The rhetoric of victimization in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie': The development, performance and reception of Laura Wingfield's characterization

This study articulates the theory of a rhetoric of victimization, persuasive strategies used to communicate and represent how an experience of pain or suffering has affected people or dramatic characters due to forces beyond their control. I use this interpretive model to analyze persuasive strategies that Tennessee Williams, theater and film artists, and audiences employ in the construction, representation, and interpretation of Laura Wingfield's character in The Glass Menagerie. Chapters One and Five define my terms.; Chapter Two describes causes for a persistent realistic bias in American theater, which helps account for the predominantly realistic Menagerie productions. I also consider causes for an historical and cultural shift in attitudes toward victimization and correlate this shift with a minor branch of criticism of Laura that finds her increasingly cliched and unbelievable as a victimized character.; Chapter Three examines Tennessee Williams' original manuscript revisions, held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. I argue that Williams' revision process is not haphazard but rhetorically consistent. Williams reduces Laura's assertiveness, ambition and agency and represents her in detrimental circumstances for which she is not responsible. Williams develops a rhetoric of victimization based on Laura's shorter leg, its detrimental effects on her psyche, her inability to change her circumstances, and others' demanding expectations that exacerbate her situation.; Chapter Four examines Williams' expressionism and surveys Laura's reception in stage, film and television productions of Menagerie from 1945-1994. Some critics prefer a frail, helpless, passive and sensitively withdrawn character while others prefer a stronger, more independent, pro-active character with a greater sense of agency. Realistic productions that present Laura's painful situation at face value, without adding the distance and irony in the screen projections and narrations, may be apt for convincing a dominant set of critics that Laura is victimized. To the extent that a dominant set of critics prefers realistic productions over expressionistic ones, they may also prefer the simple representation of a victimized character over a more ambiguous, expressionistic representation.; Chapter Five illustrates briefly how to use a rhetoric of victimization to analyze other dramatists' revisions.