Presence Of The Absent Figure On The Stage—A Study Of The Absent Father In The Glass Menagerie

As the first major success of Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams III), oneof the most prominent playwrights in the United States after World War II, and consideredas the dramatist’ autobiography, The Glass Menagerie has a significant influence onmodern drama and boasts endless attention from its viewers and literary critics since itsbirth. However, regrettably, few of the writings examined the play, in particular,“the fifthcharacter”--the absent father from the perspective of psychoanalysis anddeconstructionism. For this purpose, the present dissertation analyzes the characters in theplay with the assistance of the methodology of Freudian psychoanalysis and examines theactive binary opposition of absence over presence operating in the play. The paperconcludes that the root cause of the family tragedy is the absent but conspicuously feltfather: Mr. Wingfield.The dissertation is developed in three closely connected dimensions. It first re-examines the three family members present in the drama: Amanda, the mother, apassionate woman always living in the reminisce of her glorified girlhood; Laura, thecrippled sister who isolates herself from the outside world due to her over self-conscious ofher physical defect; and Tom, the narrator-character in the drama and also the selfishbrother, who is always dreaming of leaving his home regardless of his responsibility as thebreadwinner of his family. Then it analyzes the characters respectively by employing themethodology of Freudian psychoanalysis so as to interpret and explain those figures moreclearly and to discern the tragic elements hovering over the family members. The paperalso carefully explores the negative influences exerted by the absent father figure, Mr.Wingfield, the root cause of the tragedy torturing all the living minds in the family. Afterexposing the culprit of tragedy, the absent father, the dissertation further conducts adetailed study of the hidden character by analyzing psychologically the man in accordancewith the quite limited descriptions and the hints offered by the playwright and the narratorbefore proposing a hypothesis, that is, in what direction the drama would develop or, inother words, what the characters present in the drama would be if the absent father wasalso present and played the role that he should have been playing as the breadwinner of thefamily. The hypothesis undoubtedly produces a different solution to all the anxieties andconfusion the family members are obliged to deal with, and hence it completely subvertsthe drama itself, which also a typical technique any deconstructionist will employ whenattempting to interpret a particular text. By subverting the apparent binary oppositionactively operating throughout the drama--presence vs. absence, the dissertation goes on todemonstrate that the significance of absence represented by the father outweighs the presence in the form of the other family members in this particular dramatic work. Viewedin this new light, we can gain a clearer idea of the truth on the physically absent father, andalso argue against the presence vs. absence hierarchy. The paper therefore verifiesDerrida’s assumption on the reasonable relationship between presence and absence.On the basis of the examination above, the dissertation presents a real and true Mr.Wingfield, a figure, though absent on the stage, who always haunts the minds of thepresent characters and viewers/readers, deciding the development of the play and servingas the root cause of the family’ tragedy.