Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, http://www.uni-jena.de/, language: English, abstract: “At the age of fourteen, I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable. It immediatly became my place of retreat, my cave, my refuge.“1 This quotation by Tennessee Williams mirrors his inability to cope with the challenges and strokes of fate of his real life. For example, he felt responsible for the lobotomie of his sister Rose although he had no knowledge about this operation. Furthermore, he could not cope with his social environment, especially with his father`s incapability to handle his introvert son. With his first success, the play “The Glass Menagerie“ (1944), Williams holds up the mirror to the Broadway audience of the 1950`s who is not willing to face the reality of the postwar period or to digest it`s experiences with the Second World War. In the same way as this generation flies from their war recollections into a problem repressing fictious world and as Williams escapes from his personal reality through writing, the figures of the drama fly from an unsatisfying life into their dreamworlds. The play deals with the Wingfield family (Amanda, Tom and Laura), who “share[s] a small apartment in a poor section of St. Louis.“2 The family members have, through the visit of a gentlemen caller for Laura (Jim), the chance to realize their dreams. But “the friend Tom brings home to meet Laura [...], although he happens to be the boy she secretly admired in high school, turns out, unfortunately, to be already engaged.“3 Tennessee Williams`s breakthrough “The Glass Menagerie“ is respected to be one of his best plays, with Broadway performances exceeded only by “A Streetcar named Desire“ In this paper it is to point out the character presentation and character constellation in Tennessee Williams`s “The Glass Menagerie“. Firstly, I am going to analyse the character and then comment on his or her relationship to the other characters and so on. The first character to analyse is Amanda, then follow Tom, Jim, and last but not least, Laura.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, http: //www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut f r Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Classics of Modern American Drama, 18 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Of particular interest for this paper is the juxtaposition of conflicting traits in Amanda's character. On the one hand, she is characterized by critics as the good mother and perpetuator. On the other hand, she is the terrible, cruel mother and perpetrator. These different characteristics seem to be directly connected to Amanda's relationship to her children. For her daughter she is the good mother, trying everything to ensure her daughter's security in the future. Her son experiences his mother's treatment as suffocating and restricting for his dreams and ambitions. Yet, both of these different attitudes seem to be motivated by the same disposition in Amanda: the love and devotion of a mother for her children. Consequently, there must be other reasons that motivate Amanda's behavior. This paper is going to consider the social and economical situation in the USA at the time of the play, Amanda's glorification of her own past and the fact that the play is Tom's memory for a combination of these three points seem to be the reason why Amanda is portrait as such an ambiguous character in the drama. To begin with, the relevant social and economic circumstances in the USA during the time of the play are going to be analyzed. Amanda's glorification of her past is then discussed followed by the analysis of the influence of Tom's memory on the portrayal of Amanda in the play. Finally, the results of the analysis of the three factors are applied to the relationship of Amanda and her children.

THE STORY: The action takes place in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, shortly before the First World War. Alma Winemiller, a sensitive and lonely young woman, has become increasingly restive and disturbed by the fear that she will remain a spinster. Hem

Tennessee Williams and William Inge today are recognized as two of the greatest American playwrights, whose work irrevocably altered the theatrical and social landscapes. In 1944, however, neither had achieved anything like genuine success. As flamboyant genius Williams prepares for the world premiere of his play The Gentleman Caller—to become The Glass Menagerie—self-loathing Inge struggles through his job as a theater critic, denying his true wish to be writing plays. Based on real-life but closed-door encounters, reconstructed from troves of comments (and elisions) by each man about their relationship, Philip Dawkins gorgeously envisions what might have taken place during those early-career meetings.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category National Book Award Finalist 2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014' USA Today: 10 Books We Loved Reading Washington Post, 10 Best Books of 2014 The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of The New Yorker. John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life—his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin—Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.