Escapism vs. Escape in ‘The Glass Menagerie’ - Continued

Part Two: Escape
Right from Tom’s opening monologue, the audience discovers how escape has shaped the lives of the Wingfields. Tom’s father was ‘a telephone man who fell in love with long distances’, who escaped the lives of the Wingfield family with a letter that simply stated “Hello – Goodbye!”. His ‘larger-than-life-sized photograph over the mantel’ serves as a constant reminder to the family (especially to Tom) that escape can be achieved (it is often lit up at crucial moments of the play to emphasise its symbolic nature), but also as a mocking reminder that the characters remain trapped.

Just as ‘art’ (an image of the father) acts as a symbol of escape, so does music. Laura constantly relies on the music of the Victrola for an escape from any awkward situation she finds herself in: i.e. any time she feels she is being forced to face reality. For example, when Amanda insists that Laura answer the door to ‘the gentleman caller’, Laura avoids this duty by going to play the Victrola to ease her anxiety. Music often has the effect of transporting the listener to ‘another world’, one that is less stressful and wrought with troubles as reality, and so acts as an escape to another place, even whilst the listener remains static. However, despite this escapist quality, the listener can only escape momentarily with music – Laura does eventually have to answer the door – and it is therefore, as many of the other forms of escape in this play, it is only a futile method of temporary escape that is metaphysical rather than spatial.

The events of the play throughout are also governed by the theme of escape. One reason for this is Amanda’s control over the domestic setting, with her desires for her children to have successful futures controlling the family. Amanda wishes to ensure her children escape from their current depressing existence; Tom through his job providing for the family, Laura through being married off to a nice ‘gentleman caller’. However, ironically, her obsession with this ends up actually repressing the whole family’s capacity for escape two-fold. It entraps Amanda in her neurotic state (‘her life is paranoia’), and entraps the children in her mother’s ambitions for them, which neither of them can ever fulfil.

Despite her ambitions’ overall failings, Amanda’s will does ensure that a ‘gentleman caller’ does materialise to meet Laura. His arrival is so critical and anticipated by the family as his role could be to free the entire family from their enslavement in their unwanted roles. However, after raising their hopes, Jim too further entraps the family, sending a devastated Laura deeper into regression in her fantasy world, dashing Amanda’s hopes of her children’s success, and denying Tom his chance to escape his warehouse job whilst ensuring the family’s safety – so that eventually, ‘to escape from a trap he has to act without pity’.

One of the main symbols of escape in the play is, of course, the fire escape. It is literally the escape from the domestic setting, but its true function also hints at the escape from danger and damage – which it really is. It is the place where wishes of brighter futures are made on the moon; the place where Laura stumbles whenever she tries to, showing her dependency on her own little world, and the place Tom constantly seeks to, and eventually does, escape.

Tom is the character most desperate for escape from his depressing existence. Sick of futile escapism through visits to the movies, and living through the escapades of Hollywood stars (which he uses as ‘compensation’), he seeks adventure of his own. He is particularly inspired by a magic show he witnesses, seeing the magicians trick of escaping from a coffin bolted down without removing a nail as similar to the trick he must perform to escape from the home.

‘But the wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick. We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin without removing one nail. There is a trick that would come in handy for me - get me out of this two-by-four situation.’

Tom’s job at the warehouse pays the rent and bills – he has been forced to provide for his mother and sister since his father left. He cannot escape the ‘coffin’ of his home without removing a nail, until there is someone to take his place (i.e. a husband for Laura) – which never happens.

But Tom is so desperate to escape that he eventually does so – removing several nails in the process. He abandons his mother and sister without anyone to provide for them, leaving them symbolically in the dark after using the money supposed to pay the electricity bills to fund his application to the Merchant Marines. So he escapes and gets to travel the world – but he can never escape entirely. He’s constantly haunted by the sad memory of his lonely sister, and everywhere he goes, however far away, the memory of her stays with him.

‘Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger—anything that can blow your candles out! For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura’

And it is this that adds the element of tragedy to the domestic drama – not one of the characters escapes their depressing, mundane existence unscathed. ‘The Glass Menagerie’ highlights how the world - and all our lives - contains suffering, and it’s a fact we have to face: ‘life's not easy, it calls for - Spartan endurance!’ Life is about commitment; to both other people and yourself, and responsibility has to be taken (which both Laura and Tom are very reluctant to do), and duties have to be done. As Amanda states, even time itself is an inescapable sentence:

‘the future becomes the present, the present becomes the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!’