...The novella The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros describes the life of Esperanza via vignettes. The vignettes are used to show Esperanza’s personal experience shortly and the vignettes help show Esperanza’s thoughts during these events or on people. Gender roles are very prevalent in Esperanza’s society. Men/ boys and Women/ girls have separate ideas for the future. “The boys and girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can't be seen talking to girls.” (Cisneros 8). This quotation shows the changes that the boys go through because of how they’ll be judged. They will be judged by family and members of the community. Another gender role is that men are very forceful and like their way in Esperanza’s society and slightly in society today also. Sally’s husband is a strong example of this. “But Sally doesn't tell about the time he hit her with his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal. He thinks I'm going to run away like his sisters who made the family ashamed. Just because I'm a daughter, and then she doesn't say.” (Cisneros 92) This quotation shows that the way Sally’s husband treat her and Esperanza uses simile ‘like a dog’. The simile implies that animals that misbehave are usually hit because pain is punishment and causes the animal to not do the wrong action the animal has already done. Another gender role is that women...
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...knowing nothing else. As girls grow into women who grow into mothers who grow into grandmothers their purpose in life is laid out to them by men within a predetermined role made up of the oppressed domestic housewife. This role often constitutes the women to be a submissive creature to the male figures in her life. This assembly line of sorts makes it easy for these women to never question why this is all that can be given to them. Why do they accept this domestic submissive role? Do they realize that this role is holding them back or have they just learned to accept the role? Within this essay I will be looking at this mass production of submissive roles produced by men, specifically I will be analyzing the coming of age novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Within this novel the main character Esperanza Cordero moves from the country side of Mexico to an urban city in America in search of the American dream. She makes this move with her family when she is a young girl and as she...
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...The House on Mango Street The House on Mango Street portrays a young Latina, Esperanza Cordero, dreams, hopes, and plans for the future. This coming-of-age novel has her growing up in Chicago with other Chicanos. But she is determined to do better for herself and her family. At the beginning of the book Esperanza is ashamed of the house she has. When people look at it she feels embarrassed that it is the place that she calls home. She wishes that she could live in a "real" house, one that she would be proud of. The house that her parents promised her with a green yard, real stairs, and running water with pipes that worked. She dislikes the house on Mango Street because of its sad appearance and cramped quarters are completely contrary to the idealistic home she always wanted. "I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go."I totally understand her feelings. I was embarrassed by my neighborhood. I would tell people I lived in the “ghetto”. My mother would get mad because it wasn’t true. We lived in a very nice two-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Nowadays, people would kill to live in that location. At the end of the story, Esperanza knows she is going to leave The House on Mango Street, but she also realizes that she is going to come back because it did play a huge role in her childhood and...
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...The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, centers on Esperanza struggling to define herself in a way that will differentiate others she observes on Mango Street. Esperanza’s observations of the women of Mango Street, as they are all trapped in some way or another, is what drives Esperanza to want to be independent. Throughout the book Esperanza struggles with the idea of self-identification and differentiating herself from those in her family and neighborhood. Esperanza's first defining moment is when she decides to rename herself. She claims the name ZeZe the X and wishes she could shed her name which belonged to her great-grandmother. She believes her name carries too much baggage due to her great-grandmother being forced to marry...
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...Comparative Essay: gender roles in The House on Mango Street and Annie John Question 3: To what extent do male and female literary characters accurately reflect the role of men and women in society? In this essay I will analyse to what extent the characters in the novels The House on Mango Street (text A), by Sandra Cisneros, and Annie John (text B), by Jamaica Kincaid, reflect the role of men and women in society. These two novels criticise patriarchal societies, where “women are taught to think as men, identify with a male point of view and to accept as normal and legitimate a male system of values…” . In both of them, there are clear examples of chauvinism, which conditions the lives of Esperanza Cordero, a “Chicana” who lives in a Latin neighbourhood in the USA called Mango Street; and Annie John, who passes her childhood and part of her adolescence in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean which until 1981 was a British colony. In the following paragraphs, I will describe and analyse diverse illustrations of patriarchal society seen in both novels. These examples will be used to explain male and female roles in this kind of society. Firstly, both societies are more permissive with men than with women. In this way, males are allowed to act freely, while women are constantly being judged for their actions. In text A, we can notice Rosa Vargas’s situation. As the text says, “she is the only one against so many […] [and] cries everyday for the man who left without even...
