To Reveal Or To Conceal: A Study Of Tom's Gay Tendency In The Glass Menagerie

For years, critics and scholars have focused on the dramatic strategies Tennessee Williams adopted in The Glass Menagerie, including the themes, sympathy over Amanda and Laura, and characteristic analysis. Tom, an important role in the play, has been more often than not neglected. However, the opening speech of Tom seems abrupt and confusing. And Williams's unsatisfactoriness over the performances of The Glass Menagerie also implies that there could be "truth" under "disguise". According to this thesis, the "truth" that Williams wishes to reveal is Tom's gayness.This thesis tries to reveal Tom's sexual orientation from three aspects. Firstly, The Glass Menagerie has been regarded as Williams's most autobiographic work while Tom is referred to as Williams's alter ego. The two share stunning similarities in family background, or say Williams borrows too much from his life and experience. Williams's homosexuality has much to do with his family background, thus Tom, being in the same family background and enjoying the same hobbies and bizarre behavior, may prone to homosexual. Secondly, Williams adopts dramatic strategies in his creation, symbolic means being one of them. Even the names of the characters or the settings have specific meanings while images are abundant in his plays. This thesis ventures to analyze Tom's gayness and his hard life through the symbolic meanings of the main images. Thirdly, in his works, an author may imitate his predecessors and Williams goes further by borrowing from his own works to replenish his new plays. Thus his plays often allude to one another. From the perspective of this kind of intertexuality, this thesis will venture to unveil Tom's potential homosexuality and the dilemma he is in and further analyze the true reason of Tom's escapism and bring into light a hidden theme of The Glass Menagerie:the hard condition that a gay man's living in and his fighting through flight.As a homosexual playwright, Williams has dedicated himself to creating gay characters. On one hand, Williams has to hide this motivation because of the resistance to homosexuality of then society and the strict censorship; on the other hand, he keeps dropping a hint in the play on purpose, weaving the "truth" through the lines. In his compromise between revealing and concealing of Tom's gayness, Williams's puzzle and struggle over his own homosexuality manifests itself. At the same time, Tom's unwilling exile indicates Williams's resentment and accusation of the society that had prejudice towards homosexuals.