In Tennessee Williams's play "Glass Menagerie" the three main characters all have a way in which they like to escape their current place in the world. One way is physical and another more mentally. The daughter Laura escapes to her glass menagerie, the mother, Amanda, whisks away to her past as a young girl, and the son, Tom, to the movies where he dreams of the adventures he will have in The Union of Merchant Seamen.
I believe that Amanda escapes to her past for comfort. Her life did not turn out the way that she had envisioned. She did not marry a planter and has to work for living. She expected to be taken care of by her husband and now she is just some old maid and she is in denial.
Laura drifts to the time when she was a young girl living in the south and she had all the gentlemen callers and jonquils she could imagine. She was beautiful, smart; she had wit and was desired by many. She is almost demented by her imagination of her past. By that I mean when Laura's gentlemen caller came for dinner she dressed in her old dress she wore for her gentlemen callers.
Unfortunately she chose the wrong man. After the children were born he left and she was forced to provide for her family. I think that she was kind of ashamed of her family. She feared that her daughter would never marry and her son would become a drunkard. She really pushed her children to better but honestly she just pushed them away.
Tom escapes to the movies where he experiences adventures. Tom is restless and feels stuck in the house and at a dead end job. I think he is like many people today who hate their jobs and hate their home life. He knows what he likes to do and that is write poetry, but he has no way of expressing it and especially no one to listen to it.
He has joined The Union of Merchant Seamen and desperately wants to go but is held back by his mother who feels that he is his sister's only hope for finding a husband.