The Demand of Love

Reflections on The Glass Menagerie

In July Jana and I went to a production of Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie. It was the first time I'd seen the show, and it sparked a lot of thoughts in my mind.

The play is a classic, but if you haven't seen it there will be some spoilers in what follows. Let me summarize as little of the plot as necessary to make a point I'd like to share.

Set in a poor, small apartment during the Great Depression, the show focuses upon the domestic situation of Amanda (Mother), Tom (son and brother to Laura), and Laura Wingfield (daughter and sister to Tom). 

The "domestic situation" I speak of centers around Laura and her needs. Laura is described as a "cripple" in the play, and she walks with a limp. She is also very, very shy. Living in her own world, Laura spends most of her time collecting glass figurines for her collection, the glass menagerie of the title.

In the vast majority of productions, Laura's shyness is played as extreme introversion. But in the production we saw Laura's social awkwardness and preoccupation with her glass collection seemed more like autism and Asperger's. As Jana observed to me about how Laura is often portrayed, Laura is generally depicted as "an ingénue with a limp." But in the production we saw, Laura was less a sweet, romantic figure and played with more disability, both physical and cognitive. That portrayal of disability matters for my reflections regarding the play. Basically, the love Laura needs shifts away from romance and more toward support and care.

Tom is carrying the family financially, but he hates his job in a factory. He longs to escape, wanting a life of "adventure." But if he leaves, there will be no one to take care of his mother or Laura. That Laura will have no one to take care of her when she is gone is Amanda's great anxiety. Amanda wants to get Laura married off to secure her future. She pushes Tom to invite a friend from work to come to dinner to met Laura in the desperate and unrealistic hope that a romance might be sparked.

Tom's invitation brings Jim, the fourth character, into play. Jim sees Laura's extreme shyness and attempts to encourage her regarding what he diagnoses as an "insecurity complex." Trying to coax her out of her shyness, Jim and Laura dance, and during the dance he breaks her favorite figurine, a glass unicorn. That broken unicorn becomes a symbol of Laura herself when Jim reveals that he's engaged, breaking her heart. 

But the broken unicorn also symbolizes how Jim couldn't see Laura as special in herself, requiring care exactly as she is. Jim thinks he can fix Laura with some tips about self-confidence and self-improvement. Laura would be "better" if she were different. But Laura is a unicorn, and in trying to make her something she is not, Jim breaks her horn,

The play ends with Tom leaving home to seek his life of adventure, abandoning Amanda and Laura to their fates. The famous final lines of the play from Tom are a meditation on regret, how he's haunted by the memory of Laura wherever he goes.

With that summary in hand, let me share my reflection. 

As I said above, it's widely understood that Laura herself is symbolized by the glass menagerie. Laura is special and beautiful, but also static, fragile and breakable. Laura's disability, as portrayed in the production we saw, highlights the degree to which Laura needs protection and care. Laura's disability makes Jim's diagnosis of an "inferiority complex" laughable. Like glass, Laura's situation is frozen, immune to any call toward self-actualization. Laura's need can't be wished away with therapeutic self-improvement. Jim describes himself as a modern man of progress who is looking toward the future, and he preaches that sermon to Laura. But what Laura needs isn't "progress" or "self-improvement." What Laura needs is love.

And that's also what Tom, tragically, fails to provide her. Laura's disability presents a trap for Tom, given his dream for a heroic life of adventure. The Glass Menagerie ends on its note of regret because Tom leaves Laura, unwilling to pay the price of love.

Basically, both Tom and Jim fail Laura. Jim, because sermons about self-improvement are no substitute for love. And Tom because he chooses himself over Laura.

So here's my reflection about Laura and these failures of love:

Simply put: The entire world is a glass menagerie. The world is full of beautiful but fragile people. There's no "fix" for this fragility, as Jim preaches to Laura. Nor does the modern world want to slow down enough, in its pursuit of progress, to care for these people. 

But most importantly, as we see with Tom, few of us are willing to make the sacrifices that love demands. Like Tom, we'd rather have our adventures. That's the key insight. A good and fulfilled life, our culture tells us, is a life of self-actualization (Jim) and adventure (Tom). But that vision of happiness has no room for the love Laura requires. As Dostoevsky described in The Brother's Karamazov, love is a harsh and dreadful thing.

How many of us, I wonder, are willing to love the unicorns in the glass menagerie?