Tennessee WIlliams’ Laura in The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams uses a variety of techniques to reveal to us the character of Laura in The Glass Menagerie. We are introduced to Laura as she is seated at a “delicate ivory chair” (137), polishing her collection of glass objects. Before any dialogue is spoken, we are presented with two images of fragility, the chair and the glass collection. Laura is a dreamer, much like Walter in A Raisin in the Sun, but, unlike Walter, Laura does not dream of wealth and power, she simply dreams of beautiful things, not concrete things like money and cars, but of things that inspire feelings of freedom, joy, and serenity. Williams shows us this as Laura describes her daytime activities to her mother, Amanda.

Having shirked off her studies at Rubicam’s Business College, which made her so nervous that she vomited on the floor, she chooses to spend every day, “from half-past seven till after five” (139), visiting museums, the bird houses at the zoo, movies, and the “Jewel-box”, a place where exotic tropical flowers are grown. Laura’s lack of pragmatism is evident here, as she simply wants to partake in things of beauty: artwork, birds, tropical flowers, and walks in the park.

This mode of thought has been Laura’s for a long time, presumably her whole life, as Amanda speaks to her with a tone of pure exasperation that comes from repeating one’s self endlessly with the same message. “So what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and watch the parades go by? Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie, darling? Eternally play those worn-out phonograph records your father left as a painful reminder of him?” (139), Amanda pleads to Laura after she learns of her dropping out of school. She obviously doesn’t expect an answer from Laura, and it seems that some version of this speech has been repeated many times.

Laura is a perpetual dreamer, and her mother’s attempts to ground her always end up unsuccessful, with Laura returning to the “glass menagerie” of her own world. In the course of this conversation, we also learn that Laura is very shy and introverted, perhaps due to the fact that she is crippled. Amanda recounts her visit to Rubicam’s Business College, telling Laura that no one knew who she was, but that the instructor remembered only, “that shy little girl who dropped out of school after only a few days’ attendance” (138). This quality is also revealed to us by Laura’s actions upon Amanda’s mention of marriage.

“Of course- some girls do marry.” (140), Amanda tells her, which causes Laura to twist her hands nervously; when Amanda repeats this a second time, Laura gives a startled laugh and reaches immediately for one of her glass treasures. Laura does not want to marry because of her introversion, a frequent partner to shyness, which Amanda fears will cause Laura to remain unmarried for the rest of her life; the only boy she even mentions is one she hasn’t seen since high school, and presumably will never see again.

This brings us to what is perhaps Williams’ most effective method of exposing Laura’s character- the symbolism of the “glass menagerie” itself. The menagerie represents Laura’s fragile state, both physically and emotionally, as well as her tendency to live in her own little world. The menagerie is serene, quiet, and beautiful, though not a thing of extreme beauty, and exists simply to be admired, but its objects are very fragile and therefore easily broken; Laura is serene and quiet, attractive, but not exceptionally so, and her emotional state is very fragile, as is shown by her inability to cope with business school, as well as her lack of any realistic plans for her life.

Undisturbed, the menagerie is fine, but the smallest blow can shatter everything in it. The image Williams paints of Laura is one of quiet, serene beauty, and, most of all, loneliness, a trait that is shared by both Amanda and Laura’s brother, Tom. This is an important theme in The Glass Menagerie, that of loneliness, and Laura seems to be the personification of loneliness; alleviating Laura’s loneliness and introversion is what Amanda is struggling toward for the entire story, in the hope that Laura’s eventual happiness might spread to them all.