Dysfunction In The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie gives its audience a glance into the life of a family that can only be described as the definition of dysfunction. At the beginning of the play, the Wingfield family is introduced to us as the typical family, just struggling to get by. Delma E. Presley, an English professor at Georgia Southern University, even describes Amanda’s impulse to preserve her single-parent family as something that is as familiar as the morning newspaper (53). But as the story continues, we see this family’s issues rise to the surface. Almost immediately, we are introduced to each character’s difficulties and how they escape the entrapment of their unhappiness. In this play, it is made clear that the source of their problems