"Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
-E.
Laura is like a piece of her own glass collection: too fragile to be taken from the shelf, allowing her ideals and outlooks to be specifically effected by each of the other characters. The Glass Menagerie is a play containing such dramatic and exquisite characters that it is hard not to feel the emotions and feelings held by each one. Throughout the play, the reader notices and strives to understand Laura's shyness and awkwardness. Her fear of society and lack of confidence force the reader to yearn for changes to be made in her personality. .
The Glass Menagerie is an extremely poetic and heartwarming drama. The character of Laura is extremely vulnerable. Besides having a physical defect, her lack of confidence and individuality are directly affected and related to the actions and words of the other three characters: Amanda (her mother), Tom (her brother), and Jim (the gentleman caller). Laura seemed to be in a constant state of paranoia, always trying to please her mother and brother, without having to leave the seclusion of her home and the comfort and familiarity of her glass collection. "Such matters as loneliness, buried and released violence, sex and difference' "the last often signified by physical difference, like lame Laura in The Glass Menagerie- (Kauffmann 152). .
Amanda Wingfield is described as "a little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place- (Ritter 179). She is a woman unable to let go of the popularity and vivacity that she experienced in her youth. She is constantly involved in a detailed story of the dozens of gentleman callers clinging to her every word. Amanda seems to forget that things change, and instead of hanging on to the past, she needs to move with the times and make more memories. Until she does this, her entire life will be based on these memories, and, therefore, so will Laura's.
