At the rise of the curtain, we see an old-fashioned tenement apartment. We can also see the narrow alleyways which surround the apartment. Tom Wingfield, the narrator, enters and addresses the audience. Tom explains that the play is a memory play and that he is one of the characters in the play. The other characters are his mother Amanda, his sister Laura, and a gentleman caller. There is another character who never appears. This is his father who deserted the family some long years ago — "He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances!"
As the action begins, Amanda is instructing Tom about how to eat every bite of his food until Tom yells at her that he can't enjoy a bite of his food because of her constant nagging. Amanda then tells Laura to stay fresh and pretty for the gentlemen callers. Laura tells her she isn't expecting any, and Amanda tells how one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain, Mississippi, she had seventeen gentlemen callers all on one afternoon. Tom and Laura have heard this story many times but listen patiently to it again. Amanda then sends Laura into the living room to practice her shorthand or typing and to stay pretty for the gentlemen callers in spite of Laura's reassertion that there will be none.
