Rose was born in 1909, just two years before Tennessee.  The two siblings were inseparable -- much closer to each other than to their younger brother Dakin.  When Rose was ill, Tennessee believed he suffered the same affliction. This active imagination possessed both of their souls, often leading them on evening adventures in the parks of Clarksdale, Mississippi where they would capture lightning bugs.  They soon earned the nickname “the couple” from Ozzie, the Williams’ servant.  Later in life, when Rose was crippled with fear and depression caused by increasing tensions in the Williams household, Tennessee remained her best friend and her greatest admirer.   

When Rose was nine years old, the family moved from the tranquil landscape of the Mississippi Delta to the busy industrial city of St. Louis, Missouri.  They moved into a small tenement, the front door of which opened into an alley.  The factories, warehouses and large city population were great shocks to Tennessee and Rose.  Their father turned to drinking and became abusive.  Rose, a sensitive soul in an uncaring environment, went into a spiral of seclusion, retreating from the world.  She assumed the beautiful and fragile characteristics that Williams would explore in The Glass Menagerie and other works.   

Two early attempts to bring some pleasure to Rose brought only adverse results.  While in her teens, Rose took violin lessons, but during a recital in which she was performing Papini’s “Romance,” stagefright caused her to repeat several passages before coming to an abrupt stop.  She was taken home shaken and tearful.  When Rose turned 17 she was to make her formal introduction into society, as Southern upbringing dictated, in the form of a debut.  Her father and her aunt insisted that the debutante ball be held in Knoxville, Tennessee.  As no one in Knoxville knew Rose, turn out was poor and her family’s hopes that Rose would meet her future husband were shattered.  The event was a catastrophe, and Rose returned to St. Louis humiliated.   

Tennessee wrote sympathetic short stories about these events titled “The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin” and “Completed.”   

Other attempts were made to bring Rose out of her shell.  Her mother, Edwina enrolled Rose in classes at Rubicam Business College.  Just as in The Glass Menagerie, Edwina believed the classes would help Rose get both a job and a husband.  She achieved neither.  Rose’s job as a receptionist ended quickly and a real life gentleman caller, again as in The Glass Menagerie, paid her only one visit.  In 1937, following several stays in private sanitoriums, Rose had a lobotomy -- one of the first ever performed.  The Williams family trusted the advice of the doctors who thought the operation -- in which nerve endings in her brain would be severed -- could do nothing but help Rose’s state.  Though the operation was free to the family, the effects were costly in the eyes of Tennessee.  Rose no longer felt physical or emotional distress but also lost any vitality left in her soul. Twenty years after the operation, Williams wrote Suddenly Last Summer which revealed the terrible details of the time surrounding the operation.   

In 1944 Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, based on both his short story “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” and the screenplay “The Gentleman Caller.” Like so many of his works, it was autobiographical and featured a representation of the nucleus of the Williams family: Edwina as Amanda, Tennessee as Tom, Rose as Laura and Cornelius as the absent father.  In an introduction to the play, his greatest tribute to his sister, the playwright wrote about the clock of life:   
 

the monosyllable of the clock is   
loss, loss, loss   
unless you devote your heart   
to its opposition