The Women and Men of Mango
Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street is a coming of age story, written from the perspective of Esperanza, a 13-year-old Xicana writer living in a poverty-stricken Latino community in Chicago. Esperanza’s story is told in a series of vignettes over the course of one year. During this time, Esperanza reveals her aspirations and describes her journey into adolescence. Along the way, she finds herself in the world of women where women do not belong to themselves, but rather, their men. Esperanza’s character and Cisneros’ use of stereotypical, submissive female characters draws attention to the subjection of women in the male-dominated society she is living in.
Women occupy a central role in The House on Mango Street. Esperanza is heavily influenced by several female characters presented throughout the text, including her grandmother, Rafaela, and Sally. These women are all characters who are depicted as being trapped by their men. They spend their lives waiting by the window. In the society that Esperanza is living in, men are not to be questioned. It is accepted that “a woman's place is sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star, the one that appears early just in time to rise and catch the hind legs hide behind the sink, beneath the four-clawed tub, under the swollen floorboards nobody fixes, in the corner of your eyes” (31). Esperanza is shaped by these women because she sees that they suffer and recognizes that it is not necessarily their own fault, but that their living conditions are a direct result of the patriarchal world they are living in. Esperanza decides that she will not allow herself to be put in their same position. About her grandmother she says, “I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window” (11). Esperanza wants to be independent and become her own woman. “I am the one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate” (89)....