Patriarchy In The House On Mango Street

Women in society have always been looked down upon, and not taken seriously for centuries. The coming-of-age novella House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, proves that statement correct. The novella is about a young girl named Esperanza who moves into a house for the first time, on a street named Mango street. The house is not what she envisioned, so she makes plans in her mind to move out and get her own place, far away, but she is still very innocent. While she’s on Mango Street, Esperanza experiences series of events, that force her to mature. In House on Mango Street, the theme that females are looked down upon, taken advantage of, and the ones to blame in society are shown through literary elements such as, conflict and characterization. The gender literary theory applies to this theme. This theme is also shown throughout multiple vignettes such as “Rafaela who drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays”, “The Monkey Garden” and, “Red Clowns”.

The House on Mango Street portrays a young girl named Esperanza growing up and becoming a woman. During her childhood Sandra Cisneros stated that she felt out of place. She didn’t feel like she fits in as a Latina women in America, and went through some tough times; therefore she wrote about Esperanza to express how Cisneros grew up as a woman and matured through out her childhood. This novel expresses a coming of age story, and the goal of Esperanza to gain understanding of both herself and her community/culture. Throughout the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Esperanza attempts to become an adult and tries to overcome the obstacles that allow her to be comfortable in her own skin.

The House on Mango Street’s main themes include self-discovery, the roles of women, and the blending of two cultures to form another. Esperanza’s journey on Mango Street is an inspiring one, teaching readers many truths about life. From self-defining moments to the difficulties of womanhood, all themes expressed in this novel change people's view of the world around

Through countless stories and the motif of women sitting by windows, Cisneros ratifies how draining it is to be an average woman in Esperanza's community. In The House on Mango Street, women by windows depict women trapped by their families, specifically their husbands, maturing into a disturbing image that portrays the failure to be an individual that makes her own decisions. In the vignette “Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays,” the author tells of a woman who is “too beautiful to look at,” saying, “Rafaela who … 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” (Cisneros 80). Rafaela is yearning to be able to leave her home like the women she envies. She compares the bitterness of her fruit drinks to the desolation and seclusion of the house, and wishes the drinks were sweeter, expressing her looking out the window and longing for something more in life, like the fortunate few women in her community have. A character Esperanza knows named Sally has received abuse from her father, and when she gets married, Esperanza says, “She says she is in love, but I think she did it to escape” (Cisneros 101) and, “She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission” (Cisneros 102). Sally tried to get away from her father’s physical abuse, but in doing so, she is now living the life of a woman by the window, a

"The House on Mango Street," by Sandra Cisneros is a book about the obstacles Latin women encounter while residing on Mango Street. Men dominate their community and women are treated as if they as inferior human beings to the men. A woman's merit is placed on her outward appearance, as well as her loyalty to the men in her life. Throughout "The House on Mango Street," Sandra Cisneros utilizes the first-person frame of reference, portraying her struggle to augment her sexuality in a feminine fashion along with the firmly embedded longing for independence, amongst a community influenced by societal male gender roles. Cisneros scrutinizes the women who surround her within a parlous and male-dominated community, in which each women's circumstances are predestined by social as well as economic restrictions. For the large majority of the women living on Mango Street, these limitations are too formidable to conquer. Nevertheless, Esperanza exemplifies the potential to look past her lot in life, while the women surrounding her become victims of their society, continuing its vicious pattern.

As Beyoncé Knowles says, ‘girls run the world’. But without the revolution of women’s rights over the past 50 years, all women would still be expected to marry, have children, and become a housewife. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros perfectly projects the struggles of a young minority woman in the late 1900s. The struggles are portrayed through Esperanza, the main character, as well as her female role models in her community. Esperanza’s family lives in poverty and Esperanza strives to rise above. As Esperanza matures through her teenage years, she is exposed to how women are perceived and treated in her culture and community. Esperanza’s encounters with reality while growing up as a female demonstrates that gender expectations were meant to be broken. She matures to be a young woman in power

In The House of Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros depicts the character of Esperanza as a coming-of-age female who dreams about having a house of her own. The house will bring for her the personal and family stability that she needs; as evidenced by the way the author uses the house to represent Esperanza’s search for what she wants to be as an artist and as a woman. This is significant because it speaks about how people may use their imagination as a means to reinvent themselves.

