Sandra Cisneros The House On Mango Street

Sandra Bowman

English 100 (1029)

Prof. Sanchez

May 16, 2018

Dreams and Hope on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros uses the characters in The House on Mango Street, to show the readers how women often are defined by the men in their lives and their struggles. However, some of the characters defy the patriarchal system in which they live. The women see there’s more to life outside of Mango Street than the abuse and the life of the barrio they endure but don’t know how to escape to what they are accustom to. According to Johnson “Patriarchy, the System an It, not a He, a Them, or and US”, he describes how culture imposes gender roles and influences the patriarchy system. In society we tend to see how women are dominantly controlled by the males in

the families. The old fashion myth that females are to be kept in the home and the patriarchal society that they live in. The Husbands disciplines the home and the wives including their daughter inside of it, but for Esperanza desires to run from this masculine-controlling household are her hopes and dreams. She shares her dreams and hopes throughout the vignettes, explores life while living on Mango Street as she faces the challenges and struggles living the patriarchal life along with the other women on Mango Street.
Esperanza is the alter ego of the author who displays the need to be a woman without limitations to explore life independently. Esperanza dreams to attain a better life, refuses to settle like the other women of her neighborhood who have settled for the patriarchal life. Esperanza believes to be an independent woman who answers to only herself, is to have her own quiet home to do her writing will get her off Mango Street. Cisneros expresses this in her introduction “A House of My Own,” “As A girl, she dreamed about having a silent home, just to herself, the way other women dreamed of their weddings” (xii). Past and today society places a stigma how women should be planning for their weddings not worrying about how to purchase a home, for that is for their husband to handle. This was not the case for Esperanza. In the vignette, “Beautiful and Cruel”, Esperanza expresses how she will escape a male-dominated society and be in control of her own life. “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” (Cisneros 89). Esperanza has confidence that to have the power of femininity, she need to be in control of her own life and not allow the men to have the power and control of her life. We see this so much in today corporate world or in the cultures of third world countries how the men are often giving jobs that women are just as qualify or the women are subjected to the male dominance in society and in their family unit.
Esperanza doesn't agree to the tales of marriage because on Mango Street there is no sign that it's a good thing. Most of the married women she knows are dreadfully unhappy. Minerva's husband beats her, Rafaela's husband locks her in their apartment, and Mamacita's son belittles her for refusing to speak English. If they are beautiful or smart, the women are always under the control of men, either by their husbands or fathers. Esperanza witness the effects of early marriage and motherhood over time in her own mother, whose skills and intelligence are left to diminish as she raises her family. Her mother’s regrets were the push in Esperanza's choice to wander from the common life on Mango Street. The vignette “A Smart Cookie”, Cisneros describe how Esperanza mothers tell Esperanza how she could’ve been somebody instead of living the life she has now and doesn’t want her to have the same regrets. “Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard…Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head” (91). Esperanza takes in what her mother speaks for her to be independent, go to school or she be married and trapped as the other women on Mango Street. Mothers want their daughters to live a better life than what society expect for women to have. According Johnson, “Patriarchy, the System an It, not a He, a Them, or and US”, states society needs to change their view of how they portray their expectations of women. “To do this, we have to realize that we’re stuck in a model of social life that views everything as beginning and ending with individuals” (25). If we want to see our daughters live a life of hope and dreams it need to begin within the family unit.
Sandra Cisneros explain in the vignette “My Name” how she is named after her great grand mother and the meaning of the name. Espernaza, which means HOPE doesn’t want to become like her great grand mother’s due to the fact she doesn’t want to be confined to the patriarchal life that she lived, “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the thing she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.” (11). Esperanza determinations not to end up like her great-grandmother and feel there’s more in her future than sitting by a window letting life stand still and be subjective to a male dominant world.
Alicia who character also defy the patriarchy way. She is abused by her father and is forced to take care of the home as her mother once did, but she is determining to escape that life. In “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. Two trains and a bus, because she doesn't want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin. Is a good girl, my friend, studies all night and sees mice, the ones her father says do not exist? Is afraid of nothing except four-legged fur. And fathers.” (Cisneros 31-32). For Alicia to be free of her father and not inherit her mother’s life, Alicia must continue to strive and go to go to school to achieve her goals to change her life from the life her father wants her to have. Culturally this what is expected in a patriarchal system.
Rafaela, like many of the women in “Mango Street,” is forced to forget her own dreams because of her husband keeps her confined from the outside world.

She seems intelligent, ambitious, and spirited but her characteristics is diminished by her husband. The vignette “Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays” is almost like a fairy tale because her husband keeps her confined and her only connection to the outside world is sitting by the open window like many other the other women on Mango Street. Her only escape is to communicate with the children outside to get her drinks by lowering a bag by string. As Rafaela drinks her drink she fantasies how life will be to be living freely as other people, “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 like the island” (Cisneros 80). Exactly why she stays with her husband, but she lives in misery, because it seems the reason she stays purely she cannot visualize living in any other way, regardless of her dreams. The devotion maybe the fear stops her from grasping her

freedom.
The younger Esperanza only desires was to free herself from Mango Street and she knew she didn’t want to become like the women on Mango Street looking out the windows.

As Sandra Cisneros describe in the introduction of who Esperanza is, her vision is the same vision of most women who seek life outside a male dominant world, “Which way?” I didn’t know exactly, but I knew which routes I didn’t want to take – Sally, Rafaela, Ruthie-women whose lives were white crosses on the roadside” (xxiv). Her dreams and hopes of the non-patriarchal life doesn’t include her taking responsibility toward her family or the people she has encountered. Esperanza realizes that Mango Street, the women, and the community are just as important to her as to where she is going . She becomes accustomed with the people in her neighborhood and begins to feel affection and a sense of responsibility to come back to Mango street to bring the women and the community hope. She no longer sees herself as a woman motivated for self-determination. Instead, she identifies herself as part of community who must give back to the women of Mango street to break the cycle of the patriarchal system that plagues the neighborhood. The vignette “The Three Sisters” she speaks with the three sisters, its then when Esperanza realize that helping the neighborhood women will be a lifelong effort. “When you leave you must remember to come back for the others…You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily

as you.” (Cisneros 105). She later realizes that she will never be able to leave Mango Street behind. She promises that after she leaves she will return to help the women she has left behind. Esperanza expresses that Mango Street does not hold her soul, instead, it sets her free.
The society that was once lived in a patriarchal system can be changed by the women who pursue to have a better life than the generation before them. To attain the dreams and hopes Esperanza is confident that her culture will gain a different perspective, that the new women can soon achieve equal independence opposed to the women in earlier generations, while owning her self-assurance, writing, education, and resources to flourish in the world without connecting to a dominate male society.

Worked Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. 2nd ed., Vintage Contemporaries, 2009.