Although invariably ranked second (just behind Eugene O’Neill) among American dramatists, Tennessee Williams is indisputably

the most important southern playwright yet to emerge. Born Thomas Lanier Williams, in Columbus, Mississippi, where his much
loved maternal grandfather was an Episcopalian minister, by 1919 he had been transplanted with his family to St. Louis, Missouri.
The contrast between these two cultures—an agrarian South that looked back nostalgically to a partly mythical past of refinement
and gentility, and a forward-looking urban North that valued pragmatism and practicality over civility and beauty—would haunt
Williams throughout his life, providing one of the enduring tensions in his plays.

After attending the University of Missouri and Washington University in St. Louis, Williams followed his graduation from the
University of Iowa in 1938 with a period of wandering around the country and a succession of odd jobs, including an unsuccessful
stint as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. One of his filmscripts, however, became the genesis for his first great theatrical success during
the 1944–45 season, The Glass Menagerie. In that “memory play,” the autobiographical narrator, Tom Wingfield, hopes that by
reliving his desertion of his domineering mother and physically and psychically fragile sister, Laura, he will find release from the
guilt of the past, thereby allowing his full maturation as a poet. Williams’s biographers Donald Spoto and Lyle Leverich remark (as
have others before them) on the playwright’s lasting and decisive love for his schizophrenic sister Rose, clearly the model for
Laura, and at least partially for Blanche in the classic A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Catherine in Suddenly Last
Summer (1958), the sister Clare in Out Cry (1973), and even for the largely factual Zelda Fitzgerald in Williams’s final Broadway
play, Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980). No other American dramatist has created women characters of such complexity,
portrayed with deep understanding and sensitivity.

In his opening narration in Menagerie, Tom speaks of “an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from”
who threatens to upset the fragile escape into illusion that serves repeatedly in Williams’s dramas as a refuge for those who are
physically, emotionally, or spiritually misbegotten and vulnerable, and yet because of this somehow special. One of Williams’s chief
characteristics as a dramatist is his compassion for misfits and outsiders, perhaps fed early on by his own sexual orientation (he
frankly discusses his homosexuality in the confessional Memoirs) and later, in the two decades before his death, by the
increasingly negative critical reception of works that become excessively private. If there is a central ethical norm by which his
characters must live, it is surely that espoused by the nonjudgmental artist Hannah in Night of the Iguana (1961): “Nothing human
disgusts me unless it’s unkind, violent.”

Williams was a prolific author, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (for Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof [1955])
and a four-time recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (for the above two plays as well as
for Menagerie and Iguana). Along with two dozen full-length plays and two collections of one-acts, he wrote two novels, four
collections of short fiction—among his finest stories, influenced by Hawthorne and Poe, are “Desire and the Black Masseur” and
“One Arm”—two volumes of poetry, and several screenplays. Most are charged with a highly expressive symbolism and imbued
with his recurrent attitudes and motifs: a somewhat sentimental valuation of the lost and lonely; a worship of sexuality as a means
of transcending aloneness; a castigation of repression and excessive guilt; an abhorrence of the underdeveloped heart that refuses
to reach out to others; a fear of time, the enemy that robs one of physical beauty and artistic vitality; and an insistence on the need
for the courage to endure, to always continue onward—as Williams himself did as a writer.

