Laura Wingfield In The Glass Menagerie

In the play by Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie”, the character of Laura Wingfield does not have a lot of self confidence due to a small physical disability. One of her legs is shorter than the other and she’s forced to wear a brace and she feels judged and different from other people causing her to be extremely shy. She gets advice towards the end of the play that she needs to believe in herself more which really helped emphasize the theme of being confident in yourself and not comparing your life to other people’s. In the play Laura says, “Yes, it was so hard for me, getting upstairs. I had that brace on my leg— it clumped so loud!” (Williams 1689). Laura was talking to Jim who reassured her that no body even noticed the noise her brace made and that she made her situation seem so much worse in her head. Not only was Laura comparing her life to other’s, her brother Tom. In the play Tom says to his mother, “I got to the movies because—I like adventure. Adventure is something I don 't have much …show more content…
Early on in the play Laura tells her mother that she liked a boy in high school. She tells her mother everything she remembers about him and the nickname he used to call her. Laura says to her mother, “Yes. His name was Jim. (Laura lifts the heavy annual from the clawfoot table.) Here is in The Pirates of Penzance,” (Williams 1662). Laura has almost the exact same conversation later in the play with Jim when they are talking about their time together in high school. Jim and Laura even have a conversation about the nickname he had given her, Jim says, “Jim: But the name that I started to call you—wasn’t a name! And so I stopped myself before I said it. Laura: Wasn’t it—Blue Roses?” (Williams 1688). Similar conversations happen in both the beginning and ending of the play, which foreshadowed Jim’s arrival as the gentleman