they also hold opposing views about Laura. Tom loves his sister but recognises her obvious limitations while Amanda persists in ignoring the obvious, thus courting disaster. When Tom finally accedes to his mother’s demands and arranges for Jim O’Connor to visit then the proceedings quickly become a mockery of romance. To begin, Jim does not know the “ulterior motives” for the dinner invitation. In fact, he has no knowledge at all of Laura’s existence. Similarly, Laura does not know the identity of the visitor until just before his arrival, and it is unclear whether she even suspects her mother’s master plan. Amanda is quite insensitive to her daughter’s predictable distress: the gentleman caller is none other than Laura’s high school crush. Laura repeatedly asks to be excused from the evening’s proceedings but is denied her request. Amanda’s plan does not accommodate her daughter’s obvious social limitations, and she dismisses the girl’s growing anxiety by saying “I don’t intend to humour your silliness” and “I’m sick, too – of your nonsense!” Laura is finally excused from the charade but only when she stumbles and almost faints at the dinner table (practically sick with anxiety). Despite this glaring faux pas, Amanda persists. She directs Jim to go and sit with Laura after dinner. Amanda even tries desperately to arrange further dates until the news of Jim’s fiancé, Betty, shatters all prospects. The whole evening is an exposition of Laura’s powerlessness.

The two dominant characters, Amanda and Tom, battle over issues of money, freedom, and the future. Laura morphs into a burden that holds each of them back in separate ways. Laura is not like her mother, “possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure … a nimble wit and a tongue to meet all occasions.” Instead, she is a young woman who lives in her mother’s shadow because she can never live up to unrealistic expectations. The result of the family machinations is that Laura becomes an obstacle to Tom’s future. He is shackled to the family home until he finds someone to replace him as the wage earner and marry his sister. Laura’s predicament seems impossible to solve to the satisfaction of her mother or brother. Tom’s eventual departure is an expression of his frustration. As Laura was apparently based on Tennessee Williams’ sister Rose, one may assume that the depiction, though laden with symbolism, resonates with the life of a tragic figure. Laura never complains so it is for the reader alone to take her perspective into account when judging each scene.

The closing episode of The Glass Menagerie exposes the pitiful truth of the family situation. In a fit of despair, Amanda chastises Tom, saying, “Don’t think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who’s crippled and has no job!” This description of Laura is for once unadorned by euphemisms thus revealing the harsh yet always present reality. Amanda’s twin hopes for a marriage or career for Laura are shown to be equally unattainable. Amanda’s description of her daughter as “crippled” reveals the potent anger of someone who cannot fix the situation and who relies on her son to burden a responsibility that is not rightly his. Amanda tells the truth, for once, but only when she feels it will weigh Tom down with enough guilt to make him stay – it does not. The Wingfield daughter, Laura, stands at the centre of this family storm and we are never quite sure how much she understands or how much she hurts. If she is indeed as fragile as her little glass figurines, then the hurt is substantial. The Wingfield daughter is a pawn in a game best described as a power struggle for survival between mother and son against the backdrop of a depressed, hopeless economy. Laura loses the most and she does so silently.

“Shakespeare’s Sister.”  

There are several notable references to Shakespeare in The Glass Menagerie. Jim O’Connor who is Tom’s friend and fellow worker at the shoe factory is the man who gives Tom the amusing moniker of “Shakespeare.” The nickname was originally prompted by Tom’s habit of going to the washroom to write poems during slack work periods. To call an aspiring writer who works in a dead-end job by the name of the most famous writer in history can be interpreted in many ways. As a nickname, it is mildly disparaging but also somehow hopeful. In an essay entitled “The Catastrophe of Success,” Williams wrote of his own long struggle before he attained success, namely with The Glass Menagerie. The character of Tom is most representative of Williams as a young, struggling writer and this struggle has artistic dividends in Williams’ view. In this light, Tom’s nickname is a mark of honour because it symbolizes the preparatory work: hard and very valuable work that normally comes before any breakthrough. The references to Shakespeare in the play are, however, more extensive. For example, Laura is referred to as “Shakespeare’s sister” by Jim, and this is clearly an allusion to Virginia Woolf’s extended essay “A Room of One’s Own,” which proposes the hypothetical situation that Shakespeare had a sister. Thus, Tom and Laura respectively become Shakespeare and his unknown sister. Furthermore, Jim refers to the Shakespearean character Romeo when talking about his love life, and Jim quotes a few famous lines of Ophelia’s from Hamlet. Lastly, the memorably named “Malvolio the Magician” whom Tom sees perform, may be a reference to the character Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The task for a reader is to make sense of these various references to Shakespeare within The Glass Menagerie.