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...Simon Adelle UCOR 102 Paper 3 Professor Marcum Making It in A Man’s World April 29, 2013 “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros exposes the life of the main character, Esperanza, for one year as she struggles with trying to find her place in America as a Chicana young girl while also coming of age. The novel starts the day Esperanza and her family of six move into a house on Mango Street, and immediately she expresses her antipathy for not only the house, but also for the area in which they move into and the people around who judge them because of their ethnicity. The story is not told in the traditional format of a continuous story divided into chapters, but rather Cisneros uses forty-four vignettes to allow for the reader to fully understand why Esperanza has the struggles that she has. Along with Cisneros’ illustrating Esperanza’s looking for her identity through images of Esperanza’s thoughts and female obedience, symbolism of violence, legs, the Statue for Liberty, and Nenny, and diction of Spanish words, not using quotation marks, and a maturing tone, she also uses these them to permeate Esperanza’s desperation to leave Mango Street throughout the whole novel. Cisneros’ use of vignettes highlights important moments in Esperanza’s life that emphasize how she develops over the course of a year. Cisneros uses the brevity of the vignettes to enhance the imagery to give the most vivid image through her limited amount of words for...
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...The House On Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, follows a young girl named Esperanza through her coming of age. The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie, also follows their young protagonist, Junior, throughout his coming of age. The setting, conflict, and characterization of both novels intertwine and build up one another. The final picture created in each book, once these three aspects come together, have little differences; and overall leave the reader with a similar take away. Mango Street, the setting of The House On Mango Street is a poor neighborhood. The setting of The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, is an indian reservation, which is also impoverished. The state of poverty in this indian reservation is shown when the author writes, “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.” (Alexie 31). In the quote the author is describing the moment Junior opened up his geometry book and saw his mother’s name written on the cover. The fact that both settings are poor expose...
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...from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.” • The except “The Three Sisters” is chapter 41 from the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros published in 1984. • The chapter starts of by talking about three sisters, aunts, and they are las comadres and that is a Spanish term given to Godmother, ‘one with laughter like tin and on with eyes of a cat and one with hands like porcelain’. This gave a thought of maybe witches and further research of the novel/chapter reveals that they are representations of the “three fates” of ancient mythology and these are women who decide, death, birth and lengths of lives. • Lucy and Rachel’s baby sister died, and there was wake or a viewing that happened in their home, ‘anybody who had ever wondered what color the walls were came and came to look at that little thumb of a human in a box like candy’. • Esperanza then makes a wishes and the sister who had ‘marble hands’ called her over to tell her something. o “When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are. … You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you.” • “The story approaches the fantastical here (in Esperanza’s point of view), as the sisters seem to read Esperanza’s mind and predict her future. They recognize that Esperanza is already strong enough to leave Mango Street, but...
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...lines between genres, calling her fiction, often vignettes rather than structured narratives, "lazy poems" ("Do You Know Me?" 79). Her Bildungsroman, The House on Mango Street, is read both as a young adult novel and as a work of adult fiction, and her most recent book of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991), includes prose poems similar to those in Mango Street [The House on Mango Street], and longer works. Most of her fiction is composed as first-person narratives told to us by the central protagonist. She speaks for people like herself or whom she has known--Mexican and Chicana girls and women who grew up "on the borderlands." According to Cisneros, "If I were asked what it is I write about, I would have to say I write about those ghosts inside that haunt me" ("Ghosts and Voices" 73). Part of those ghosts are the myths and legends of the borderlands, which can hold women back in their quests for self-identity, or, when creatively adapted, can offer possibilities for constructing new cultural motifs. In The House on Mango Street, like Cisneros's childhood home, located in Chicago's barrio, the protagonist Esperanza says, "Mexicans don't like their women strong" (10). One could say that all of Cisneros's female characters either struggle to be strong and succeed, thus transcending culturally dictated gender roles, or are defeated in their struggle (Lewis 69). The fact that they live "on the borders," straddling two or three cultures, requires them to combine...
