Setting and Plot

Setting:

St. Louis, Missouri in 1937 in the Wingfield house

Plot:

   The play begins with Tom as the narrator telling the audience his story from memory.  He describes their house and the members of his family.  Amanda is his mother, and Laura is his younger sister.  His father abandoned his family years ago; the last time the family heard from him was in a postcard from Mexico saying, “Hello. Goodbye”.  Tom enters into the dining room where his mother and sister are eating.  As soon as Tom sits down at the table, Amanda begins complaining about the way he eats and tells him to chew his food.  She also tells Laura that she needs to be prepared for gentlemen callers and starts to describe her adolescence with all the gentlemen callers she had before she married her husband.  Because Laura unfortunately has a brace on her leg and is very shy, she knows that there will not be any gentleman callers. 

Her mother hopes that Laura will educate herself enough to become self-sufficient, but Amanda soon finds out the Laura has dropped out of business school.  Instead of going to class, she spent her days walking through the park, going to museums, and going to the zoo.  Amanda tells Laura that the only thing that she can do now is get married, and she asks Laura if she has ever liked a boy.  Laura tells her about a boy she knew in high school named Jim and how he gave her the nickname “Blue Roses”.  In hopes to attract male callers for Laura, Amanda decides to sell newspaper subscriptions over the telephone to bring in extra money. 

Tom has an argument with his mother and decides to go to the movies like he always did.  His mother does not like that excuse and yells at him about going to the movies, but Tom enjoyed going to the movies for the adventure.  As he was leaving, Tom accidentally breaks some of Laura’s glass figurines in her glass menagerie, and she begins to cry.  Amanda refuses to talk to Tom until he apologizes.  The next day after Tom apologizes, Amanda and Tom discuss Laura's prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for potential suitors at the warehouse.  Tom tells his mother about a man he works with named Jim O’Conner and tells her that he invited him to dinner the next day. 

As Amanda is frantically preparing for this dinner, she tells Laura the name of this suitor just before he arrives at the house.  To her amazement it is Jim, the boy she had a crush on in high school.  When Jim arrives to the house for dinner, Amanda makes Laura open the door for him, but she panics leaving only Tom and Jim in the room.  Tom confides to Jim that he has used the money for his family's electric bill to join the merchant marine and plans to leave his job and family in search of adventure.

Amanda walks into the room and introduces herself to Jim.  She orders Tom to go get Laura for dinner, but Tom returns saying Laura is feeling ill.  Amanda calls Laura for dinner but sees that she is ill, and she tells her to go lay on the couch while they eat dinner.  As soon as dinner is over, the lights flicker and go out.  Amanda lights some candles and tells Jim to go keep Laura company while Tom and she clean up. 

Laura is scared by Jim's presence, but she loosens up because of his warm and open behavior. She confesses that she knew him and liked him in high school, but she was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him of the nickname he had given her.  "Blue Roses" is what Jim heard when Laura had the medical condition pleurosis. He reproaches her for her shyness and low self-esteem but praises her uniqueness. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal, a unicorn. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally knocks over the unicorn, breaking off its horn. Laura forgives him and notes that now the unicorn is a normal horse. Jim then kisses her, but he quickly draws back and apologizes.  He explains that he was carried away by the moment and that he actually has a fiancée. Laura gives him the broken unicorn as a souvenir.

Amanda enters the living room when Jim explains that he must leave because of an appointment with his fiancée. Amanda sees him off warmly but, after he is gone, yells at on Tom for not knowing that Jim was engaged. Tom leaves through the fire escape outside of their apartment and watches Amanda and Laura.  He explains that, not long after Jim's visit, he gets fired from his job and leaves Amanda and Laura behind. Years later, though he travels far, he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of Laura.