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.

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.

scholarly journals Fantasmas no palco: Dancing at Lughnasa e o Teatro de Memória de Friel

2018 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Maria Isabel Rios de Carvalho Viana
Keyword(s):  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Brian Friel ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

É característica marcante da obra do dramaturgo irlandês Brian Friel a representação da memória no palco. Dancing at Lughnasa é uma de suas peças classificada pelos críticos como uma “peça de memória” por apresentar, assim como a peça The Glass Menagerie de Tennessee Williams, um narrador-personagem que narra eventos de seu passado. Porém, a relação dessa peça de Friel com a memória vai muito além da mera temática e passa a ser o procedimento e a forma do dramaturgo de fazer teatro à memória do próprio teatro, recuperando suas origens nos rituais e na tragédia e relendo elementos marcantes da fundação do Teatro Literário Irlandês. Partindo da ideia do “fantasmático” no teatro desenvolvida por Carlson, o objetivo desse artigo é detectar alguns dos “fantasmas” presentes no texto de Friel, mostrando o caráter metateatral da peça e de que forma Friel faz do seu teatro um Teatro de Memória.

scholarly journals DEVERES E QUERERES: CONFLITOS TRÁGICOS EM 'FILOCTETES' E 'O ZOOLÓGICO DE VIDRO' | DUTIES AND DESIRES: TRAGIC CONFLICTS IN 'PHILOCTETES' AND 'THE GLASS MENAGERIE'

2016 ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Carolina De Pinho Santoro Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Dilemma ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

<p>O objetivo deste trabalho é explorar a permanência de elementos trágicos no teatro contemporâneo, tendo como base as obras <em>Filoctetes</em>, de Sófocles, e <em>O zoológico de vidro</em>, de Tennessee Williams. Embora a produção da tragédia grega tenha se limitado a um curto período da Antiguidade clássica, elementos dessa forma artística ainda perduram e têm influenciado obras teatrais de diversos lugares até os dias de hoje. As duas peças analisadas compartilham a temática de um dilema ético, retratando um conflito entre a vontade e o dever que se reflete nos embates entre os personagens. </p><p><strong>Abstract:</strong><em> </em><em>This article explores the permanence of tragic elements in contemporary drama by focussing on Sophocles's </em>Philoctetes<em> and Tennessee Williams's </em>The Glass Menagerie<em>. Although the production of Greek tragedies was limited to a short period of classical antiquity, some elements of this artistic form endure and have influenced drama in various places up until the current day. Both plays thematize an ethical dilemma by portraying a conflict between one's will and one’s sense of duty, which is reflected in the verbal disputes between characters</em>.</p>

Falling Star

2020 ◽  
pp. 345-362
Author(s):  
Steven C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Constant Pressure ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Panoramic Image ◽  
Music Department ◽  
Ghost Town ◽  
Studio System ◽  
Gangster Film ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
The Glass Menagerie ◽  
Hollywood Studio System

This chapter dissects the demise of the Hollywood studio system, caused by several factors including the incursion of television. Warner Bros.’ legendary music department became, to quote Steiner, “a ghost town”; Max was among the few composers remaining on staff. Amid constant pressure to economize, Steiner continued to do fine work. He earned Ayn Rand’s praise for his musical depiction of nonconformity in The Fountainhead, created incendiary accompaniment for James Cagney’s valedictory gangster film White Heat; and devised an evocative “glass effect in music” for The Glass Menagerie. “Steiner has written a beautiful score,” Tennessee Williams wrote Jack Warner, “one that blends perfectly with the moods of the play.” Steiner also innovated as musical supervisor of the stereo-surround blockbuster This Is Cinerama, whose panoramic image foreshadowed IMAX. But most of his assignments were cheap, forgettable programmers, and his battles with Louise over Ronald grew increasingly bitter.

Tennessee Williams and Jo Mielziner: The Memory Plays

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-235
Author(s):  
Harry W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Human Values ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
American Drama ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
Glass Menagerie ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
The Glass Menagerie

The conventional reliance upon “memory,” the lyric subtleties of both writing and scenery, and the ubiquitous mood of emotional despair characterize three early Tennessee Williams plays — The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke — and set them a part from the less “poetic” currents in the Williams canon. The plays are remarkably similar in organic configuration; their shape and texture reveal a theatrical form of considerable distinction. Although they gained articulate theatrical expression under three different directors, the scenery for all three was designed (in the “Broadway” productions) by Jo Mielziner, whose ideas have continued to influence subsequent productions. The unique fusion of the Williams-Mielziner artistry has given the American drama a consummate theatre aesthetic: a vision of dramatic life most subtle in its use of human values and most articulate in its visual definition of mood.

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