To begin, one may take a broad overview when seeking links between The Glass Menagerie and Shakespeare. One quickly finds a clear connection between Williams’ “memory play” and Shakespeare’s most famous play Hamlet where the ghost of old King Hamlet, the ghost of the past, implores his son to, “remember me” (1.5.91). Old King Hamlet wants his son to correct an injustice. Therefore, in each case, the play’s chief protagonist, Tom or Hamlet, is forced to look back at events that evoke a sense of responsibility and ultimately guilt. Another parallel between these two plays is that the characters of Laura and Ophelia are both mentally fragile women who are spurned by the men they love. We may now hop to a separate Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet, because Jim aligns very well with the figure of Romeo (with whom he identifies) since he is charismatic and very much idealized in Laura’s eyes. Laura’s heartbreak is sealed by Jim’s kiss because this man she adores then goes on to announce his engagement to Betty and declares it impossible to see Laura again. When Jim leaves the Wingfield household in the climactic scene of the play, he says, “So long, Shakespeare! Thanks again, ladies – Good night.” This quote returns one to Hamlet since it echoes Ophelia’s line, “Good night, ladies, good night. Sweet ladies” (Hamlet 4.5.73). The link between the scenes is that Ophelia has suffered a mental breakdown due to the death of her father Polonius and her earlier cruel rejection by her lover, Hamlet; and now we have Laura who also ‘lost’ her father and has been rejected by the one man she loves, Jim. The parallels between The Glass Menagerie and Hamlet are quite strong. One odd point is that Jim speaks Ophelia’s lines and not Laura. One possible explanation is that Laura is repeatedly depicted as virtually voiceless in the story, so we constantly learn of her predicament through others’ commentaries. The focus is nonetheless clearly on a heartbroken Laura with Tom as the Shakespeare-like figure who constructed the entire play from a painful memory. It is also a painful remembrance that is the thorn at the centre of the play Hamlet, forcing the young Prince into mental anguish and indecision.

The reference to “Shakespeare’s sister” is quite interesting in its own right. In “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf’s key point regarding this fictional sister is that “it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare” (58). Woolf then goes on to construct just such a woman, writing, “Imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith” (58). The fictional biography of Judith is that she is just as talented as her brother William. However, she is barred from educational opportunities on account of the restrictions of the historical era; she is burdened by the expectations of her sex (marriage and domesticity); she runs away from home and tries to succeed as an actress; and finally, she gets pregnant and then tragically commits suicide! This synopsis does an injustice to Woolf’s story, but it makes explicit the kind of comparison being employed by Williams to illuminate the character of Laura. Even in 1930s America, Laura is restricted to just two life choices, and these are marriage or a gender-appropriate career. Yet, much like a solitary writer/artist who has no adequate outlet for her talents, this girl “lives in a world of her own.” It is not clear if Laura is in fact talented, but she certainly has a well-developed imagination as proven by her obsession with the assorted characters in the glass menagerie. Unfortunately, Laura, like Shakespeare’s sister Judith, is obstructed from expressing herself in any manner that does not conform to societal expectations. Jim’s throwaway joke of calling Laura “Shakespeare’s sister” is Williams’ ingenious way of giving us a glimpse of Laura’s potential. A girl walled in by suffocating expectations who lives in a world that is only a shadow of the life possible for Tom.

Tom is the Shakespeare figure in this play, so one must not forget that he artistically shapes the presentation of his own memories. In that case, is this modern-day poet moulding his memories to ameliorate his guilt? Laura’s story does not end as tragically as Judith’s, but we still sense a bleak, unfulfilling future ahead of her. When reading the play, it is of particular note that Tom is conspicuously absent in the scene between Jim and Laura, so it is most definitely a work of poetic imagination on Tom’s behalf. Is it not strange that a girl as fragile as Laura not only receives a kiss from the boy she loves in a fantasy scene but also forgives him when he breaks her prized glass unicorn? After all, the glass unicorn is symbolic of Laura’s delicate character and breaking it surely means a crushing, psychological blow. When Tom previously breaks one of her other glass figurines, Laura is inconsolable and screeches “My glass! – menagerie.” This is the same girl who cannot join the dinner table group due to overwhelming anxiety when Jim is present. Yet Tom as Shakespeare crafts a scene where she forgives a clumsy young man and even gives him her prized possession as a “souvenir.” Also of note is that Laura has no lines at the play’s ending, in fact, no lines after Jim leaves with her good wishes ringing in his ears. As Williams cautions at the play’s opening, “Memory takes a lot of poetic license.” One may even interpret the reference to Laura as “Shakespeare’s sister” as containing two opposing voices – the sympathetic playwright Williams (on account of his sister Rose) and the bristling, overburdened character Tom. In modern America, a frustrated brother would expect Laura to work just as hard as others to succeed instead of allowing a “little defect” to determine her life. Maybe Tom not only envies “Malvolio the Magician[’s]” escape trick but is also like the Malvolio character in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Malvolio was duped to perform a certain role due to his love of a woman, but he eventually realizes that “there was never a man so notoriously abused” (4.2.78). It may seem ironic to debate if Tom seeks to lessen his feelings of guilt in a play defined by guilt. Yet the shaping of memory is complex work. However, in the end, even this modern “Shakespeare” seems unable to quench a memory that haunts him every time he looks in a shop window and sees “pieces of coloured glass.”

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, edited by T. J. B. Spencer, Penguin Books, 2005.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet, edited by Horace Howard Furness, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1913.

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Hodder and Stoughton, 1908.

Williams, Tennessee. “The Catastrophe of Success.” New York Times, 30 November 1947.

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Signet, 1987.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Read Books Ltd, 2012.