Laura is perhaps the most important character of the three main figures of `The Glass Menagerie', a play by Tennessee Williams that induces a range of themes from fragility, entrapment to the significance of memory. So how is it that this withdrawn, shy character is the very axis around which the play rotates? This essay will attempt to explain Laura's significance in the play and why she stands apart from the other characters, even though she is the one with the fewest lines.

The very title of the play is symbolic in its relevance to Laura, the `Glass Menagerie' being Laura's collection of little glass animals which comes to represent many facets of her personality. Like the glass animals, Laura is delicate and easily broken. Glass is transparent, but, with light shined upon it, one can create a prism of rainbow colours. Similarly, Laura, who is almost nonexistent...