Oppression Of Women In The House On Mango Street

The House on Mango Street is the tale about a young girl named Esperanza who is maturing throughout the text. In it Esperanza documents the events and people who make up Mango Street. It is through this community that Esperanza’s ideas and concepts of the relationships between men and women are shaped. She provides detailed accounts about the oppression of women at not only the hands of men who make up Mango Street but also how the community contributes to this oppression. As the young girls and women of Mango Street try to navigate the world they must deal with a patriarchal society that seeks to keep them confined. By growing up in this environment where women are confined Esperanza seeks desperately to depart from Mango Street for fear

of following similar fates as the women who surround her. Sandra Cisneros’s vignettes demonstrate that through Esperanza’s experience of growing up on Mango Street and witnessing the oppression of the women who make up the Latino community that these events are what motivate the young narrators desperate desire to leave her environment.
Esperanza takes note of the relationships between men and women who make up Mango Street. One of the examples she provides to readers is of Earl and his unknown wife. The children and Esperanza note that they know nothing of Earl’s wife not even her appearance but that “whenever she arrives, he holds her tight by the crook of the arm. They walk fast into the apartment, lock the door behind them and never stay long” (Cisneros 71). In this glimpse of a relationship Esperanza is describing the confining nature of Earl marriage. In this vignette Earl’s wife does not have a name, and her description is mere gossip between those in the community. In essence Earl’s wife is left without an identity. The reader’s and Esperanza only know that she is Earl’s wife. In his treatment of his wife Earl treats her more as an object and property, Esperanza’s description of the way he guides his wife into the house is startling. He grips her arm as if she is a child who he must direct. Also by noting that Earl locks the door behind them provides the reader with a sense that Earl is protective of his wife, possibly that he is fearful of her escaping from him.
Another relationship that Esperanza describes is of Rafaela and her husband.

Rafaela is married to an older man and “gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at” (79). The narrator Esperanza notes that because Rafaela is locked in the house she gives the passing kids money to run to the store to bring her back juice. Esperanza states that “Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys. And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string” (81). Esperanza is being to notice a common occurrence in the treatment of women on Mango Street. Rafaela is locked away by her husband as he wants to keep her from running off. This mirrors the relationship between Earl and his wife. Rafaela is described in more detail however allowing readers a deeper connection to her experience in her marriage. Esperanza witnesses Rafaela’s confinement in the house each time she passes by with friends and Rafaela sends them down money to buy her a drink from the store since she is unable to go herself. There is also an interesting comparison in which the confined room is compared to being bitter whereas the sweet drink is compared to being the

outside world like the island Rafaela originated from or the dance halls. The sweeter drink is the more appealing, Rafaela wants to be free, she wants to be able to leave her home and partake in the activities of the world but her bitter reality is that of being stuck in a house on Mango Street. The lines of this chapter are cryptic, the sweeter drinks or more desirable things appear to be a way to entice women into relationships but by being swayed by the desirable things the women are allowing themselves to be kept on a string and risk being confined as Rafaela. As this continuation of inequality between men and women becomes apparent to the narrator Esperanza her desire to leave Mango Street also grows.
This desire to leave is seen close towards the end of the book when Esperanza begins to openly state her desire for freedom from possible oppression as well as trying to flee Mango Street.

In the vignette titled Beautiful and Cruel Esperanza declares that she has “decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain” (88). She also remarks that “her power is her own. She will not give it away . . . I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate” (89). Esperanza is demonstrating that she does not want to become tied down in the traditional sense of marriage when she refers to it as a ball and chain. As she has been growing up within Mango Street she has been witness to relationship in which the women become objects of their husbands and loss the identity of themselves. Esperanza is aware of the power imbalance between the men and women in her Latino community and openly states that she wants to be powerful. When she writes that she will not give her power away she is demonstrating again that she will not hand over her power to the men in her life as Earl’s wife and Rafaela have done. In growing up on Mango Street Esperanza’s notions about the relationship between women and have begun to shape her outlook on life. In her last quotes she is clearly decided that she fight back against the stereotype of what is expected from a young girl or female. In stating that she

will be the one who will leave the table like a man she is putting herself in a place of power. The way which she describes how she will not clean up after herself by tidying the table demonstrate she does not want to perform feminine duties as a way to not fit into the traditional role of a woman. By breaking the traditional role Esperanza believes she can become the powerful. In behaving and thinking in this manner Esperanza has signified that she will not travel the same roads as the women on Mango Street, that she will not share in their fate of being trapped women.