Amanda Wingfield

Amanda Wingfield is a character in the play The Glass Menagerie, which is set in St. Louis in 1973. She is from a genteel southern family and has a prominent southern upbringing. She is a mother to two children, Tom and Laura; her husband abandoned the family and left her to raise two children. Amanda loves her children immensely and lives for them, but can often come across as overbearing and constantly nagging to both Tom and Laura. It is as if Amanda fluctuates between illusion and reality; like she closes her eyes to the brutal realistic world. Through her actions, it seems as if she is living in an illusionary world of her youth. Some would say she is evil, but I think she is just deeply flawed. It is as if the fluctuation between these two worlds is her only defense between the loneliness and emptiness of what her life has become.
Amanda is different from most people. Her southern upbringing is extremely apparent. She lives in her own little world and crosses back and forth
between illusion and reality. She is a very caring mother, but does not accept the harsh realities of life. She tries to live vicariously through her daughter, Laura, and constantly nags and tries to run her son’s life. I see it as almost being a form of bipolar. Sometimes, she accepts things and acts fairly normal but the vast majority of the time, she tries, to create different situations her own way and tries to make people do what she wants in her mind. She tries to live in a fantasy but there are some realities she does have to accept.
It is obvious to me that Amanda has suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune at some point in her life. She has a hard time coming to terms with her new status in society. Throughout the play she repeatedly states that when she was younger, living in Blue Mountain, she had seventeen gentlemen callers on one Sunday afternoon. Most of the time, she is saying this because she is trying to relive her own life, by living vicariously through her daughter Laura. She has high hopes that one day a gentlemen caller will come to sweep Laura off her feet and take care of them. She refuses to acknowledge the fact that Laura is crippled. Instead, she says she has a slight defect. She completely fails to understand that what her children want is not precisely what she wants. What she does not know is that her constant nagging and trying to control their lives is really driving the children further away from her. She sometimes indulges in playful games to escape the reality of everyday living. An example is when she role plays with Laura. She will say things like, “You be the lady this time and I’ll be the darky.” She refuses to accept reality.
She pushes Tom so hard because she does not want him to be like his father and she wants so much for him to be happy. Without realizing that Tom is different from her or what she wants him to be she cannot acknowledge the fact that he will one day leave in search of the adventure that he wishes he had now. I don’t think she is completely able to live in this illusion she has created. The pressures of everyday living force her to face many unpleasant facts. The biggest of these is realizing Laura may not marry. We see her tell Laura, “I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who are not prepared to occupy a position.” Even if she does fail to acknowledge Laura’s defects, she is realistic enough to understand Laura’s difficult position. Furthermore, she has seen the letter that Tom received from the Merchant Marines and knows that he plans to leave someday. After facing these brutal facts she tries to get Tom to set up a gentlemen caller for
Laura. In conclusion, we have seen that Amanda really does create her own fantasies. I think she has some major psychological problems in creating sometimes purposely ignoring reality. There are some realities she must face like Laura being crippled and Tom leaving. There are always things in life we know are there but just do not want to accept. I think this behavior is common to all of us. There are some situations that we do not like and do not want to happen. This causes us to either ignore it or try to change it. This does not make us bad people. A lot of things people do are with good intentions. However, they can also come across the wrong way. People get caught up with what they want to happen and do not pay much attention to what the reality of the situation is. I think Amanda’s love for her children and desire for them to live happy and fulfilled lives consumed her, causing her to create her own “alternate” reality. Thus, making her life as she wants it to be but possibly, not as it actually is.