Amanda evokes, to a larger extent, feelings of sympathy and compassion from the audience by the situation she is in and how she is treated by Tom. Amanda constantly reminisces about the past in order to escape from her present day miserable life. This evokes feelings of compassion from the audience because of the contrasting way she talks about her previous life as a ‘southern belle’ with complete delight and how she talks about her current life as a struggling, hard-working mum in a desperate situation after marrying Mr Wingfield ‘your father!” which she emphasises her regret for throughout the play and which represents missed opportunities. However, these feelings of compassion and sympathy for Amanda are again tempered by her vein and conceited nature. “It wasn’t enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure-although I wasn’t slighted in either respect.” Here Amanda boasts about her popularity and here her vanity is conveyed to the audience which tempers empathetic feelings from the audience but also the fact that Amanda is oblivious to Laura’s feelings, as Laura has never had any gentlemen callers and so this must make her feel a reject and completely inadequate, also contributes to the limited feelings of sympathy felt for Amanda.
Tennessee Williams presents and portrays Amanda as an ambitious and tactless character on the surface, however, on closer inspection one can identify that Amanda has had a disappointing life after such a promising start when she was young which evokes feelings of sympathy from the audience and also Amanda evokes feelings of compassion from the audience by how hard her life has been after being abandoned by her husband and left to raise the children in a small flat next to a ‘bowling alley’ and having to climb up ‘fire-escape steps’ to reach it every time.
Compassionate feelings felt for Amanda, however, are limited because of some of her personality traits. Amanda is a scheming, equivocal and deceiving character who at times is completely oblivious to others’ feelings and disregards them. “Amanda steps out of the kitchenette and stares furiously at Laura. She points imperiously at the door.” Here Amanda ignores Laura’s pathetic whimpering and demands she answer the door even though she knows Laura is chronically nervous and so this arouses feelings of sympathy for Laura and conveys to the audience that Amanda is selfish and has to get her own way. Also Amanda further exacerbates feelings from the audience that she is conceited when she is hypocritical after lecturing Tom previously to never call Laura ‘crippled’ but instead a ‘slight defect hardly noticeable’ after an angry tirade with Tom she says Laura is ‘crippled’ just to make Tom feel guilty and remorseful even though it is not his fault. The audience also witnesses again Amanda’s vein nature when after an angry confrontation with Tom which eventually leads to part of Laura’s Glass Menagerie being broken by Tom, she is completely oblivious to Laura’s devastation and instead is furious with Tom’s remark that she is ‘an ugly, babbling, old witch’ and childishly reacts by saying she is ‘not speaking until you apologize’. Here the audience witnesses that because Amanda is vein and values beauty more than anything, she is deeply hurt by this remark. This does evoke feelings of sympathy from the audience for Amanda; however, these are largely tempered by her childish reaction and lack of concern for Laura. To conclude, I think the emotive feelings of sympathy and compassion felt for Amanda are to a much larger extent than those felt for Jim which is mainly because of her false sense of reality and the hope she lives in that a gentlemen caller will one day come and rescue her from this terrible situation, however, they are to a lesser extent than felt for Tom and Laura because although Amanda has endured a lot of hardship, suffering and is desperately unhappy with her life at the moment, she has previously lived a wonderful life and thoroughly enjoyed her youth in ‘Blue Mountain’ being popular with up to ‘seventeen gentlemen callers in one day!’ visiting her whilst Tom and Laura have never really had the opportunity to be as free and happy as she was.
