Narcissistic Depression in Tennessee William's the Glass Menagerie

The present article revisits Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie using certain concepts of psychoanalytic framework like Narcissistic Depression as tools of analysis. Modern man has constantly been concerned with the problem of depression; there are also some psychologists who have extrapolated some special psychological terms about depression such as objective depression or something that Julia Kristeva calls it as narcissistic depression. In this kind, the psychic or the depressed narcissist instead of feeling hostility to some internal object feels flawed, incomplete and wounded. In this way, depressive actions like mourning, hides an aggressive reaction against a lost object or a person and thereby reveals the ambivalence on the part of the mourner with respect to the object of his mourning. Considering such a phenomenon in mind, this study strives to apply Kristeva’s concept of narcissistic depression on William’s play The Glass Menagerie. The study covers many parts of the play starting with a literature review concerning narcissism and narcissistic depression. This will then culminate into shedding light on the traces of such depression and following psychological disorder and mental pitfalls in the characters of William’s The Glass Menagerie. The findings show that all of the characters in this play lead a life of loneliness characterized by the themes of illusion, frustration and repression which further echoes the whole society being presented in Williams’ play.