FEMINISM: THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET

FEMINISM: THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET by Sandra Cisneros

FEMINISM - 

PLOT

Initial Situation

Esperanza and her family move to the house on Mango Street.

We meet Esperanza and learn that she and her family have just moved into their first ever house. She's disappointed with it – this is not the house she's been dreaming of her whole life. It's tiny and falling apart and she has to share one bedroom with her three siblings and her parents.

Conflict

Meet the neighbors.

Esperanza introduces us to the other residents of Mango Street. Esperanza's just a kid, but even from her perspective we can see that most of her neighbors live difficult and complicated lives. Poverty, crime, and apathy are endemic. Whole families are crowded into tiny apartments. Single mothers struggle to raise too many children.

Complication

Uh-oh, it's everyone's least favorite developmental stage – puberty!

One day Esperanza and her friends are talking about hips, and the next she's slammed with the responsibilities of adulthood. Like consoling her father on the death of his father, and having to get a job to help pay for her high school education. As she enters into adolescence, Esperanza is torn between her desire to remain independent and free, and her curiosity about boys and sex. To make matters much, much worse, Esperanza begins to notice that being a woman on Mango Street often means being mistreated by men – her female friends and neighbors are physically abused, confined to their homes by their overprotective husbands, and abandoned to raise children on their own. Maybe she doesn't want to grow up, after all.

Climax

Esperanza is raped.

While she waits for her more sexually experienced friend Sally to finish hooking up with a guy at the carnival, some boys accost Esperanza. It's so painful for her to recount that she never says exactly what happens, but it seems that one of the boys rapes her.

Suspense

Sally gets married young, and Esperanza fantasizes about escape.

Esperanza's friend Sally, whose father frequently abuses her, gets married to escape the beatings, only to end up living in a virtual suburban prison. Esperanza, on the other hand, longs for freedom. At a funeral, she meets three elderly sisters who read her palm and divine her secret wish to leave Mango Street. They confirm that she'll achieve her dream, with one hitch – she has to promise to come back. Esperanza's reaction? No freaking way – she's never coming back to this crummy neighborhood!

Denouement

Esperanza accepts her past.

Esperanza's friend Alicia helps her realize that she has a responsibility to return to Mango Street to help the people who can't leave as easily as she can. After all, if she doesn't do anything to help, no one else will.

Conclusion

Esperanza strikes a balance.

Esperanza clings to her dream of leaving Mango Street to live independently and pursue a career in writing, but she accepts that she can never forget where she came from. She resolves to come back some day for the people who cannot escape

CRITIQUE:

The House on Mango Street is a coming of age story of a young girl named Esperanza living in a poor neighborhood she had never dream of.  Each chapter is an individual story or vignette of young Esperanza's neighbors and friends. The young narrator shows different facets of her own personality through each portrait- a sense of humor, a sense of outrage, hope, optimism, sadness, pity, pride, shame, and compassion. The House on Mango Street attacks the other side of feminism. In this collection, each chapter signifies Esperanza's growth developmental stages - be it emotional, physical, mental, and sexual aspect. Esperanza experienced series of awakenings, specifically sexual awakening when she hit her puberty stage. As the stories got deeper, themes of desperation and fear run throughout. It is more of the narrator's emotions and how Esperanza and her female friends struggle from the maltreatment of men and the reality of women's role in their neighborhood. These are the reasons why Esperanza finally decided to escape the Mango Street but promises to comeback in hope to help others who cannot leave. Sandra Cisnero's feminist work shows how Esperanza found hope despite of all the turning points and obstacles in her life. Sandra also depicts various elements of how woman thinks, generally, in this theme.