House On Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros

In The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, twelve-year-old Esperanza Cordero must navigate through the trials and tribulations that one can associate when encountering young adulthood. Cisneros uses her unique writing style of vignettes to illustrate the narrative voice of Esperanza in her text. A major theme that can be seen as the most prominent thus far, is on the feminist role of Esperanza as a female in her Latin American culture. The House on Mango Street is an overall bildungsroman that can be considered to be a feminist work of literature. The bildungsroman is encompassed by various feminist values throughout the text of written work, regarding the particular subject. Cisneros illustrates these feminist views through the creation

of several women characters with strong and brilliant attributions that inspire the main character of the bildungsroman. Esperanza is witness to the treatment of these females through oppression of different kinds of freedom, beaten and abuse and the double edge sword of beauty expressed through various women figures on Mango Street.
Living on Mango Street, Esperanza is expected to become a replica of the typical Latina women in her culture. A girl who grows into adulthood to be married off to a Latino man to care for a household, bearing and looking after children while at the same time subjecting to a man. Right from the start Esperanza sees this form of restriction on females that she yearns for a different life away from Mango street, she craves for that perfect home she was promised by her parents that she can call her own. Esperanza as a character is head strong, determined and has a sense of individualism at the tender age of twelve. “We can see this in the vignette My Name. “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window” (Cisneros 11). Esperanza has made clear a statement that while the women in her family no matter how hard headed and strong they, were they still caved into that role of housewife to a man. Esperanza’s aspiration is to become isolated from collapsing under this traditional obligation. In her eyes sees this as wrong and in a way, she vows to not submit and even goes as far having thoughts of changing her too many letter name. Esperanza wants to rename herself with an alias of strong women she has learned about previously, possibly in hopes of staying true to herself and her individualism. As the bildungsroman starts to take a reader on a journey through these small vignettes, we see that Esperanza experiments with her female power only to be brought down by the overwhelming misogyny power in various forms in the writing along with other women figures.
The first actual insistence Esperanza comes across from in the form of deprived freedom against women that portrays this bildungsroman as a feminist literature is in the vignette Alicia Who Sees Mice. “Alicia who inherited her mama’s rolling pin and sleepiness, is young and smart and studies for the first time at the university.” Alicia who we know lost her mother is going through a difficult time from this one event. The first part of the quote can be seen as a metaphor, where Alicia has clearly inherited more than the mother’s rolling pin and sleepiness. Alicia has definitely acquired the role of full time mother to her siblings through the father’s insistence. The young Alicia has to maintain a household while at the same time pursuing an education at a university where she has to take two trains and a bus to arrive to her classes. Alicia has not only become enslaved through her father, nevertheless she has also fallen under traditional cultural obligation of taking the place as caretaker in case of the mother dying as the oldest daughter. The character of Alicia, a reader we can see that she has the ambition and the determination of overcoming the poverty in her life in order not to spend a lifetime of working at a manufacturing plant as typical Latino people. Alicia thinks that higher education is the key for obtaining a better future. However, Alicia is heavily weighed down by forces of misogyny where the men do not see the value in a woman earning a college degree since the only outcome will be a certain place in a household at the end of the day for women. Esperanza and Alicia can be seen as fairly relative and mirrored characters to one another. They both strive to be independent and strong females as they go against the grain of breaking that traditional obligation of being meek and weak women.
The vignette Minerva Writes Poems is a further example of how Cisneros’ House on Mango Street is seen as a feminist literature piece. The chosen vignette does not only encompass the feminism theme it also demonstrates the treatment of females by men of the Latino culture. “Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what she can do? Minerva. I don’t know which way she’ll go. There is nothing I can do” (Cisneros 84). Minerva is trapped in an ongoing cycle, we can clearly see that she cannot break away from and in a form, is not smart or strong enough to stop it from reoccurring. On the other hand, even though this form of oppression she finds condolence in writing her poems. Even if she is, perhaps subjected to hiding her poems in fear of displeasing her husband or being the ridiculed as a result of writing. As a reader, we can conclude that the poems Minerva writes are possibly close to her heart as she reserves them on her physical body throughout the day next to her spare change. The act of writing poetry can also be seen as a form expressing herself through the hardships of Minerva’s life and therefore liberating herself through this form. Minerva is a further representation of men exercising their power over women when it comes to dependency. Perhaps Minerva is forced to stay beside her husband because she has two children and no form of income to maintain them if she decides to leave her husband. Being dependent on the male spouse has always been a struggle for many women over time that they think they are helpless to actually do something to prevent this and therefore stay in that specific woman role. Since Esperanza and Minerva are relatively close in age and they both have writing in common, they create a friendship bond through the sharing of their written poetry. Esperanza through this interchange of poetry, she ventures unknowingly to not only find solace, however to find her identity as intelligent female trying to exceed beyond the culture’s expectations. Since Esperanza is witness to Minerva’s situation, this certain event in overall becomes further ammunition in her pursuit to escape the life that Mango Street provides to those who stay there. We can see that Esperanza further craves the independence to become something beyond than an extension of a man.
In House on Mango Street female characters inhibit majority of the bildungsroman and one cannot help yet to discuss the aspect of beauty of certain characters to discuss further feminism themes.

