The story of The Glass Menagerie is set in the era of the Great Depression. The Wingfields live in one of the numerous dark hive-like apartments located in the overpopulated urban centers of the lower-middle-class population. People who dwell in these apartments, of course including the Wingfields, are always “burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation” (Williams, 1999: 3) because life is hard and desperate. The fundamental dissatisfaction about life comes from the difficulty in making a living. For the Wingfields, the living conditions are even worse because the father is absent and the lame daughter fails to work on any profitable business. The most urgent task of life is to improve their living conditions. Hence, Tom, as the only male member in this family of three, is forced to shoulder the responsibility of supporting the family and has to work in the shoe warehouse though he does hate this job. Similarly, Amanda has to work on the business of promoting magazines for matrons after the hectic housework. Laura, however, being the biggest sister in the family, is not required to bear the burden of raising the family because of her fragility.
Chapter Three Causes of Laura’s Inferiority Complex ............................. 22
3.1 Physical Defect ............................ 22
3.2 Single-Parent Family in Poverty .............................. 25
3.3 Unfavorable Social Environment ..................................... 28
Chapter Four A Hard Journey out of Inferiority Complex .......................... 32
4.1 Retention of Moral Merits and Purity .............................. 32
4.2 Acquisition of Support from Family Members ............................ 35
4.3 Acceptance of Encouragement from a Fellowman ......................... 38
Chapter Five Conclusion............................. 42
Chapter Four A Hard Journey out of Inferiority Complex
4.1 Retention of Moral Merits and Purity
It is obvious that the long-termed and multifaceted ethical imperatives the individual must face increase his inferiority feelings. One possible way to overcome the inferiority complex is to internalize the external ethical imperatives into his own. In this way, the individual will substitute the imperatives of compulsion with the imperatives of freedom, which means that he will eliminate the painful pressures coming from the environment and normally maintain himself independent. At this stage, the inferiority complex is overcome, and the individual is no longer a servant but becomes a master of himself.
In the essay The Catastrophe of Success, Williams gives following opinions on what is good for a successful person who has ever gone through agonizing struggles in life.
Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressive—that’s what good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims. Williams Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. “In the time of your life—live!” That time is short and it doesn’t return again … the monosyllable of the clock is loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition. (Williams, 1999: 105)
Chapter Five Conclusion
Inferiority complex is a universal mental phenomenon that attracts wide attention from both literary writers and psychologists. Tennessee Williams had endured a long period of sorrowful and hard life full of failures before he rose to fame with the play The Glass Menagerie, which left him a strong sense of inferiority. The Glass Menagerie reflects Tennessee Williams’ thoughts on inferiority complex, which is epitomized by the character Laura. On basis of Adler’s individual psychology, this thesis studies Laura’s inferiority complex.
Under the impact of
