Alejandra Yanez Eng 1B Blog

       In the Glass Menagerie the characters of Amanda Winfield is overbearing, arrogant, and yet also loving to her children. Despite her being dominant and selfish, she does love her children without a doubt. The way she shows her love is overbearing because instead of driving her children closer to her she drives them away. Her children: Laura and Tom are distant from her because she is one of those mother's that pushes them to do things not because they want to, but because it is what she wants. She creates her own emotional rollercoaster that she goes through with her children. In the scene where.Tom and Amanda are having a conversation about how he is unhappy with the job he has instead of comforting him she tells him that he is " a selfish dreamer" (1048). It is understandable that she loves her children and she just wants the best for them; what mother does not want the best for her children? But the way she proceeds in doing so is what cripples her children into having issues with being comfortable and accepting who and what they are. Laura is severely shy; she is so shy that she gets sick when she takes a typing class and has to interact with others. The fact that her husband left because "he fell in love with the idea of traveling" (). Despite all that foolishness of her, she is tender and would do anything for her children. All she has left are the stories she recounts over and over to her children about how she met their father and how she had so many gentlemen callers after her. She is ruthless when it comes to the love she has for her children. 


     Laura Wingfield is dangerously shy; she is basically handiapped by it. She has this complexity of her that makes her always doubt herself and bring herself down. She is her own bully because she does not allow herself to accept that she might have some defects, but she fails to use that as a stepping stone to greater things. In scene four Tom says, "She lives in a world of her own- a world of-little glass ornaments, Mother...." (1021). Like her glass collection, Laura is a fragile and unresponsive to movement and change. Laura just kinda sits around looking at life and time just pass by her very eyes. I feel for Laura, but at the same time she has to work on having some sort of confidence in herself. She has none what so ever and she feels like everyone looks down upon her. I get the part about being shy because I am shy myself, but one has to know when to say "ok this is not getting me anywhere, something needs to change" and she kind of just sits by watching life as it happens.