The Glass Menagerie characters

Appears from the start

Amanda's son and the play's narrator, recalling his life in the Wingfield apartment. He works in a shoe warehouse to support the family but longs to write, travel, and escape the obligations that have replaced his absent father.

Appears from the start

Tom and Laura's mother, an abandoned wife who supports her children through determination and memories of her youth as a popular Southern girl. Anxious about their futures, she tries to impose her ideas of success and security on both of them.

Appears from the start

Tom's intensely shy older sister. A childhood illness left her with a slight limp, and her awareness of it has deepened her retreat from strangers. She finds comfort in old records and a carefully tended collection of small glass animals.

Also known as Mr. Wingfield

Appears from the start

Amanda's husband and the absent father of Tom and Laura. He left the family years earlier; his smiling portrait remains in the apartment as a reminder of both his charm and the escape Tom is tempted to repeat.

First appears in chapter 2

A former high-school classmate whom Laura remembers as confident, talented, and unusually kind to her. He once misheard an explanation of her illness and gave her the nickname Blue Roses, an attention she has continued to treasure.