Similarities And Differences Between Glass Menagerie And Linda

Decent Essays
The characters I choose are Laura from the “Glass Menagerie” and Linda from the “Death of a Salesman.” The comparisons of Laura and Linda are; both are in their own little worlds. Laura is always talking about her collection of small glass animals. “My glass collection takes up a good deal of my time.” (Williams, Tennessee,1691). Linda is a stay at home mother, she treats her husband like he is a child. Linda: “Take an aspirin. Should I get you an aspirin? It’ll soothe you.” (Miller, Arthur 1767). Laura has a strong bond with her brother Tom. “Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!” Linda has a bond with her grown children, “That’s all you are, my baby! (To Biff.).” (Miller, Arthur, …show more content…
Laura’s mother, Amanda, is looking for a husband for Laura. Linda is always optimistic about the future. “But you’re doing wonderful, dear. You’re making seventy to a hundred dollars a week.” (Miller, Arthur 1778). Laura never considers the future. “I don’t do anything much.” (William, Tennessee 1691). Both women are controlled by another family member. Linda’s husband is restraining her. “I won’t have you mending stocking in this house! Now throw them out!” (Miller, Arthur 1780). Laura was to shy and being controlled by her mother. “I took her over to the Young People’s League at the church. Another fiasco. She spoke to nobody; nobody spoke to her.” (Williams Tennessee …show more content…
“It was the lesser of two evils, Mother. I couldn’t go back there; I threw up on the floor.” (Williams, Tennessee 1661). Laura never went out anywhere to meet friends or to have a social life. She always went walking to the local zoo. “I went in the art museum and the bird-houses at the Zoo.” (Williams Tennessee 1661). Laura also used her brace as a form of alienation herself from other people. “Yes, it was so hard for me, getting upstairs. I had that brace on my leg it clumped so loud!” (Williams, Tennessee, 1689) Laura was self-conscience of the noise her brace made while she was walking. “To me it sounded like thunder.” (Williams, Tennessee,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    How Miss Hancock Made a Difference in Charlotte’s life? What did Miss Hancock and Charlotte’s mother do to change Charlotte’s life? As Charlotte was going to school Miss Hancock was her English teacher in seventh grade. In grade seven, the students thought, “as a person she is, they admired her” (Wilson 215). Whereas, Charlotte lived with her mean, unpleasant, mother; however, they lived in a big modern house that was very orderly.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the mid seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in New England, women were not just the typical housewives. The impact they had was unimaginable. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote Good Wives to explain the roles of women’s lives and explain the neglected aspects people never considered. Furthermore, she wrote this book to describe these changing roles of the world people thought “men” controlled.…

    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale is an exploration into the life of Martha Ballard, a successful sixteenth-century midwife, through her diary entries. Through Martha’s perspective and Ulrich’s commentary, the readers are able to get a sense of how society was like in colonial North America, where her diary entries take place. Colonial women were primarily expected to perform wifely duties and tend to domestic affairs while their husbands worked to financially sustain the household. Historically, women and their accomplishments have been overshadowed by male achievements. Ulrich uses Martha’s diary entries to prove that colonial women are worthy of being celebrated for their accomplishments and overcoming the restrictive gender roles…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women have played an important part in society for many years. In Good Wives, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich explores the roles of women in seventeenth and eighteenth century New England. Ulrich explains both the duties that women were expected to fulfill, as well as the realities of daily life. Ulrich’s account demonstrates the complicated way in which different roles created or limited possibilities for women in Colonial New England. Overall, the account enables the reader to actually experience the lives of seventeenth century New England women.…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “The Conscience of the Court”: How Hurston Reveals Racism through Word Choice Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Conscience of the Court” explores a court case in which an African-American maid was accused of almost beating a man to death for seemingly no reason. This short story allows Laura Lee Kimble to explain her side of the story. Though she is far less educated than the people of the court, Laura Lee is able to explain the event in great detail. Throughout this story, Hurston utilizes the smallest of sections to communicate the subtle racial tension in the court room. Hurston reminds the reader that this story is about race, and her approach evolves throughout the story.…

