The Glass Menagerie - How Far Do You Agree That The Father Is The Most Important Character In The Play?

that she could have done better.  She also doesn’t seem to want to talk about Mr Wingfield much because every reference she does make to him is punctuated by an exclamation mark – ‘One thing your father had plenty of – was charm!’ – or trails off – ‘And then I – (she stops in front of the picture) met your father! Malaria fever and jonquils and then – this – boy…’ the brevity of the recollections suggests strong emotion.  An extended, realistic assessment of Mr Wingfield’s character would be too painful for Amanda.  Also, some of Amanda’s biggest character traits, like her constant nagging of Tom, and her obsession with Laura getting a gentleman caller may be partly due to the abandonment that the family experienced with the departure of Mr Wingfield.  She fights to keep her family together driven by worthy motives.  She doesn’t want Tom to end up like his father, and, believing that her children are ‘unusual’ she wants Tom to make a success of his career and so she continues to pick on Tom about his bad habits and gets him up early enough for work.  She also doesn’t want Laura to be alone for the rest of her life, living off her brother, ‘mothers afraid I’m going to be an old maid’ so she tried getting Tom to bring home men from the factory for Laura to meet and enrolled Laura into business college. When she realises that Laura hasn’t been going to her lessons she says ‘ so what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and watch the parades go by?…we won’t have a business career… what is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position…’ she understands that if Laura doesn’t get a husband or a job then she doesn’t have much hope for the future.  These worries have been partly brought on by the departure of the father because he used to help out the family financially, but now they have to find their own ways of making money.  Amanda is doomed to dissatisfaction because it is impossible to recreate the past.  Her paralysis is partly responsible for the disintegration of her family.  Throughout the play, Laura does not show much indication of how she feels about her father leaving but we can tell that she may miss him because she prefers her fathers worn out phonograph records to the hot swing music of the Paradise Dance Hall.  This may also indicate that she is in need of a male protector, which she lacks in the absence of her father.   Williams shows that Tom’s father’s actions have had a big knock on effect to Tom’s own actions that he takes towards the end of the play.  Although we can see that both Amanda and Laura have been scarred by Mr Wingfield’s desertion, it is not very clear how Tom feels about it.  Tom’s introduction of his father is very vague ‘there is a fifth character in the play who doesn’t appear except in this larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel.  This is our father who left us a long time ago…he gave up his job…and skipped the light fantastic out of town…the last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mexico…and no address’ he shows no emotion towards what his father did in his words.  From the beginning Williams has let the audience know that Tom eventually left in the end as he is said to be wearing a merchant sailors outfit, so we know that in some way or another, he has done the same thing as his father.  He seems to want to copy what his father did at times.  However, despite the fact that he is very keen to escape from the household and his life there, we cannot be sure that Tom admires what his father did.  He sounds disgusted with himself and his father when he tells Jim about his plans ‘the bastard son of a bastard’ this shows that maybe, as he had to experience how his mother and sister reacted when his father left, even though he wants to do the same thing, he has to try and do it with as little pain caused as possible.  This may also show that his father has had a big impact on the final decision he makes and his guilt that he feels at the end of the play. Overall, I do not believe that the father is the most important character in the play but his character still has a significance and without him, Tom’s feelings about the decision he decided to take may be different.  Also, if the father hadn’t left then Amanda’s attitude towards both of her children may have also been different, for example, she may not have to nag Tom to do his work so much and she may not be as worried about Laura not having gentleman callers.