The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, was written and first performed in 1944. In the play, Williams describes the three members on the Wingfield family, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in the society of the 1930s. The mother, Amanda, clings to her past life as a Southern debutant and hopes desperately that her daughter, Laura, will follow in her footsteps. Tom Wingfield, the narrator and Amanda's son, dreams of breaking free from the mundane, simple life he is forced to lead once his father has abandoned the family. Williams is able to incorporate elements such as setting, symbolism, and conflict to express a main theme of escape.
Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie takes place in the Wingfield family apartment, in 1937. Driven by postwar poverty, they are forced to live in a lower-class urban section of St. Louis. Not unlike a jail cell, it is a gloomy, dehumanizing place. Williams has described an apartment as "one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in over-crowded urban centers of lower middle-class population" (Cardullo 161). Each of the siblings has a different opinion of the cramped living quarters. To Laura, her home is a safe haven from a society she has failed to fit into. To Tom, the prison-like feel of the family apartment weighs heavily on his need for freedom.
Another literary element that Williams presents throughout The Glass Menagerie is symbolism. The title itself gives the audience a glimpse into Laura's personality. Like her figurines, Laura is fragile and delicate. The glass unicorn, notably her favorite, represents her abnormalities. The unicorn is different from other horses, as Laura is different from other girls. She harbors a social awkwardness and is oblivious to the society in which she lives, almost "extinct in the modern world" (Arp, Johnson, and Perrine 1200).