Amanda is based on her mother, Edwina Williams. Amanda and Mrs. Williams were thoughtful women and both were verbose. During The Glass Menagerie, Amanda would have long soliloquies explaining her past and how she was a highly sought after woman in her childhood. According to Signi Falk, Williams' mother had a "verbal compulsion" (Bloom 103) and Williams claimed that "her mother would talk half an hour after she was buried" (Bloom 103). Mrs. Williams' love for Williams is manifested when she "spends nine nights sleeping with her son to care for him while he was ill with diphtheria, during this time this disease was a common death for children" (Bloom 15). Another way Amanda was inspired by her mother is how she escaped reality through memories, “withdrew into memories of the happier times of her youth” (Bloom 16). Amanda also escaped reality and her financial problems through his talk about her