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.