The Glass Menagerie

Williams’s first success, and the play he called a memory play: Tom narrates his own family from outside it — a mother living on the story of her Mississippi girlhood, a shy sister whose whole world is a shelf of glass animals, an absent father on the wall, and a gentleman caller who is invited to fix all of it and cannot.

It opened on Broadway in 1945 and is the most autobiographical thing Williams wrote; his own sister Rose spent most of her life institutionalised. It sits on the list at Lexile 1350, the top of its range, and as a companion to Death of a Salesman four years later — two American plays about families that cannot afford their own stories.

Context: One of two mid-century American plays in the Drama grouping; the list’s link resolves to the collected Theatre volume rather than the single play.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
• Tennessee Williams — the playwright.
• Death of a Salesman — the list’s other American play, and the obvious pairing.