The Glass Menagerie - Research Paper Example

The play gives not the external reality but the internal real life, life as felt rather than seen’. Since it is a memory play it represents the mental stature than the realistic expression. It is quite apt to think about the inner state of the characters by psychoanalytical approach. It is very strange that Laura, though very passive, is yet the centre around which the play revolves. The mother worries about her. Her mother Amanda is very much attached to her. She understands her plight but at the same time wants her to correct herself and improve herself; her brother continues to be haunted by her memory even after deserting her.

Thus Laura is the pivot of the play. Tennesse Williams created Laura in the image of his sister Rose. Williams’’ fondness for is sister is evident I portraying Laura as an idol of beauty, delicacy and purity. He builds her within a protective coating of glass and warns the world to stay away lest she should become contaminated by ills. Laura, because of her physical disability and disposition, retreats herself to the world of Glass menagerie collection. According to Griffin her ‘glass animals are her escape mechanism’.

Laura is completely isolated from the external world which seems to her as hostile and cruel world for a frail girl like Laura. The description from the sixth scene obviously state this attitude. “The arrangement of Laura’s hair is changed; it is softer and more becoming. A fragile unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura; she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting” (Glass 62). Laura is described as an object exposed to male gaze; her face ‘unearthly fragile’.

Thus Laura is identified as one of the unanimated glass animals only to be watched and touched by other forces. Her intimacy with the glass objects is the psychological process of mind. Carl