Abstracto

The world of illusion in Tennessee Williamâ�?�?s â�?�?The Glass Menagerieâ�?

Jemima Daniel

The glass Menagerie is considered by many critics to be Williams’ best play. This play when it staged in 1944 immediately established Williams’ reputation as a dramatist. Earlier, he had written a short story ‘Portrait of a Girl in Glass’. Also he had composed a film script ‘Gentleman Caller’. The Glass Menagerie derives from these two pieces as well as from his experience of his own family and their life in St. Louis which is the drama’s locale. This is the play of gentle aristocratic tradition of the warm South at bay in the soulless materialistic society of the North. The individual crushed by a mechanical society is forced to seek relief from pain in memory fantasy and flight.