scholarly journals Repetition as Trapped Emotion in Tennessee Williams’s the Glass Menagerie

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-51
Author(s):  
Olivera Kusovac ◽  
Jelena Pralas
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
Emotional Conflicts ◽  
Stylistic Device ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

AbstractRepetition as a linguistic and stylistic device extensively used in Tennessee Williams’s plays has been noticed by many. At the same time, more psychologically-inclined scholars have frequently drawn parallels between Williams’s plays and his own experiences and emotional conflicts. In an attempt to combine the two perspectives, this article will explore the function of repetitions as indicators of trapped emotions in Williams’s celebrated and award-winning play The Glass Menagerie. Starting from the stylistic theoretical background, but at the same time taking into account the psychological insights into the link between Williams’s life and work through some basic concepts of Freud and Lacan, an attempt will be made to demonstrate that in this play linguistic repetition appears as an obsessive expression of the characters’ emotions as well as those of the dramatist himself, making him repeat and relive both his experiences and his emotions. The authors will first introduce the concept and functions of repetition as a linguistic and stylistic device and then explore its representative instances in individual characters and their meanings, ending with the parallels which can be drawn between the characters’ and the dramatist’s own experiences and emotions expressed or intensified through repetitions.

Williams's the Glass Menagerie

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-51
Author(s):  
Elizabeth C. Cobbe
Keyword(s):  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

scholarly journals Blue Mountain and Blue Roses: An Exploration of the Feminine Psyche in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-205
Author(s):  
Namitha V. S
Keyword(s):  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Role Expectations ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Blue Mountain ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Southern Belle ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams, the remarkably outstanding American dramatist of the 1920s, through his plays, presents a marked concern for the identity crisis a woman faces. He projects the crisis arising out of the conflict between a woman’s own aspirations and the traditional role expectations. The Glass Menagerie (1945) depicts the life of two women- Amanda Wingfield and her daughter Laura Wingfield. Amanda is the typical Southern belle that suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune, who withdraws from reality into fantasy. Her daughter Laura, the physically and emotionally crippled heroine of the play is a self-less character who does not speak as much of others. She is extra-ordinarily sensitive and delicate; and her cripple isolates herself into her own illusory world with her own glass menagerie. This paper is an attempt to close study the women protagonists in this play and to reveal that they are a combination of a particular personality type. Williams seems to be interested in the personal and psychological aspects of his women. This paper tries to analyse the psyche of these women and prove that they seem to be more complex and complicated than portrayed in the work.

The Glass Menagerie

1990 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Irene Shaland ◽  
Tennessee Williams
Keyword(s):  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams’s Misunderstood ‘memory play’: Re-Imagining Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-493
Author(s):  
Ramón Espejo Romero
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

Abstract Tennessee Williams famously called The Glass Menagerie a ‘memory play’. This remark has been consistently overlooked or misinterpreted by critics, unleashing a tradition of approaching the play in a rather confusing fashion concerning who the characters are and how the playwright uses them. This paper engages with the character of Amanda. First of all, I will trace major transformations in the conception of characters throughout twentieth-century drama, providing background for Williams’s attempt to redefine major aspects of a playwright’s craft such as what a ‘character’ is. Secondly, I will survey a critical tradition surrounding Tom Wingfield’s mother and consider major views concerning the character. Recurrent in them, as my analysis indicates, is the failure to acknowledge her as a tool for the ‘memory work’ Tom carries out. The character is subsequently posited as a fluid entity that helps Tom (and Williams) make sense of the past and explore how their families shaped who they were. As opposed to a realistic play, where so much is given at the start, a ‘memory play’, as Williams seems to have conceived it, remains a cry for the reader to join the playwright in a common search for meaning, one that utilizes, rather than just displays, characters in order to reach standpoints that are far from fixed and immutable.

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