Drama Blog- The Glass Menagerie

Amanda can be dramatic, selfish, manipulative, and controlling. We addressed this in class, and at first I totally agreed. She was so hard on Tom and tried to control and almost live through Linda. Although I thought this at first, I am beginning to see that she really does care about her kids. In class, someone said that she loves her kids, but her approach is the problem. After reading the first six scenes, I completely agree with this statement. I mean all moms can nag and make us angry, but Amanda just seems to do it all the time. She is so obsessed and worried about her children that she does not realize how she truly treats them. It seems as if she is just being hard towards Tom concering his job. However, she says "How do you think we'd manage if you were-" (page 1247). This implies that she is worried for making their lives a good as they can be. She loves her son, but she relies on him so much. I do not think that she was trying to be hard on him like saying he is terrible and not good at working. Rather, she is just taking her worries and stress out on him. She may do this, but she also shows little parts where she is caring about her kids and wants the best for them. For example, on page 1251, she says to Tom "Promise, son, you'll-never be a drunkard". This is one scene that shows that she is concerned and worried her son could potentially ruin himself. I think that her way of showing love is warning and trying to make them perfect so that there is no way their life can be bad or screwed up in any way. When I think of Amanda, I think of one of the women in the show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. My sister and I watched this together, and one of the women said she dedicated her life to her kids and that all she cared about were them. Just like Amanda, she showed her love in ways that made the kids mad or annoyed with her. She was trying to keep her daughter from going away for the summer, but this only made the daughter annoyed rather than make he stay. She lived through her kids and didn't have a life outside of that, which is what I think Amanda does.