As Esperanza comes into contact with them throughout her journey of self-discovery. Esperanza regards the aspect of beauty to be a source of power in which she admires and hopes to obtain while also at the same time she holds a resentment towards it. Young Esperanza shortly discovers beauty to be a double edge sword when it comes to having advantages and disadvantages encountering male characters in the text. There are two situations where we as readers witness that these women who contain their beauty physically are the ones who seem to endure hardships the most. When Esperanza first encounters her friend Sally, she is right away perceived to be beautiful with a physical description. We see that Sally’s father has placed certain restrictions on his daughter in result of her beauty. Sally is a character that has a considerably rebellious personality and definitely defies her father in his wishes to keep her sheltered and homebound. We see that Sally commits several actions to utilize her feminine power and the end results in a backlash in the form of physical abuse. “One day Sally’s father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she doesn’t come to school…Until the way Sally tells it, he went crazy, he forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt” (Cisneros 93). We

are led to believe that life at home has become complicated for Sally and that in a fit of rage, Sally’s father went overboard with the physical blows. Since he was described as forgetting to be her father between the buckle and belt, this further indicates the seriousness of how rough he was with Sally. In several vignettes, later we learn that Sally escapes her father’s household through marriage, however she finds herself under the same conditions and cycle as we have seen previously through other characters. Esperanza, from this circumstance can learn two lessons. One lesson can be that running toward a man to fix your problems can never be the best solution as Sally finds herself with an abusive husband as her father. Second, Esperanza can learn that only she herself will she rise from the different difficult situations with no help from anyone, especially not a man and this continues to fuel her plan to escape Mango Street.
A second female character in which the aspect of beauty betrays her and how it becomes a double edge sword used against her, is Rafaela.

Rafaela might not suffer from physical abuse, although she suffers from oppression of physical freedom caused by the hand of her own husband. The character is a further example of when a culture is heavily dominated by men, giving women almost to no chance of rising from the long-established responsibility of their culture. “Rafaela who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will away since she is too beautiful to look at” (Cisneros 79). We are guided to believe that Rafaela has been long imprisoned in the confinements of her own her for far too long. Since Esperanza indicates two facts, Rafaela has begun to age from simply witnessing the outside world from her window and that she spends her time daydreaming about a fairy tale of a princess within the same situation. At the end of the vignette the last line expressed by Esperanza, a reader is led to believe and question if she actually pities these female characters for not being strong enough to overcome their situations. “And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string” (Cisneros 80). Esperanza may pity these women for not being more and being trapped in an endless cycle, however this encourages her to pursue for her own individualism and

freedom.
The House on Mango Street by Cisneros is perhaps a short one-hundred-and-ten-page bildungsroman. However, it is constructed with short vignettes, yet it is written to be highly inspirational and creative to impact readers. It encompasses important, influential lectures through themes and imagery that can give readers a reason to study Latin Literature. The major theme being that it can be considered as a feminist piece of writing through the creation of several female characters that incorporates the author’s feminist ideals. The main one being in her protagonist character of Esperanza. The author is able to demonstrate what women of the Latin culture endure when it is mainly controlled by the social construction that favor males over females through restriction of freedom, maltreatment and the two-sided feature of beauty.