Tom invites, to the second largest extent, feelings of compassion and sympathy from the audience because of his unfulfilled dreams, lack of any opportunities or prospects and his complete despair and depression with his life. Tom is trapped in the role of provider which evokes feelings of sympathy from the audience because it is as if he is trapped in a ‘wooden box’, which is his life, and he cannot escape it even though he is desperate to do so. Tom also evokes compassion from the audience as he is trapped in his memory guilt and anguish ‘the play is memory’ and he cannot escape it so he tells the play, as a narrator, as if it is a confessional piece and is trying to justify why he left, but he still feels guilt. The sympathy felt for Tom is deep because he reveals to the audience the extent of his misery both as a narrator and as a character and after arguments with Amanda, Tom reveals the reasons why he hates his life which is working in the ‘celotex interior!’ shoe warehouse but explains that he has to go even though he would rather someone ‘picked up a crowbar to batter out my brains’. However, the sympathy felt for Tom by the audience is also very much tempered by the fact he acts intimidating and aggressive towards his mother and mocks her genuine concern for him and also at the end when he leaves his crippled sister and struggling mum and repeats what his father did by walking out. This evokes feelings of compassion for Laura and Amanda and feelings of anger at Tom however, his shame and the fact that this act will stay trapped in his memory forever to torment and punish him evokes strong feelings of compassion for Tom from the audience. Tennessee Williams presents Tom as a dreamful, desperate character who wants to escape more than anything, which he does by going to the ‘movies to escape’, but this is not enough for Tom and although he seems dreamy and deluded on the surface he begins to ‘boil inside’ with anger and frustration until he can bear no more and leaves. To conclude, I agree that the extent of compassion and sympathy felt from the audience for Tom is perhaps more than Jim and Amanda but I disagree with that it is more than that felt for Laura because although, like Laura, Tom is trapped and discontent, he is not completely isolated and reclusive like Laura because he has friends like Jim and can go out at nights but Laura has nobody and can only seek refuge and solace in her victrola, glass menagerie and yearbook. Also Tom can be at times vitriolic and abusive towards his mother whilst Laura actually never raises her voice and she is completely harmless so some compassionate, emotive feelings felt for Tom are tempered by this.
I think Tennessee Williams without doubt portrays Laura as the character which the audience will feel most sympathetic and compassionate for. This is because Laura is a crippled, chronically nervous, pathetic character who lives in her own world, as she is too fragile and frightened to go out and live in the real world. Laura evokes feelings of sympathy from the audience as she is crippled and so feels insecure with her disability and so stays inside the house most days, as she is scared to go out. Laura also evokes feelings of compassion due to the fact she is chronically shy and she even drops out of a Business College course because it gave her ‘indigestion’ which is ridiculous and on closer inspection one can conjecture that she was afraid of socialising and so dropped out as she is anti-social and reclusive. Another factor about Laura which evokes feelings of sympathy from the audience is the disturbing fact that she spends a lot of time playing with a glass collection and anthropomorphizes the animals which evokes deep feelings of compassion from the audience because Laura lives such an isolated, reclusive life that what she values the most would be considered unimportant to other people. “I shouldn’t be partial but he is my favourite one.” However, although I agree that the extent of compassion and sympathy felt for Laura by the audience is the most, Laura does slightly temper these feelings on occasions by being equivocal and deceiving to her mother when she lied about the business course for four months. However, again on closer inspection, this evokes further feelings of compassion from the audience because she is so chronically nervous that she feels it better to keep lying to her mum for months rather than face her or go back to the college. Also, Laura evokes compassion from the audience by her role in the household of trying to maintain and emotional balance and it is often herself who gets hurt the most when Tom and Amanda argue but again some of these feelings are tempered by the way Laura acts by not taking her opportunities like the Business College course which would have relieved a lot of strain from Amanda and Tom. Although there is no evidence of Laura being unhappy, depressed and discontent her situation does evokes sympathetic feelings from the audience as she has no friends and so cannot possibly be content.
In conclusion, I agree this far that the character Laura, from a director’s point of view, is the character that invites the most compassion and sympathy from the audience. However, an actress playing Laura may feel that Laura does not because they would have experienced Laura from a different perspective. Experiencing the performance of the play myself, I can imply that Laura evokes the most compassion and sympathy out of all four characters but Tom also evokes to a similar extent these feelings by the way he explicitly expresses his unhappiness to the audience.