Tennessee Williams has achieved superior status in the realm of American theater — amidst the critical discussion of America’s greatest
playwrights, Williams’ name is consistently among the first to surface. The production of his first two Broadway plays, The Glass Menagerie and A
Streetcar Named Desire, secured Tennessee Williams's place, along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, as one of America's major playwrights of
the twentieth century.
Williams quickly became a rich and famous writer. He won several awards including two Pulitzer Prizes for drama, four New York Drama Critics' Circle
Awards, and one Tony Award for best play. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Williams had fifteen plays
produced on Broadway between 1945 and 1961.
Throughout his career, he was simultaneously praised and denounced for addressing taboo subjects in an open and realistic way. In 1956, Roman Catholic
Cardinal Spellman blacklisted him for writing the screenplay Baby Doll. A central topic in all of Williams’s plays is the “undressing of male and female sexual
desire” (Robert F. Gross, editor, Tennessee Williams: A Casebook [New York: Routledge, 2002], 35). In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams showed violence
never before seen onstage, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof dealt with many sexual questions never before discussed onstage. His plays often show women as
creatures who actively experience desire instead of just being objects of desire. After viewing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brooks Atkinson, Broadway’s leading
critic said that Williams is a “master dramatist with a terrifying knowledge of the secrets of the mind.”
Williams was a perfectionist who constantly revised his work. Scholars believe that he used his writing to explore issues and situations from his own life. A
perfect example is seen with The Glass Menagerie, which is considered an autobiographical play. However, some feel that Williams is represented in the play
not by Tom, but by Laura. Williams was an effeminate boy who was called “Miss Nancy” by his father. He was a shy and socially awkward child who was
teased by his classmates (Gross, 45). He was also handicapped for a time during his childhood due to illness.
He was very close to his sister who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of her adult life in mental hospitals. In an effort to treat her, Williams's
parents authorized a prefrontal lobotomy in 1937 at the Missouri State Sanitarium, and the operation incapacitated Rose for the rest of her life. It is thought
that this horrifying experience prompted the writing of his most disturbing play Suddenly Last Summer, and might have contributed to his alcoholism and his
dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates (Gross, 45).
Although his work in the theatre made him famous in the States, his films made him an internationally known figure. Seven of his plays as well as his
novella The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone were adapted for the screen during his lifetime. Williams’s work was well suited to film because he addressed
subjects that were appealing to the film industry, including “the irregular passages of romantic life, the moral and psychological contradictions of sexual
desire, the unavoidable discontents of family relations, and the exotic and perverse nature of Southern culture” (R. Barton Palmer, Hollywood’s Tennessee :
the Williams films and postwar America, 1st ed [Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009], IX).
In the mid ’60s, the critics seemed to turn on him and began writing vindictive reviews that said Williams had lost his edge (Gross, 35). He also began to lose
his popularity with audiences, and his plays started closing after disappointingly short runs. What caused this shift after such a period of rampant popularity?
Some believe it was a response to his increasingly open homosexuality. Williams himself alluded to this belief in interviews. However, the shift in popularity
also seems to coincide with his shift in writing style. Williams began writing in a new style that did not sit well with audiences and critics. His plays became
increasingly less realistic and more idea driven rather than plot driven.
This shift in popular opinion caused Williams to experience a frustration commonly felt by artists: the style in which he wanted to write and the topics that he
wanted to address did not necessarily coincide with the tastes of his public. He openly expressed a need to do the work that he felt was important, yet he still
seemed to crave public approval. This created the impossible, and common, situation of an artist wishing to push audience members farther than audiences
want to be pushed.
When Williams spoke to Yale drama students in 1973 he confessed, “The truth is that I don’t know whether or not I can ever again receive a persuasively
favorable critical response to work in this country.” His feelings about this rejection may have contributed to his continued decline.
In the ’70s, Williams began work on his Memoirs, which was published in 1975. This autobiographical book is written in the style of free-association that he
learned in psychoanalysis. The book gives an open account of his homosexuality as well as his work in and out of the theatre.
In the introduction to Memoirs Williams says that today’s audience members seem to be “obdurately resistant to my kind of theatre.” He reasoned that that
they “seem to be conditioned to a kind of theatre which is quite different from the kind I wish to practice.” He went on to say “I am quite through with the kind
of plays that established my early and popular reputation.”
Some believe that the open accounts of his sexual past detailed in Memoirs may have further contributed to his continued loss of popularity. Regardless of
the reason, it is true that the works created at the end of his life were basically ignored. Williams died on February 25, 1983, alone in a hotel room as a
depressed alcoholic with writer’s block (Gross, 35). His later works were re-examined after his death, and many scholars believe that they were not given fair
treatment during his lifetime. Both popular and scholarly writing about Williams and his work exploded after his death. It is almost certain that Williams died
having no idea of the popularity that his life’s work would enjoy almost thirty years later.

