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

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

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