“How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”
The Glass Menagerie is a great domestic tragedy with three very distinctive characters--the strong, proud Amanda, the weak and innocent Laura, and the realistic dreamer, Tom. One finds in this play an elegiac portrait of misery, rather than a scalding enactment of taboo. There is no one tragic event here, but a general condition of pathos. Instead of a classic conflict, The Glass Managerie depicts a lack of cooperation. We find in the Wingfield home no crime, but a chronic, aching social and economic woe.