Compare Blanche and Amanda

Compare Blanche and Amanda In today’s socioeconomic world, there is no room for slacking off or failure. People are seen as individuals who earn their social status and there is much pressure to succeed. In the plays, “The Glass Menagerie” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” both written by Tennessee Williams, there are two main characters who are not capable of living in the present and have a difficult time facing reality. Amanda Wingfield, the mother from “The Glass Menagerie” and Blanche Dubois, Stella’s sister in “A Streetcar Named Desire” have many similar characteristics and life styles that are discovers throughout each play. In the article “Tennessee Williams and the Predicament of Women” written by Louise Blackwell both of these women are defined as “Women who have learned to be maladjusted through adjustment to abnormal family relationships and who strive to break through their bondage in order to find a mate”. Each woman played an important role, affecting everyone they came encounter with, starting with the earlier years when they women were “southern belles”. In order for these two characters to deal with the complications in their lives they resort to living in their own fantasy worlds of deception and lies. Amanda Wingfield is the mother of Tom and Laura, a middle-aged southern belle whose husband has abandoned her and their children several years earlier. Amanda spends her time reminiscing about the past and nagging her children. She is completely dependent on her son Tom for finical support and holds him fully responsible for her daughter Laura’s future. Amanda is obsessed with her past as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of “One Sunday afternoon in the Blue Mountain__ your mother received__ seventeen!__gentlemen callers!”(1050). The reader cannot even be sure if this actually happened or if this is an over exaggerated story that she made up. However, it is clear that despite its possible falsity, Amanda has come to believe it.