Four characters and a memory appearing in The Glass Menagerie:
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The Wingfields
Amanda
Amanda Wingfield
"I wasn't prepared for what the future brought me."
An ageing former Southern Belle, Mother to Laura and Tom, and would-be-matriarch of the Wingfield family. She was born into a wealthy family in the rural South, but fell for the blue-collar Mr Wingfield, who promptly abandoned her, leaving Amanda all but impoverished and alone. She means well and wants the best for her children, but is incredibly bossy and domineering, finding comfort only in her memories.- Age-Inappropriate Dress: She wears a 'girlish' summer frock left over from her youth in the last two scenes.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Amanda boasts on and on about the seventeen gentlemen callers she had on a single day back in her youth although she might have exaggerated the number as the years passed, due to faulty memory or an effort to console herself.
- Jerkass: She's a massive Control Freak, constantly bossing and belittling her children, especially Tom, about the most minor of things.
- Moral Guardians: Hides or destroys a book by D. H. Lawrence that Tom got from the library, (probably Lady Chatterley's Lover), describing it as "filth". Considering she was probably raised as a conservative in the Deep South, this makes sense.
- My Beloved Smother: Amanda is very overbearing, towards Tom in particular, best demonstrated by her lecturing him on how to chew in the first scene.
- Riches to Rags: Amanda was born into a wealthy family, spending her days being waited on by servants, hobnobbing at fancy parties and being courted by landowners' heirs... Until she married the deceptively charming Mr Wingfield, who left her living in near-poverty in St Louis with his two children.
- Southern Belle: As above, used to be a straight example, until Mr Wingfield swept her off her feet.
- Stepford Smiler: Desperately attempts to remain cheerful and optimistic in the face of everything, often behaving as if she's just as well-off as she was before meeting Mr. Wingfield and preferring to live in her past.
- Struggling Single Mother: Mr. Wingfield left long ago, leaving the near-penniless Amanda to raise Tom and Laura by herself, in the 1920s and 30s no less, when attitudes towards single moms would be far worse than they are now.
- Turn Out Like His Father: Pleads Tom not to make a rash decision and join the Merchant Navy, admitting that she and Laura would be lost without him. She's right of course, but Tom will realise that far too late. And her own behavior contributed to driving Tom away. Had she been less overbearing, Tom might have stayed with her and Laura, especially Laura.
Tom
Tom Wingfield
"I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!"
Amanda's intelligent but restless son, who resents the drudgery of his job in a shoe warehouse, taken on to support the family, and chafes very badly under his mother's controlling behaviour. He longs to follow in his father's footsteps and live an adventurous life, but his love and compassion for Laura holds him back.- The Alcoholic: A functional one, this being a characteristic inherited from his father. His nightly "trips to the movies" are a cover for him going out drinking to forget his miserable life, given that he clearly comes back drunk from one of them.
- Author Avatar: The play is semi-autobiographical and Tom represents Tennessee Williams himself: the playwright's given first name was "Thomas", he also held a job he loathed in a shoe factory, and he also had to deal with an abusive, alcoholic absentee father and a mentally ill sister he regretted not being able to help.
- Big Brother Instinct: While Laura is technically older than him, it still applies as he is much more mature than her, and clearly cares about her wellbeing, instantly snapping out of one of his angry rages at Amanda when he inadvertently damages her precious glass collection. This ends up Zig-Zagged, as he abandons her at the end of the play, but is wracked with guilt about it.
- Calling the Old Woman Out: Angry Jerkass he may be, but he makes a good point about Amanda's obsession with the past causing her to become detached from reality.
- Deadpan Snarker: Several of his lines show his dry sense of humor, particularly his (intentionally, blatantly false) angry rant at Amanda about his double life as criminal kingpin 'Killer' Wingfield. A less emotionally charged and more typical example:Amanda: Rise and shine!Tom: I'll rise, but I won't shine.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Tom, in his monologue in the end, reveals that the guilt of abandoning Laura means he cannot find peace in anything he does.
- Generation Xerox: Just like his father he is an alcoholic, who longs for a life of adventure, and eventually abandons his family just as Mr Wingfield did, to join the Merchant Navy.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Has a tendency to fly off the handle very, very quickly as a result of Amanda's nagging, which, to be frank, is kind of understandable.
- Jerkass: He's an extremely angry young man who hates having to provide for his family, calls his mother a "babbling old witch" (although this isn't too unfair), and eventually abandons Laura and Amanda, presumably dooming them to a life of abject poverty.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Tom's closing monologue reveals that after getting fired from the warehouse shortly after the events of the final scene, he finally left St Louis and his family behind to travel the world as a merchant sailor... But he laments that no matter where he went, he found himself haunted by the guilt of abandoning Laura.
- Unreliable Narrator: In his opening monologue, Tom concedes that the play is his memory, with which he has taken considerable creative licence, and that the most realistic of the characters shown is Jim.
Laura
Laura Wingfield
"I - I - have never had much luck at - making friends."
