House On Mango Street Marianismo

Challenging Marianismo in The House on Mango Street

For thousands of years, gender norms have implied that the place for women is in the home, taking care of children and obeying every desire of men. These unwritten rules state that women cannot think for themselves; they should only perform menial work, if any at all, and they must not be independent. Failure to follow them results in shaming from men, who hold nearly all of the power. Unfortunately, these sexist expectations still exist in the modern world, though the labels given to them differ between cultures. In the latino community, they are referred to as the concept of marianismo. Latina women all over the world fight daily, through both grand and small acts, to earn the respect and

freedom they deserve. Literature serves as one of the most powerful forms of expression in the fight against this concept. By portraying how atrocious and ironic marianismo is, authors such as Sandra Cisneros make groundbreaking steps in the battle for social equality. In her novel The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros juxtaposes the way that Esperanza’s community’s machismo imprisons her neighbors and loved ones with Esperanza’s own rebelliousness to challenge the obsolete notion of marianismo.
One of the characters whose life is contrasted with Esperanza’s gender role-defying personality is the neighbor Minerva. Minerva is a young mother of two, trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband. Exhausted of his cycling of leaving her, she finally summons the strength to force him out, but the next week she comes to Esperanza “black and blue and asks what can she do” to save herself from her precarious relationship. Like Esperanza, Minerva is courageous, but she submits too easily and makes a dangerous decision: she opens the door and allows her husband to remain in her life and the lives of her children. Unlike Minerva, Esperanza refuses to be intimidated and abused by the men or boys in her community. When a boy named Sire move to the neighborhood and stares at her, she declares that she “[doesn’t] cross the street like other girls…[she] had to prove [...she] wasn’t scared of nobody’s eyes.” Although she is only a child, Esperanza is exasperated with the constant control that the men have over the women. She rebels against the concept of marianismo by being brave, even if she is fearful of Sire and other boys. Esperanza knows that she needs to prove that she is as confident and determined as any man in order to destroy the gender stereotypes she is burdened with.
Rafaela - Another character whose situation contradicts Esperanza’s response to the ideal of marianismo is Rafaela, a woman who is physically locked away within her home. While Minerva is trapped in her relationship, Rafaela is shut inside due to her husband’s fear of giving her power over herself. Whenever he leaves the house, she is “locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful” and could choose to improve her life by leaving him. Although she dreams of escaping her prison, Rafaela does not challenge her situation. Instead of acting against the machismo of her husband and society, she asks only for the children to buy her juice, her only sweet sanctuary from the reality of her life. Esperanza, on the other hand, denies the men in her community the satisfaction of controlling her. She is wise and knows that she is fighting to free herself from the grasp of society’s machismo. It may appear that there is little she can do as a child, but she realizes that by being her own tenacious self, she has “begun [her] own quiet war [...she] leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.” After living on Mango Street and witnessing all of the broken relationships and damaged women, Esperanza decides that she does not want Mango Street to be her home. She desires to live away from the pressures that Rafaela and other women face but recognizes that Mango Street has made her an insurgent against the obsolete gender norms.
Esperanza’s great-grandmother of the same name is the third and most personal character to Esperanza who was victimized by societal expectations.

Terrified of finding herself in her great-grandmother’s situation, Esperanza is determined to fight for her freedom and self-government. When grandmother Esperanza was young, she fought against the same pressures and refused to be married, but she was unable to conquer the sexist society alone. One day, against her will, a man “threw a sack over her head and carried her off…She looked out the window her whole life.” This man was young Esperanza’s great-grandfather. Because great grandmother Esperanza was unable to overcome the gender expectations of her world, she spent the rest of her existence in despair, something that young Esperanza wishes to avoid. Young Esperanza knows that it will be challenging but possible to overcome the expectations of modern society. She has learned from her grandmother’s sorrow that she must find and seize the opportunity to create a better life for herself. Simultaneously inspired and disheartened by her ancestor’s respective spirit and inability to protect herself from the marianismo of society, Esperanza states that she has “inherited her name, but [she does not] want to inherit her place by the window.” She knows that the same expectation of machismo exists in the Latino community but that it can now be overcome. As long as she fights for her own beliefs and rights, she can protect herself from the hordes of men who want to control her

life.
Esperanza’s internal and external rebellion against sexism, contrasted with stories of suffering friends and family, help to destroy the concept of marianismo in the Latino community. Throughout the novel, Esperanza witnesses the mental and physical imprisonment of her friends on Mango Street, spurring her defiance towards the gender norms. Although Mango Street is her home, she wishes desperately to be free from its social conditions and vows to never become subservient like the women she knows. She is young, but she understands the damaging toll that marianismo takes on the women in her community. Much like nonfictional people throughout history and in modern society, she opposes gender norms with the hope that one day women will finally be given the equal treatment they deserve.