New Womanhood in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie

Abstract

This research tries to depict the New Womanhood in Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie (2000) as a means for female's emancipation from the patriarchal domestic space. For this purpose, this research has focused on its two central female figures; Amanda and Laura and their struggle to be free from the male dominated society and their efforts to be independent women in contemporary southern American society. Though the play presents the plight of sensitive, helpless women who are victims in Southern patriarchal society these women have tried to be self sufficient in their decision making as the glimpse of the emergence of New Women and female emancipation.

The New Woman rejects all the traditional submissive roles of females and adopts the new and independent gender roles. Amanda and Laura in the play, though at the beginning of the play, just like to be limited in the domestic arena. Later, these women reject all the traditional norms of domestication while they are abandoned by the male family members. Laura seems submissive at the beginning. Amanda assumes that Laura should marry a rich man and should be settled well. However, Laura rejects the marital relation being determined to be self independent. It is a form of New Womanhood developed within her. Her rejection of the dependency upon marital status itself is the new form of womanhood. Amanda's interest for the job of her daughter itself marks that the time itself was demanding women's participation in public domain. It is adaptation of new gender roles and negligence of traditional one. It is a New Womanhood in contemporary American society.