Tennessee Williams is one of the greatest playwrights who enjoyed great reputation in America after the Second World War。 As a playwright, he receives a lot of theatrical awards。 During his lifetime, he has accomplished more than 60 plays and many of them have been adapted to films。 论文网

Born in Columbus, Williams has a violent, aggressive father, puritanical mother and a hypersensitive mother who is the prototype of Laura in The Glass Menagerie。 His family life provides rich materials for his later plays。 He has tried many jobs before he took writing plays as his career。 In 1940, he accomplished his first full-length production of Battle of Angles which helped him receive Rockefeller fellowship。 In 1945, The Glass Menagerie became a great success, which lofted him to celebrity。 With the success of A Streetcar Named Desire, he became one of the most applaud dramatists。 His other plays, such as Summer and Smoke, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Rose Tattoo, and The Night of the Iguana are also very widely known in the world。

What distinguishes Williams from his contemporary writers is his concern about the problem of women in patriarchy in his works as he lived with his unfortunate mother and sister。 (Li, 2012) He attaches great importance to the depiction of psychology of women such as Amanda who was greatly influenced by the southern traditions。 Apart from that, he also explores the human experience in modern world。 Out of compassion born of his own painful discovery of the ultimate loneliness a desolateness of inpidual human experience in the world where he lived, Williams has fashioned a theater in which images of incredible brutality collide with those of fragile beauty。 Kazan has written that “everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life。 He was so naked in his plays”。 (Gerald, 1973) Many of his plays represent his perspective he once announced: “it is not the essential dignity but the essential ambiguity of man that I think needs to be stated。” (Williams, 1978)

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame。 There are altogether four characters including Amanda, Laura Wingfield, Tom Wingfield and Mr。 Wingfield。 Amanda Wingfield is the mother who is a faded Southern lady。 She lives in a dingy apartment in St。 Louis with her daughter and son。 Although she lives a rather hard life, she still longs for the comforts and admiration that she remembers from her old days as a beautiful young lady。 She worries about the future of her daughter Laura, a twenty-year-old girl with a limp and extremely inferiority about herself。 Laura locks herself up in her own room and plays with her glass collections to avoid communication with people。 Since the children’s father run away from home, Tom, the only man in the family, has to take up the responsibility to support the whole family。 For the fear that her daughter cannot find a husband, Amanda was obsessed with looking for a young man for Laura。 She asks Tom to invite his colleague Jim home for dinner。文献综述

During the gathering, Laura discovers that Jim is the boy she falls in love with in high school。 As the evening approached, Jim finds that Laura is extremely shy and self-contemptuous so he sincerely encourages her to think better of herself and praise her for the specialty he find。 He and Laura dance together to a light music, in which he accidentally brushes against Laura’s glass menagerie, knocking a glass unicorn to the floor and breaking off its horn。 Jim then apologizes to Laura and kisses her。 When Laura feels she finally finds her soul mate, Jim reveals that he is already engaged。 Laura is a little bit sad but not desperate about that。 She gives him her broken unicorn as a souvenir and Jim then leaves。

 At the end of the play, Tom leaves home forever。 Amanda braces Laura and asks Laura to blow out the candles as the play ends。