glass menagerie
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In The Glass Menagerie, none of the characters is capable of living entirely in the present. Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters who are avoiding reality more than facing it.
Amanda's relationship to reality is the most complicated in the play. She frees herself from the harsh realities of life by constantly reminding herself of the past. She continuously repeats the story of the " one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain--your mother received--seventeen!--gentlemen callers! " (Williams 942). When Jim comes over for dinner, Amanda wears the " girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash " that she wore on the day she met her husband (Williams 965). Amanda lives with the past, and at the same time damaging the children psychologically. At the end of the play, she is a crushed woman when her plans for Laura do not work, and she is forced to deal with reality...