The Glass Menagerie also has no character like Stanley, which means that Laura's tragedy is more purely reflective of the cruelty of fate and the inherent loneliness of life than Blanche's.

It's abundantly clear from the opening scenes of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire that the families depicted in the respective plays are quite low down on the social ladder. They may not be dirt poor, but they're certainly not especially prosperous, either. If one had to put a class label on them, one could say that the Wingfields and the Kowalskis are lower-middle class.

The Wingfields live in a tenement building that faces onto a shabby-looking alleyway. This is clearly not a part of the world where anyone would want to live if they had any choice in the matter. As if the set design wasn't enough to tell us that times are tight for the Wingfields, Tom's monologue, with its reference to the effects of the Great Depression, makes explicit what kind of economic environment his family is living in. This is a family very much down on its luck.

Much the same could be said about the Kowalskis. They live in a fairly run-down part of New Orleans—not quite a slum, perhaps, but still pretty downmarket all the same. The apartment block in which Stella and Stanley live has clearly seen better days, what with its shabby exterior and faded stairs.

In the opening scene, we hear the sound of piano music drifting in the evening air from some dive-bar in the vicinity. This only adds to the sense that this is a somewhat disreputable neighborhood, certainly not the kind of place where we'd expect to see the snobbish and refined Blanche DuBois.

I think that you would want to focus on how women are depicted in both of Williams' work.  Amanda and Blanche might be a good starting point on how both women are depicted.  Both have some challenge in dealing with reality.  Amanda cannot fully understand the implications of her behavior on her son and, probably, her husband.  She has trouble being open and honest about her past and her own sense of self indulgence about it helps to create a distorted view of her self and of reality.  I would look for lines where this embellishment and this sense of self indulgence is present.  Where can we find delusion in Amanda?  What does this do to those around her and who have to live with her?  Blanche is living in a state of denial.  I think that you can examine recent posts in the group of "A Streetcar Named Desire" where myself and other editors have talked at length about Blanche's own challenges with reality, her own past, and her sense of self.  Additionally, you can compare how Amanda ends up impacting others as Blanche impacts others.  Both do a fairly good job of making life challenging, to say the least.  I would also examine their relationship with men in terms of whether or not there is a level of honest and forthrightness in these associations.  If you wanted to do so, I think you can also examine how women, as a group, are seen by Williams as complex in a world that might not fully acknowledge complexity.  The response to this divergence of narrative is to dismiss or "send" them away.  Examine how Blanche is "dealt with" by Stanley's manipulation of Stella and then how Laura is dealt with by her family.  In the end, perhaps Williams is making a case that in a normative society that is driven by consensus, the different experiences and narratives that many women possess might not be immediately validated and authenticated.