Amanda’s shy and delicate daughter, who is actually older than Tom, although her childlike innocence means this is not immediately obvious. She lives a lonely existence in the family’s apartment, with her "glass menagerie", a collection of miniature animals she obsessively cleans and polishes.- Beautiful All Along: Cruelly Subverted. Just as it seems like she could become so and become romantically involved with Jim, the crushing blow of his engagement was so much that she went straight back to Shrinking Violet territory.
- Hikikomori: She very rarely interacts with others and spends the majority of her time alone in the apartment.
- Informed Flaw: Her being 'crippled'. It doesn't show, though supposedly she wore a leg brace in high school.
- Leitmotif: She's associated with a piece also called The Glass Menagerie, a delicate, mournful tune described as akin to circus music from far away.
- Lonely Doll Girl: While older than most examples, Laura and her collection of glass figures certainly fit this trope.
- Morality Chain: Tom's love for Laura is the only thing keeping him from up and leaving St. Louis and his family behind for most of the play. And in the end, even that isn't enough when Amanda accuses him of knowingly inviting an engaged man home to meet Laura, causing him to reach his breaking point and leave.
- Old Maid: The implication is that if Jim doesn't marry Laura, she's doomed to a life of spinsterhood. He doesn't.
- Shrinking Violet: She's so shy that being in a typing class caused her to vomit, but this is Justified given the implications she has a form of social anxiety disorder.
- Unconfessed Unemployment: A variant: Amanda thinks Laura's taking a business-college typing class with the eventual aim of getting a job, but in Scene 2 it's revealed that after throwing up in her first lesson, she never went back and instead spends her days visiting art galleries and the zoo.
- Womanchild: Played for Drama. Her unspecified mental disorder(s), which in turn have probably not been helped by Amanda's tender ministrations, mean that she's essentially unable to function as an adult and instead spends her time obsessing over her "Glass Menagerie" and watching penguins at the zoo.
Mr Wingfield
Mr Wingfield
"One thing your father had plenty of – was charm!"
— Amanda
Amanda's husband, and Tom and Laura's father, who "fell in love with long distances" long ago, quitting his job and abandoning his family to travel the world. He appears only as a large photographic portrait displayed in the Wingfields’ apartment.
- The Alcoholic: Amanda describes him as this, a characteristic lifted from Tennessee Williams's father, who he is based on, and one he appears to have passed on to Tom.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: To Amanda, and everyone else who met him, he seemed like a cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy, but he turned out to be a selfish asshole who abandoned his wife and two young children to fend for themselves.
- Dad the Veteran: In some productions, and the original text, he wears a WWI doughboy's uniform in the photograph.
- Disappeared Dad: He's been gone since Laura and Tom were young children.
- Last-Name Basis: He's referred to only as "he" or "your father", and his first name is never mentioned.
- Present Absence: Amanda's obsession with her past and overprotectiveness, not to mention Tom's resentment at being forced to be the family breadwinner, are direct results of his departure, and are central to their characters for much of the play.
The Gentleman Caller
Jim
Jim O'Connor
A cheerful, polite young man and Tom’s Only Friend at the warehouse. He hasn’t attained the lofty heights of success he seemed destined for at high school, but remains optimistic and extremely patriotic.- Foil: To Tom. Both are intelligent young men who's future has turned out to be far from what they hoped it would be and even work in the same shoe warehouse in dead end jobs. But Jim remains positive and is taking night school classes in the hope that he'll eventually land a better job, and is friendly and helpful to everyone he meets, while Tom is angry, bitter and seeking to run away from it all.
- Future Loser: In high school he was a basketball star as well as captain of the debating team, but he's ended up working as a lowly clerk in the same warehouse as Tom. He's got grand plans to get out of the rut and work in the newly-emerging television industry, but there's no strong suggestions they will be successful.
- Love Interest: He is this to Laura, and seems to return her feelings, describing her as beautiful and encouraging her to come out of her shell... Until it's revealed he's already engaged.
- Nice Guy: That's Tennessee Williams' whole character description of him in the published play. Exactly how 'nice' he is questionable after he kisses and then rejects Laura, due to being already engaged.
- Patriotic Fervor: Unless it's all part of an act, he clearly loves America, describing its present state as "wonderful"... During The Great Depression.
- Straw Character: Significantly Downplayed, but an essential function of his character is to deconstruct The American Dream by showing that an optimistic, confident overachiever can still get screwed by life as easily as anyone else. While Jim is convinced he's destined for success, it's suggested that this is far from likely.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Criticises Tom's plans to join the Merchant Navy (leaving the electricity bill unpaid) and attempts to persuade him to take night-school classes and find a different career, just as he's trying to do.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Despite working in the same shoe warehouse as Tom and only earning $20 (about $400 in today's money) more a month than him, Jim is wholeheartedly sold on The American Dream: he's convinced he can become an executive, taking night-school classes in public speaking to prepare himself, and frequently waxes lyrical about the wonders of America and capitalism.
