Metaphorical Disability in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie

Abstract

This paper analyses the disability in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie at three levels: the physical disability, cultural disability, and social disability, which is reflected in Laura’s vulnerability, Tom’s spiritual struggle as a gay man, and their mother Amanda’s neuroticism. Through representations of the repressive social culture against the disabled and dramatizing the interconnected collision between the old South and modern society against the homophobic cultural background, Williams expresses his humanistic concerns.