Escapism vs. Escape in ‘The Glass Menagerie’

Escape and escapism are major themes in Tennessee Williams’ play, ‘The Glass Menagerie’. The themes span the entire play, control the lives of the characters, and are manifested throughout through Williams’ use of symbols, setting and structure.
I’m going to upload this article in two parts because it kind of turned into an epic rambling on the themes, so I’ll separate it nicely into ‘Escapism’ and ‘Escape’ for you all.

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Part One: Escapism
Escapism is a very real aspect of the Wingfield family. Each member has its own methods and reasons for their desire to slip through the meshes of reality into the realms of fantasy (though these reasons generally boil down to dislike of their depressing, mundane existences). This wish to dismiss the painful reality of their lives through the use of fantasy or memory is manifested in such ways because of the futility and impossibility of a clean break from the family, and of real escape. The family members are inextricably bound to one another by their joint need for escape and for fulfilment. This makes escapism extremely important in keeping their world in one piece.
Amanda’s escapism is very much rooted in her memories of the past. She is described as ‘a little woman of great vitality clinging frantically to another time and place’: somewhere where she was happy. Amanda’s memories of Blue Mountain, her home when she was young girl, is her where of trying to bring some of the spirit of the good ol’ days, when she was young and popular and loved and sought after, into her current, boring, life. She buys jonquils, a flower she was obsessed with in her youth, to try and bring this spark of happiness and vivacity back into her life.

But this flower of youth is now faded and ineffectual when faced with Laura’s relative failure at attracting gentlemen callers compared to Amanda’s tale of 17 gentlemen callers in one day back at Blue Mountain. Laura crippling shyness prevents Amanda from living through her daughter’s youth and beauty as she would like to. Her only other method of escapism in the present is through her membership of the prestigious D.A.R (Daughters of the American Revolution – a women’s society for descendants of the patriots of the Revolutionary War). Her membership is a way of holding on to her faded glory – hence she wears her best outfit (all cheap or imitation) and presents her sugary Southern charm to other D.A.R members. But even this escapism proves relatively ineffectual: she is shunned by other members that she speaks to on the phone; one woman even hangs up on her. All Amanda wants is love and acceptance, something she had in abundance in her youth, but now seems scarce to her. Her futile escapism strives for these, even if it means searching for it in places that are really out of reach for her.

Tom uses escapism because he longs for adventure. He goes to the movies every night to escape the drab life he leads as a warehouse worker (a profession he detests when he truly wishes to be a poet and travel the world), living with his overbearing mother and dependent sister. These over-frequent trips to the movies he feels are ‘compensation for lives that passed like [his], without any change or adventure’. He is accused by his mother, who relies on him to ‘make sacrifices’ and generally face reality on behalf of the family via his work at the warehouse, of retreating into fantasy: ‘you live in a dream: you manufacture illusions’. But, far more so than the other characters, Tom actually focuses on making his escapism a reality through attempts at practical escape. In the end he does follow in the footsteps of his father and successfully escapes the family – though how effectively this is achieved is debatable...

However, the third Wingfield really takes the biscuit when it comes to escapism, for Laura is the ultimate fantasist. Almost everything Laura does or says in the play is for some kind of escape or escapism. She is described as a girl who has ‘failed to establish contact with reality’, who lives ‘in a world of her own – a world of glass ornaments’. Her ‘glass menagerie’, as Amanda calls it, is Laura’s main means of escapism in the play: it is a world into which she becomes absorbed, and focuses all her energies on. The glass menagerie is Laura’s escape from the harshness of reality. Her disability and lack of confidence has led to an intense shyness. So she chooses to isolate herself in a world of glass, and dotes over the tiny ornaments to avoid interaction with others. It is no surprise that this key symbol of escapism gives the play its title.

Laura’s glass menagerie is a collection of tiny glass animal figurines. She feels a far stronger connection with these creatures than any human, even ascribing the glass figures personalities. She, in many ways, feels herself one of her own glass collection, and Tom notes her increasing regression into this world of fantasy: ‘she is like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile’. The glass animal that she particularly identifies with as her favourite is a glass unicorn, a creature that shares her singularity and fragility. But the horn of this unicorn is broken off when it falls from a table knocked by Jim and Laura whilst dancing. Laura’s comment to reassure Jim after this is that ‘glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are’. This is also true of Laura, who after Jim’s rejection of her, on account of his engagement, retreats further back into her fantasies, and also of the nature of her escapism – it is truly a fragile world that is almost destroyed by the interference of Jim, the ‘emissary from a world of reality’. But there is a difference between the unicorn and Laura. The unicorn becomes just like the other glass horses, and transfers from the world of fantasy to reality. This could symbolise Laura’s refutation of her escapism, but instead she gives the broken unicorn to Jim as ‘a souvenir’, thus separating the assimilated unicorn from herself and retaining her singularity. The glass unicorn leaves the Wingfield home with Jim on his departure, whilst Laura remains trapped in her world of escapism.