++++++++++++++++++
The Glass Menagerie is an autobiographical play of Tennessee Williams that brought him his first great success. The prototype of Wingfield family
was the Williams’s own family drama: a strict father, quick-tempered mother and sister Rose, who suffered from depression. Depicting the main
character Tom Wingfield, the author depicts himself. Tom is an ambiguous, controversial character, which changes over the course of the play and
this fact makes the play even more interesting.
Speaking about the main character of the “The Glass Menagerie”, first it is better to tell the plot of the play. It will help to understand the
circumstances of the situation, events affecting the behavior of the protagonist and the formation of his personality. Thus, analyzing the story itself,
we should start be mentioning that in its essence it is a memory. Tom Wingfield tells of the time – between the wars – when he has lived in St. Louis
with his mother Amanda Wingfield – a woman, endowed with an enormous zest for life, but not knowing how to adapt to the present time and
desperately clinging to the past, and his sister Laura – dreamer who had undergone a serious illness in the childhood, and one leg remained slightly
shorter than the other one. Tom himself, a poet at heart, worked in a shoe shop and suffered, being engaged in hateful job. In the evenings he was
listening to endless stories about her mother’s life in the South, about the left fans and other real and imaginary victories (Smith 2011).
Amanda was eagerly waiting for the success of her children: promotion of Tom and Laura’s advantageous marriage. She did not want to see how
her son hated his job and how timid and unfriendly her daughter was. Mother’s attempt to make to send Laura to typewriting courses crashed –
because of fear and nervous tension girl’s hands were shaking, so she couldn’t hit the right keys. She felt well only at home when she was busy with
her collection of little glass animals. After the failure of Amanda’s courses, Laura got even more fixate on the thought of her daughter’s marriage. At
the same time she was trying to influence her son, trying to control his reading: she was convinced that the novels of Lawrence – the favorite writer
of her son were too dirty. Amanda didn’t like Tom’s habit to spend almost every free evening in the cinema. For him, these trips were a way to
escape from the monotonous routine, the only outlet – the same as glass menagerie for his sister (Tarigan 2010).
One day Tom’s promised Amanda to bring home and introduce Laura to some decent young man. Tom invited to the dinner his colleague, Jim
O’Connor, the only person in the shop with whom he was on friendly terms. Laura and Jim went to the same school, but for Jim’s surprise she
appeared to be Tom’s sister. Laura, when she was a schoolgirl, was in love with Jim, who was always in the limelight – starred in basketball, led the
discussion club, sang in school productions. For Laura, seeing again this prince of her girlish dream was a real shock. When shaking hands with him,
she almost lost consciousness and quickly hid in her room. Soon, under the pretext, Amanda sent Jim to her. The young man did not recognize
Laura, and she had to reveal to him that they had been familiar. Jim hardly remembered the girl whom he gave the nickname Blue Rose. That nice
friendly young man did not succeed in life, as he had promised during his school years. But he did not lose hope and continued to make plans. Laura
gradually calmed down, sincere concerned tone of Jim removed her nervousness, and she gradually began to speak with him as with a longtime
friend (King 1973).
Jim saw that the girl had many complexes. He tried to help assuring that her lameness was not evident – no one at school even noticed that she was
wearing special shoes. He tried to explain that people were not evil, especially when you knew them better, and that she had to stop thinking that
she was the worst. In his view, the main problem of Laura was that she drove into her head that everything was bad.
Laura asked about the girl whom Jim had dated in school because people said they were engaged. Laura was very happy to hear that there had
been no wedding. She got a hope. She showed Jim her collection of glass figurines – the highest mark of confidence. Among the little animals Jim
saw a unicorn – an extinct animal, no one else was like it. Jim immediately drew attention to it. It was probably boring for it to stand on a shelf with
mediocre animals such as glass horses.
They heard the sound of waltz from the restaurant through the open window. Jim invited Laura to dance, she refused fearing to step on his leg. “But
I’m not made of glass,” – Jim said with a laugh (Bloom 2007). During the dance they ran into a table, and the unicorn fell. It became the same as all:
his horn was broken. Jim said Laura that she was an extraordinary girl, unlike anyone else – just like her unicorn. She was beautiful, she had a sense
of humor. There was one in a thousand like her, the Blue Rose. Jim kissed Laura. However, she misinterpreted the movement of the soul of young
man: a kiss was just a sign of a tender care of Jim about the fate of the girl and an attempt to get her to believe in herself
However, seeing the reaction of Laura, Jim frightened and announced that he had a fiancee. He sad that Laura had to believe that she also would be
happy, she only needed to overcome their complexes. Jim continued to utter typical platitudes like “man – the master of his fate,” etc., without
noticing that Laura there was the expression of infinite sadness on her face. She gave Jim the unicorn – in memory about that evening, and about
her.
When Amanda came in the room, she was almost sure that the groom was on the hook. However, Jim was in a hurry, he needed to meet his bride
at the station and left. Immediately after he was gone, Amanda started yelling at her son for bringing a young man who was already dating another
girl. For Tom, this scandal was the last straw. He quit his job, left home and embarked on a journey. In the epilogue, Tom said that he could never
forget his sister: “I did not know that I was so devoted to you, that I could not betray you” (Bloom 2007). In his mind there was a beautiful image of
Laura, blowing at her bedtime candle. “Goodbye, Laura” – said Tom sadly (Rathbun 1990). This is how the play ends.
Having summarized the play it became possible to understand the life of the main hero better, to find out about his character, deeds, point of view,
and life position and so on. Analyzing Tom, it is worth mentioning that Tom Wingfield acts as both a character and narrator during the whole play.
His great desire to experience “adventure”, his use of poetry as mean to get away from the problems of the real life, and his never disappearing
feeling of being limited by his own family all relate to personal experiences that readers of the play could have in their lives. Tom Wingfield loves his
family a lot and feels devoted to his mother and elder sister. Nevertheless, at the same time, Amanda and Laura’s incredible dependency on Tom as
their security, defense and profits can often consume him.
As it was mentioned above,
++++