Amanda is based on her mother, Edwina Williams. Amanda and Mrs. Williams were caring women and both were talkative. Throughout The Glass Menagerie, Amanda had long soliloquies explaining her past and how she was a highly sought after woman growing up. According to Signi Falk, Williams' own mother had a "verbal compulsion" (Bloom 103) and Williams said that "her mother would speak a half hour after her rest" (Bloom 103). Mrs. Williams' love for Williams is demonstrated when she "spent nine nights sleeping with her son to care for him while he was ill with diphtheria, during which time the disease was a common death among children" (Bloom 15). Another way Amanda drew inspiration from her mother is the way she escaped reality through her memories, “she retreated into memories of the happiest times of her youth” (Bloom 16 ). Amanda also escaped reality and her financial problems through her speeches about it.