Similarities Between Tennesse Williams and the Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie is similar and different in many ways to Tennessee Williams. His mother is a borderline hysteric, his sister is schizophrenic, and he is an alcohol addict, and his father was a traveling sales man and was never home. In this draft we will see the similarities between Tennessee Williams real family and the family in The Glass Menagerie. But fist lets take a look about his biography.

Thomas Lanier Williams, born (March 26 1911) was an American writer, primarily of plays. He received many of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama. After he moved from St. Louis to New Orleans in 1939, he changed his first name to "Tennessee", the Southeastern U.S. state and his father's birthplace.
Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi to Edwina and Cornelius Williams, at the home of his maternal grandparents. His grandfather was the local Episcopal priest. Williams was of Welsh descent; his father Cornelius was a hard-drinking traveling salesman, and favored Tennessee's younger brother Dakin. Tennessee was less robust as a child and his father thought him effeminate. His mother Edwina was a borderline hysteric] Tennessee Williams would find inspiration in his problematic family for much of his writing.
In 1918, when Williams was seven, the family moved to the University City neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, where he first attended Soldan High School, a setting referred to in his work The Glass Menagerie. Later he studied at University City High School.[1] In 1927, at age 16, Williams won third prize (five dollars) for an essay published in Smart Set entitled, "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" A year later, he published "The Vengeance of Nitocris" in Weird Tales.
Williams attended the University of Missouri from 1929 to 1931, where he joined Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He transferred to Washington University in St. Louis for a year. There he wrote a play, Me Vaysha (1937). He finally earned a degree in 1938 from the University of Iowa, where he wrote "Spring Storm." Previously, Williams had written Cairo, Shanghai, and Bombay! This work was first produced in 1935 by the Garden Players community theater in Memphis, Tennessee. Regarding this production, Williams wrote, "The laughter ... enchanted me. Then and there the theatre and I found each other for better and for worse. I know it's the only thing that saved my life."[3] He later studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City.

His mother she is a borderline hysterical ( Anxiety disorders are blanket terms covering different forms of abnormal and pathological fear and anxiety, which only came under alleges of psychiatry at the very end of the 19th century.). Like his mother in The Glass Menagerie, she kept teasing Tom, on how to eat and digestion until he left the table. Another example is that she talks to much on boring topics; therefore she is intolerable in speech. The character of Amanda Wingfield is very similar to Edwina Williams, the author's mother. Amanda, an overbearing mother who cannot let go of her youth in the Mississippi Delta and her "seventeen gentleman callers" is much like Williams' own mother, Edwina. Both Amanda and Edwina were insensitive to their children's feelings; in their attempts to push their children towards a better future, they instead succeeded in only pushing them away.

His sister Rose, she has Schizophrenia (It is a mental disorder characterized by a distinguished process and emotional responses.). Like his sister in The Glass Menagerie, she is daydreaming all the time because she is afraid from reality. As Tom said in The Glass Menagerie “She lives in a world of her own — a world of — little glass ornaments.” That shows that she is schizophrenic like Rose in real life.

Tennessee Williams in real life, he was addicted to sleeping pills, which says that he is escaping from reality, like in The Glass Menagerie he is escaping reality through the fire escape. Also he was addicted to alcohol, like The Glass Menagerie he was going to the movies to seek adventure and returning home drunk. Tom, like Williams, spent much of his time writing poetry to escape the depressing reality of his life. Tom feels guilty about wanting to leave his sister and mother to pursue his dreams; likewise, Williams endured a lifetime of depression and guilt over his sister Rose's mental state and his choice to leave her.