The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams. It was first published in 1945 and produced a year
before.
The scenes of the play is framed by the recollections of Tom Wingfield, according to his impressionistic narratives, accompanied by images projected on a screen. He recalls his life in St Louis with his mother Amanda, a faded Southern belle who endlessly clings to her glamorous illusions of the past, and with his sister Laura, a crippled shy young woman.
Laura's private world is centered on a collection of small glass animals she immensely treasures. Amanda's husband has long deserted the family, and she has transferred her romantic hopes to Laura, continually asking her about her gentlemen callers, in reality are non-existent.
Tom has become a compulsive movie-goer to escape intolerable situation at home. Amanda asks Tom, to invite his friend Jim O'Connor to dinner. Jim turns out to be the same young man with whom Laura was infatuated at high school. Laura's reserve and sensitivity are eased by Jim's warmth, but suddenly embarrassed, he tells her he is engaged to another girl. Thinking it was a deliberate joke on Tom's part, Amanda is enraged with Tom. Sick of the home situation, Tom leaves the house, never to return.
The play ends with Amanda comforting Laura, and with Tom's final narration filled with much pain for his sister.
The Glass Menagerie made a name for Tennessee Williams as a famous playwright in the American Theater.