Tom is the playwright's stand-in. Tennessee Williams (born Thomas Lanier Williams) was an aspiring poet in St. Louis when he lived with his family and, at his father's behest, worked in a shoe factory. His older sister Rose was, in childhood, his one true friend and, in adulthood, a mentally unstable woman whose clashes with Williams's mother repeatedly pushed an already crumbling family to the brink of collapse. Rose shared Laura's delicateness and fantasy, though her grasp on reality was looser or perhaps became so as the environment worsened in the tense Williams household. She was an early recipient of a pre-frontal lobotomy in 1937; Williams never forgave his mother for ordering the procedure.
The tragedy of Rose had a profound effect on Williams's writing throughout his career. Rose imagery and the name or word "rose" appears in numerous works. In The Glass Menagerie, roses appear as the nickname and symbol for the Rose character in her happiest (though most painful in their ultimate outcome) moments: those in which the one boy she ever cared for pays her some regard.
SCENE 3.
The words "After the fiasco--" appear on the screen as the scene opens. Tom stands on the fire escape landing and addresses the audience. In the wake of what Tom refers to as the "fiasco at Rubicam's Business College," Amanda has become obsessed with procuring a gentleman caller for Laura. It is a topic perpetually under discussion and the object of Amanda's planning. In order to make a little extra money "to feather the nest," Amanda is running a telephone subscription campaign for a magazine called The Homemaker's Companion.
Tom's monologue ends. Amanda makes a cheerful, breathless, unsuccessful sales pitch on the telephone. The lights dim. When they come up again, Tom and Amanda are engaged in a loud argument while Laura looks on desperately. Tom is enraged because his mother has taken back to the library the D.
