On March 26, 1911.one of America’s greatest playwrights entered the world. On that very day in Columbus, Mississippi Thomas Lanier Williams, better known as Tennessee Williams, was born.

Tennessee Williams was the second child born to Cornelius Coffin and Edwina Dakin Williams. His mother came from a genteel family, while his father was a descendent of the first state governor and senator from Tennessee. (Mississippi Writers Page).

Williams’s first brush with fame came at the young age of 16. It was then that Williams published his essay "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" in Smart Set. Within a year he published "The Vengeance of Nitocris" in Weird Tales. A few years later, in 1929 Williams entered the University of Missouri. His educational career there was short lived, in 1931 he left college to work for a shoe company.

The true beginning of Williams’s literary career began in 1937. In Memphis his first play "Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay" was produced. A year later Williams had two more plays produced by the Mummers of St. Louis. They produced "Candles to the Sun" and "The Fugitive Kind". In 1938 Williams finished college and graduated from the University of Iowa.

Later successes followed with the plays, "A Streetcar Named Desire," (1947) "Summer and Smoke," (1948) "A Rose Tattoo," (1951) "Camino Real," (1953) "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," (1955) and "Dragon Country" (1956), just to name a few. Williams even received two Pulitzer Prizes in 1948 for "A Streetcar Named Desire" and in 1955 for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". In all, Williams wrote over 14 plays, poems, and short stories.

"The Glass Menagerie" centers on the Wingfield family. The family consists of the matriarch, Amanda, and her two children Tom and Laura. Amanda is a homemaker who’s life centers around D.A.R. meeting and finding a suitable gentleman caller for Laura. Tom works as a shoemaker in an old warehouse. Laura is a very insecure young woman. A childhood illness has left her crippled. One of her legs is shorter than the other, thus requiring the use of a brace. She fears the mockery of the public and has even gone so far as to walk around St. Louis for eight hours, rather than admit to her mother she dropped out of Business College.

Due to Amanda’s constant nagging, Tom finally decides to bring home a gentleman caller. Jim, the gentleman caller, is a nice young man who went to high school with both Tom and Laura. Tom, the gentleman caller, works with Jim at the warehouse. Immediately both Amanda and Laura are attracted to Jim, but Laura soon discovers that his heart belongs to another.

It was near the end of the Second World War, in 1944, that "The Glass Menagerie" was written. Initially Broadway producers Eddie Dowling and Louis Singer were skeptical of the play's success. Although the character’s denial of reality may be psychologically realistic, many critics questioned the reality of the play’s characters. They believed Williams presented four characters whose lives seem to center around an avoidance of reality. For instance, Tom uses the escape of movies to remove himself from his day-to-day job and his unpleasant homelife. Amanda finds herself living in the memories of her younger days. She refuses to admit the harsh reality that her husband has abandoned both her and her family. Jim, the gentleman caller, hides behind his zeal to succeed. This desire for success shields him from the blandness of his ordinary life. Finally, Laura has created an elaborate world with her collection of glass animals. With her glass collection, Laura can escape into a world where she feels as if she is normal.

The notion of avoiding reality still occurs today, nearly 60 years after "The Glass Menagerie" was written. Often people who feel they do not fit in hide themselves behind facades. They pretend to be something they are not, thus avoiding reality like the characters from "The Glass Menagerie".

Despite some initial reservations, "The Glass Menagerie" was produced in both Chicago and on Broadway. In 1955, the play won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award as the best play of the season.

This passage is taken from scene seven. It is during this particular scene that Laura and Jim have their first in-depth conversation. It is also during this scene that Laura talks about her glass collection.

Jim: Now how about you? Isn’t there something you take more interest in than anything else?

Laura: Well, I do – as I said – have my – glass collection.

[A peal of girlish laughter rings from the kitchenette.]

Jim: I’m not right sure I know what you’re talking about. What kind of glass is it?

Laura: Little articles of it, they’re ornaments mostly! Most of them are little animals in the world. Mother calls them a glass menagerie! Here’s an example of one, if you’d like to see it! This one is one of the oldest. It’s nearly thirteen.

{Music: "The Glass Menagerie".]

{He stretches out his hand.]

Oh, be careful – if you breathe, it breaks!

Jim: I’d better not take it. I’m pretty clumsy with things.

Laura: Go on, I trust you with him! [She places the piece in his palm.] There now – you’re holding him gently! Hold him over the light, he loves the light! You see how the light shines through him?

Jim: It sure does shine!

Laura: I shouldn’t be partial, but this is my favorite one.

Jim: What kind of a thing is this one supposed to be?

Laura: Haven’t you noticed the single horn on his forehead?

Jim: A unicorn, huh?

Laura: Mmmm-hmmm!

Jim: Unicorns – aren’t they extinct in the modern world?

Laura: I know!

Jim: Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome.

Laura [smiling]: Well, if he does he doesn’t complain about it. He stays on a shelf with some horses that don’t have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together.

Jim: How do you know?

Laura [lightly]: I haven’t heard any arguments among them!

Jim [grinning]: No arguments, huh? Well, that’s a pretty good sign! Where shall I set him?

On February 24, 1983 Tennessee Williams died at the Hotel Elysie in New York City. Williams will always be remembered as one of the most successful playwrights of the 20^th Century. While most of Williams’ plays were set in the South, they rose above regionalism and allowed people everywhere to appreciate their universal themes. For the first time ever, a Southern writer was in the forefront of American playwrights.

Williams, Tennessee. "The Glass Menagerie". New York: Random House, 1945.

Boxill, Roger. Tennessee Williams. New York: St. Martin’s, 1987.

Crandall, George. The Critical Response to Tennessee Williams. Westport: Greenwood, 1996.

Martin, Robert. Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams (Critical Essays on American Literature). New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

O’Conner, Jacqueline. Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1997.

Presley, Delma. The Glass Menagerie: An American Memory. Boston: Twayne, 1990.