    • 1857 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Martha Ballard; previously Martha Moore, was thought to be a highly depended on midwife and healer in her town of Hallowell, Maine. She dedicated the majority of her life to serving those around her, helping care for any aches, pains, and ailments her friends and family suffered with. Her community greatly depended on her for her knowledge and abilities to manufacture remedies and early medicines. The best evidence of the practical side of Martha’s education came from the diary itself. She documented her day to day activities and thankfully left behind a view into the world of a woman living during the eighteenth century.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry (376), “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1034), and “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” by William Shakespeare (529), seem to treat women as second class citizens. Even though they are all from different eras they all three still do not speak of women in high regards. In fact, the Feminist movement would have a field day with all three. One may be a poem but it really speaks volumes of how the narrator felt about his mistress.…

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Asserting the Woman’s Experience in Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear Children”, “To My Dear Loving Husband”, and “A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” For centuries, artists find a woman to be a most worthy muse. Poets proclaim her beauty, her poise and charm. Her physical presence is evident but her intellectual contributions are absent.…

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Upon analysis of Martha Ballard’s diary during the period 1785 to 1790, it is revealed that the nature of women’s work in later eighteenth-century New England was strongly divided by gender. According to Ulrich, although women could both work at home or outside, their contribution was never officially recognized. In addition, it can be deduced from the diary that women were expected to abide by the constrains of a patriarchal society while also conforming to gender norms. However, the women in these times were strangely empowered through the informal economy they had created for themselves. These deductions are primarily supported by the evidence found through the entries in Martha’s diary.…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In direct opposition to this seeing is how Linda’s hometown superficially sees her (as an Asian only). Living in Boiling Springs, Linda describes herself as the “open secret” of the town. As an extension of the To Kill a Mockingbird comparison, the “open secret” part acts as a parallel to Boo Radley. This means that in the town, Linda is a social pariah that nobody openly talks about and by the same token no one gets to know. Therefore, without Baby Harper present, Linda will only know how to judge someone shallowly and will not possess the ability to evaluate herself on an objective basis.…

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Unfortunately, Linda is not able to protect her husband before his death. Moreover, she is depressed husband’s death. Also, she didn’t understood her husband’s suicide: “why did you do it?” (Miller 807) because she “made the last payment on the house today.” (Miller 807)…

    • 1927 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Glass Menagerie”, “Death of a Salesman”, and “A Raisin in the Sun” all reflect the human experience. The human experience in this case involves American families during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s that are co-dependent on each other throughout the economic and social struggles of their time. The families’ struggles transcend their time periods; people empathize with them now and will continue to do so long into the future. The stories depict experiences that feel very real and that people can relate to in their own lives. Economic hardship and dreams of a better future are common themes in these plays.…

    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This particular quote symbolizes how humiliated Mrs. Hutchinson felt that she was the center of attention, crying out in agony and how people can become too caught up in…

    • 1081 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women have always struggled to break through an invisible glass ceiling that separates them from their goals. Women are kept from attaining higher positions in business, they are kept from studying math and science, and are deterred from playing certain sports. However, once upon a time women were kept from being themselves. Many women were discouraged from trying to learn at all, instead kept in the confines of the home. Virginia Woolf’s “What if Shakespeare Had Had a Sister?” brings to light the struggles that women faced in the sixteenth century, many of which spill into post-Civil War America, as evident in William Faulkner’s…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the 1600s, a patriarchal society cast a glooming shadow on the world of literature. Women were expected to be restricted to household tasks, while only men had the opportunity to write. Hence, Anne Bradstreet became a symbolic figure of female writing as she became the first published female poet in the New World. Her writing served as a window to observe the newly discovered land. Although she writes about and consistently emphasizes her devotion to God that the conventional Puritan beliefs promote, Bradstreet implicitly shows a priority for world pleasures.…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics