The biographical theory in The Glass Menagerei by Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie is a four-character play memory play by Tennessee Williams, published in 1994 and catapulted William from obscurity to fame (Wikipedia).

This drama tells about the story of the unhappy family life after being deserted by the father and the daughter has problem in socializing.

THE CHARACTERS

1. Amanda Wingfield - Laura and Tom’s mother. A proud, vivacious woman, Amanda clings fervently to memories of a vanished, genteel past. She is simultaneously admirable, charming, pitiable, and laughable.
2. Laura Wingfield - Amanda’s daughter and Tom’s older sister. Laura has a bad leg, on which she has to wear a brace, and walks with a limp. Twenty-three years old and painfully shy, she has largely withdrawn from the outside world and devotes herself to old records and her collection of glass figurines.
3. Tom Wingfield - Amanda’s son and Laura’s younger brother. An aspiring poet, Tom works at a shoe warehouse to support the family. He is frustrated by the numbing routine of his job and escapes from it through movies, literature, and alcohol
4. Jim O’Connor - An old acquaintance of Tom and Laura. Jim was a popular athlete in high school and is now a shipping clerk at the shoe warehouse in which Tom works. He is unwaveringly devoted to goals of professional achievement and ideals of personal success.

THE SYNOPSIS 

The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura.

Amanda's husband abandoned the family long ago. Although a survivor and a pragmatist, the sometimes voluble Amanda yearns for the comforts and admiration she remembers from her days as a fêted Southern belle. She worries especially about the future of her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp and tremulous insecurity about the outside world. Tom works in a shoe warehouse doing his best to support them. He chafes under the banality and boredom of everyday life and struggles to write, while spending much of his spare time going to the movies — or so he says — at all hours of the night.

Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor (or, as she puts it, a "gentleman caller") for Laura, whose shyness helped lead her to drop out of high school and a subsequent secretarial course, and who spends most of her time with her collection of little glass animals. Pressed by his mother to help find someone, Tom eventually invites an acquaintance from work named Jim home for dinner. Laura realizes that Jim is the boy she was attracted to in high school and has thought of since — though the relationship between the shy Laura and the "most likely to succeed" Jim was never more than a fairly distant teasing acquaintanceship. Initially, Laura is so overcome by shyness that she is unable to join the others at dinner. After dinner, though, Jim and Laura are left alone by candlelight in the living room, waiting for the electricity to be restored (Tom, planning to escape his family, has failed to pay the power bill). During their long scene together, Jim diagnoses Laura's inferiority complex, urges her to think better of herself, and kisses her. Jim and Laura then share a quiet dance, and he accidentally brushes against the glass menagerie, knocking the glass unicorn to the floor and breaking off its horn. After Jim reveals that he is already engaged to be married, Laura asks him to take the broken unicorn as a gift and he then leaves. When Amanda learns that Jim is engaged she assumes Tom knew and lashes out at him.
As Tom speaks at the end of the play, it becomes clear that he left home soon afterward and did not return. In Tom's final speech, he bids farewell to his mother and sister, telling Laura to blow out the candles, which she does as the play ends.

The AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY {Tennessee Williams}

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American best known playwright, author of many stage classics.

After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie (1944), closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, and Sweet Bird of Youth.

Thomas Lanier Williams III was born of English, Welsh, and Huguenot descent, in Columbus, Mississippi, the second child of Edwina (née Dakin) and Cornelius Coffin (C.C.) Williams.

Cornelius Williams had a violent temper and was a man prone to use his fists. He disdained his son's effeminacy and his mother Edwina, locked in an unhappy marriage, focused her overbearing attention almost entirely on her frail young son. Many critics and historians note that Williams found inspiration for much of his writing in his own dysfunctional family.

By the mid-1930s his father's increasing alcoholism and abusive temper (he had part of his ear bitten off in a poker game fight) finally led Edwina to separate from him, although they never divorced.

Throughout his life William remained close to his sister Rose who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia as a young woman. In 1943, as her behavior became increasingly, she was subjected to a lobotomy, unfortunately with disastrous results, and was subsequently institutionalized for the rest of her life. As soon as he was financially able to, Williams had her moved to a private institution just north of New York City where he often visited her. He gave her a percentage interest in several of his most successful plays,the royalties from which were applied toward her care.  The devastating effects of Rose's illness may have contributed to Williams' alcoholism and his dependence on various combination of amphetamines and barbiturates.

After some early attempts at heterosexual relationships, by the late 1930s Williams had accepted his homosexuality. In New York he joined a gay social circle which included fellow writer and close friend Donald Windham (1920–2010) and his then partner Fred Melton. In the summer of 1940 Williams initiated an affair with Kip Kiernan (1918–1944), a young Canadian dancer he met in Province town Massachusetts. When Kiernan left him to marry a woman he was distraught, and Kiernan's death four years later at 26 delivered another heavy blow.

On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York at age of 71. The medical examiner's report indicated that he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops he frequently used, further indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room. Some people have questioned the official account of Williams's death. Forensic detective and expert Michael Baden reviewed the medical files in regard to Williams's death, and stated that the results showed that Williams died of a drug and alcohol overdose, not from choking. Williams's friend, playwright Larry Myers, said that the autopsy autopsy report was later modified to state that Williams actually died of acute seconal intolerance intolerance, and his friend Scott Kenan said that someone in the coroner's office invented the bottle cap scenario in the first place.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ REFLECTION OF LIFE IN HIS DRAMA THE GLASS MENAGERIE

The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams which premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on Williams himself, his histrionic mother, and his mentally fragile sister Rose. In writing the play, Williams drew on an earlier short story, as well as a screenplay he had written under the title of The Gentleman Caller.

The play premiered in Chicago in 1944. After a shaky start it was championed by Chicago critics Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy, whose enthusiasm helped build audiences so the producers could move the play to Broadway where it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1945. The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights.

The character and story mimic Williams's own life more closely than any of his other works. Williams (whose real name was Thomas) would be Tom, his mother, Amanda. His sickly and mentally unstable older sister Rose provides the basis for the fragile Laura (whose nickname in the play is "Blue Roses", a result of a bout of pleurisy as a high school student), though it has also been suggested that Laura may incorporate aspects of Williams himself, referencing his introverted nature and obsessive focus on a part of life (writing for Williams and glass animals in Laura's case). Williams, who was close to Rose growing up, learnt to his horror that in 1943 in his absence his sister had been subjected to a botched lobotomy. Rose was left incapacitated (and institutionalized) for the rest of her life. With the success of The Glass was left incapacitated (and institutionalized) for the rest of her life. With the success of The Glass Menagerie, Williams was to give half of the royalties from the play to his mother. He later designated half of the royalties from his play summer and smoke to provide for Rose's care, arranging for her move from the state hospital to a private sanitarium. Eventually he was to leave the bulk of his estate to ensure Rose's continuing care. Rose died in 1996.

CONCLUSION

Characters in his plays are often seen as representations of his family members. Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was understood to be modeled on Rose. Some biographers believed that the character of Blanche DuBois Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is also based on her. Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was generally seen to represent Williams' mother, Edwina. Characters such as Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer were understood to represent Williams himself. In addition, he used a lobotomy operation as a motif in Suddenly, Last Summer.

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