Queer Theory Lense

Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie recounts a beautiful story about a single mother and her family struggling to make a living during the depression. Amanda, a single mother, viewed as a hopeless romantic woman longing to find a husband for her oldest child. Laura, the oldest child, was a quite, imaginative women who admired the small things in life. Tom, the main support for the family, was written as a powerful young man with different opinions and ways of living than society would accept. Tennessee Williams was known as a “closeted” gay man. Williams was writing in an era where no two men could be together, so he wrote this play with the feelings he was hiding from the rest of the world. Using the Queer theory lense, did Williams purposely make the character Tom sound as if he was suppose to be resembling Williams, or was this just a
But, towards the end of the play, he starts to break down and show how he really feels. He said, “I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions.” (Page 97). This quote sounds like a depressed man who is lost in his own mind. Did Tennessee Williams have him say this towards the end to show Tom's true emotion? He said he has not found companions, showing that he has yet to come out to the world. The Queer theory would see this and immediately start to analyze the author's motives for having Tom say this. Even though some may read The Glass Menagerie as a play about a single mother and her family, the Queer theory and the Marxist theory would differ. The Queer theory acknowledges Tennessee Williams’ ulterior motives such as the sexuality of Tom. The Marxist theory analyzes the economy and social norms of the time period that would possibly affect Tom’s outing. Overall, both of these theories work together to uncover Tennessee Williams’ alternatives to his