A HAPPY ENDING FOR THE GLASS MENAGERIE?

A HAPPY ENDING FOR THE GLASS MENAGERIE? One of most astute readers and critics of literature that I know acknowledges that as a girl she used to change the endings of movies in her mind to give them a more satisfactory ending. She calls it “cool whipping ” a story. She says that even now one of the questions she asks at the end of a story is whether there is hope for the characters. Stefanie Cohen in an article in the Wall Street Journal (September 28-29) quotes Cherry Jones, who is playing Amanda Wingfield in the current production of The Glass Menagerie: “To do a play this devastating, you have to be hopeful….We joke that Jim [the Gentleman caller] leaves and says, ‘I made a horrible mistake, I’m headed back to the Wingfields!’”