The House On Mango Street Gender Roles Essay

The Strength to Rise Above Gender Roles on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is a book about the obstacles Latin women encounter while residing on Mango Street. In their community, males dominate and women are treated as if they as inferior. 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. Critical observation is included throughout The House on Mango Street as Cisneros scrutinizes

The female characters in The House on Mango Street, endure domineering husbands and fathers, and face adverse conditions while bringing up their offspring. Many of the daughters and women have piteous lives, in particular, those that endure a restrictive life, as they dwell under the authority of their fathers or husbands. For example, in "Linoleum Roses," because Sally is married to an extremely possessive, abusive husband, she is not permitted to look out the window, let alone speak on a telephone. Similarly, Rafaela depicts another woman on Mango Street, who is trapped by her husband. Rafaela's beauty causes her husband to fear that Rafaela might escape, so he locks her in their apartment. Consequently, Rafaela's only recourse is to stare out the window of her apartment. This distinct behavior is commonplace among the women on Mango Street. Cisneros also describes Rosa Vargas, in "There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn't Know What to Do," as another woman trapped on Mango Street. Like many others on Mango Street, Rosa Vargas is forsaken by her husband, merely left to care for her feral and ill-behaved children. Additionally, many of the women on Mango Street marry at a very young age. In particular, Minerva is a young married woman who

Unfortunately, her great-grandmother was forced to marry, unable to ever forgive her husband, and spent her life staring out the window, as do so many other women in Esperanza's community. With determination, Esperanza makes clear that she rejects the notion to be like that. She states, "I may have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window" (Cisneros 11). Women who are confined and staring out the window is a pitiful, recurring concept reiterated throughout the course of this story. Furthermore, Esperanza refuses to inherit her great-grandmother's destiny, knowing that to be "like a wild horse" (Cisneros 10) is advantageous. In addition, Esperanza verbalizes that there is no way that she will "accept this heritage passed on by so many women before her, who had to passively watch their lives who had to passively watch their lives pass them by, and perform the tasks that were expected of them" (Grum 43). Esperanza's mother offers incentive to Esperanza as she "encourages [Esperanza] to try to be the master of her own destiny and amount to something in her life" (Grum 43) because Esperanza's mother knows that she, herself "could've been somebody" (Cisneros 91). A warning is also provided as Esperanza's mother also instructs her that "shame is a bad thing because it keeps you down" (Grum 91). As a result, this drives Esperanza