The Glass Menagerie

Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern belle of middle age, shares a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son Tom, in his early 20s, and his slightly older sister, Laura. Amanda worries especially about the future of her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp and is insecure in the outside world. Tom works in a shoe warehouse doing his best to support the family.

Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor (or, as she puts it, a “gentleman caller”) for Laura, her daughter. Pressured by his mother to help find a caller for Laura, Tom invites Jim, an acquaintance from work, home for dinner.

The delighted Amanda spruces up the apartment, prepares a special dinner, and converses coquettishly with Jim. Laura discovers that Jim is the boy she was attracted to in high school and has often thought of since. Jim recognizes Laura’s feelings of inferiority and encourages her to think better of herself. However, Jim tells Laura that he is engaged to be married, Laura asks him to take a broken glass unicorn as a gift and he then leaves. When Amanda learns that Jim is to be married, she turns her anger upon Tom and cruelly lashes out at him.

The play concludes with Tom saying that he left home soon afterward and never returned.