that you ever think of!"1 Every time Tom attempts to leave the oppressive atmosphere and "go to the movies", the mother reproaches him because she is frustrated about having been abandoned once by her own husband: "Go to the movies, go! Don't think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who's crippled and has no job! Don't let anything interfere with your selfish pleasure, just go...!"2 At the end of the play however, Tom manages to escape (symbolically through the fire escape) and follow in the steps of his own father: "I left Saint Louis. I descended the step of this fire-escape for a last time and followed... in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space..."3
             Also, Amanda's obsession with finding gentlemen caller for Laura is nothing else than her nostalgia for her own past when she used to be assiduously courted: "Now look at yourself, young lady. This is the prettiest you will ever be! I've got to fix myself now! You're going to be surprised by your mother's appearance!"4 Before the momentous dinner with Jim O'Connor, Amanda prepares her daughter's appearance and symbolically makes her face the mirror, and then returns immediately to the preoccupation with her own dress. This indicates that the mother somehow appropriates the i
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