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...Innocence in “Monkey Garden” In the chapter, “Monkey Garden,” from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the garden symbolizes the archetypal Garden of Eden from Genesis. Similar to Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree, Esperanza loses her innocence in this mystical backyard. As an under-privileged child on Mango Street, Esperanza witnessed adult problems that most children her age would never dream of, especially the maltreatment of women. In this fantastical children’s garden, the kids escaped their real-life problems in search of the lost treasures the garden holds. The rich imagery Esperanza weaves into her description shows the evasion of her problems: “There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theatre curtains.” The images of Mars and the theatre imply entering a fictional or distant world without everyday challenges. In addition, the kids on Mango fabricate rumors that align the Monkey Garden with the Garden of Eden, “Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything.” Through her escape into fantasy, Esperanza kept her innocence. Through it, she stayed a child until the next day. Despite the seemingly irrevocable purity of the Monkey Garden, Sally’s kissing game with the boys not only defiles the image of the Monkey Garden but also substantiates the gender inequalities suffered by the women of Mango. Esperanza’s love for Sally drives her to protect Sally against mistreatment...
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...Reading Response: The House on Mango Street The various allusions to children’s stories and popular culture in Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street portray a shift in the feminist paradigm toward publicly rejecting the societal conformations to gender roles, specifically those of women, and also function well in providing a connection between the characters of the stories and the readers. Esperanza, the main character, seems to be invested in a fantastical view of the world that she alludes to in describing her experiences and telling her stories. In the course of the development of Esperanza’s character, it can be seen that while she first admires and aspires to be the Cinderella that she feels like when the shoes given to her fit, she grows into a person that uses stories as a means of escape—her recital of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” to Ruthie—and finally, in her allusion to Rapunzel when she describes Rafaela’s marriage, it seems that Esperanza comprehends the clichéd gender roles and realizes women accept their lives as helpless objects in need of rescue. Besides these instances, various other women, such as Marin, “Waiting for a car to stop, a start to fall, someone to change her life” (27). Also, any reader who has experienced Western culture in her upbringing would either relate to and be affected by Esperanza’s changing attitude toward fairy-tales and children’s stories. Although Esperanza’s connection to such tales might be naïve and not a transformation at...
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...The House on Mango Street-- Defying the Injustice Facing Women Women have been objectified by men and each other for as long as humanity itself. This is the systematic sexism that still goes on today, and it was certainly present in Sandra Cisneros’ novel. The House on Mango Street uses characters like Esperanza and Sally to clearly illustrate the terrors of misogyny and female oppression, showing that injustice against women can only be stopped if the women themselves stand up to it. Sally, Esperanza’s friend, is a good example of what happens when women accept their ‘places’ in society. She is abused by her father but defends him, saying he doesn’t hit her hard. There are times where she briefly has freedom, but when her dad ‘apologizes’,...
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...The novel The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros is a story about a young girl named Esperanza who lives in an all hispanic neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. Esperanza is a girl who would like to live in a house of her own and live the life she want but she is anchored down by the constraints of society. The story captures the idea of how women are portrayed and their role in society. Relying on men seems like the only way to live for women. Throughout the novel, Esperanza begins to notice how women are treated by men. She notices how gender inequality is common in lives of those dealing with the injustice. Some women find that getting married at a young age is their way to freedom, others find that education is the key to their...
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...Why Minerva Opens the Door for Her Husband The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a novel about escape and identity for many characters, including Minerva, a poet. As Esperanza grows up on Mango Street, she meets many potential role models. From Rafaela to Mamacita, many of the women on Mango Street are waiting by windows. One of them is Minerva, who writes poems, a teenager trapped in an abusive relationship, with kids and her own guilt stopping her from fighting back. She writes poems to provide a semblance of freedom to herself, but never actually believes in her ability to leave. Because Minerva’s only escape from her abusive husband is inside her head, she lacks the self-efficacy she needs to break free. Minerva has only one...
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...In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, she demonstrates oppression due to society, gender, culture, social class, etc.. The novel takes place in a small town told in the perspective of an adolescent girl named Esperanza as she grows and matures, facing different coming of age issues. In the vignette “The House on Mango Street” we are given an example of oppression due to social class and society. When a Nun confronts Esperanza, she causes Esperanza to feel ashamed. Cisneros writes “You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.”(Cisneros 5). The way the Nun talked to Esperanza really affected her and made her feel like there was something wrong with where she lived and how...
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