In the novel “The House On Mango Street,” Sandra Cisneros shows the themes identity, family, and the house, through Esmeralda’s experiences. She demonstrates the theme of identity by telling the story of Esperanza, the main character, and how she finds out what identifies her from others. Cisneros reveals that Esperanza’s family helps her feel like she belongs to the house on Mango Street and not left out. The house is an important theme of the novel because it helps Esperanza to look back and have a past that she is proud of by living in that house and overcoming many hardships. The themes in the novel “The House On Mango Street,” are identity, family, and the house.

Sandra Cisneros’, “The House on Mango Street” focuses on the narration of Esperanza, a young adolescent growing up in Chicago. Throughout the novel, Esperanza strives to develop her own sense of identity, while searching for the means out of her poverty-stricken neighborhood. With the help of her friends and family, Esperanza discovers how the world works, and what she needs to do in order to successfully better herself. The novel features several concepts of gender and sexuality studies including that of class structures, red-lining, gender, sexuality, intersectionality, and beauty. Those listed are simply a few more prominent features, as each character Esperanza introduces displays many more concepts within each scene. The concept of gender is portrayed widely throughout the novel and creates a foundation for the expectations the girls are about to face as they grow. Intersectionality interplays within the daily lives of each girl, and is seen within every page of the novel. Finally, beauty standards play an important role in the transition from adolescent to young adult each girl faces. Together, gender, intersectionality, and beauty standards, make up the novel, as it portrays the importance of each of these three core concepts of gender, women and sexuality studies.

Everybody makes choices, and those choices are all affected depending on the person making them. The “House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisnero describes a year in the life of Esperanza, while she lived on Mango Street with her friends, family, and neighbors. The author of House on Mango Street presents the idea that gender is always a factor in the choices people choose to make; this becomes clear when Esperanza’s brothers refuse to talk to her outside of the house because she’s a girl.

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. The author Cisneros, utilizes 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. The writer, Cisneros’ feminist views are

Gender role plays an important role in Sandra Cisneros’s novel The House on Mango Street. The role of women in a patriarchal society is one of the most important themes in the novel. The main character Esperanza, along with other women have to face a lot of difficulties caused by gender inequality. Esperanza 's disappointment begins as she moves into the new community and witness the way women are treated. Cisneros introduces gender stereotypes to demonstrate to the reader that gender roles can create barriers for women which affects their self-definition, their desires and their decision of improvement and development. In my opinion, the novel revolves around women’s dreams, self-determination and Esperanza’s courage to break the gender stereotypes and empower each other in spite of facing sexual assault and not being able to live a joyous life.

The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros follows young Esperanza and how gender limitations, within families and cultures, which are a prominent issue for females in her community. By now, Esperanza clearly recognizes these environment that keeps women in her community and from her background oppressed. She has seen several women go through hardships and containment, never truly having the opportunity to reach potential. For example, her grandmother who shares her name was restrained by her husband and could never leave the house, tying her down to only have her imagination of what exists beyond the window she gazes at. Furthermore, this is quite similar to the life of Esperanza’s neighbor, Rafaela, and is shown here:

In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, Cisneros’ captures “the image of the Chicana who needs to create her own path, not only within her culture and society, but also in Chicano fiction” (Martinez 1). This book is not like an ordinary novel, as it is “a loose-knit series of lyrical reflections, her (Esperanza’s) struggle with self identity and the search for self-respect amidst an alienating and often hostile world” (De Valdes). The men and women in Esperanza’s life play drastically different roles from each other, which tells the reader about Esperanza’s Mexican culture. Additionally, by the way women are depicted in The House on Mango Street, the reader can see that there are a great amount of expectations for Mexican women.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros shows many instances of gender roles that majorly affect the characters throughout the book. Esperanza has one main goal: to leave Mango Street and live in her own home. However, stereotypes in this neighborhood limit her from achieving her goals. “The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours” (Cisneros 8). Boys and girls are viewed as completely different ideas with different characteristics.