Traumatized Interpretations of Female Characters in American Southern Culture in The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams is the most famous Southern playwright in the history of 20th century American literature, and southern identity is a thread that runs throughout Williams’ work. The Glass Menagerie is one of his highly representative dramatic works. The play tells the story of how an ordinary family in deep identity crisis escapes the harsh reality and cultural trauma during the Great Depression in the United States. Using trauma theory as a tool, this paper explores the complex relationship between the deep-seated causes of the tragedy of the two female characters in the play and the historical context through the traumatic events experienced by the characters in the play and the different attitudes they show in the face of trauma. Through this, the vulnerability and identity crisis of individuals during the period of social change and cultural breaks are analyzed. The purpose of the paper is to arouse human beings’ thoughts on how to cope with cultural integration and foreign cultural invasion, and how to obtain salvation when they are amid an identity crisis.

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