How Are Women Oppressed In The House On Mango Street

Feminism is a subject appearing in many books. In the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, women are oppressed by patriarchy socially and psychologically in many different instances. These include the abusiveness of fathers and husbands towards girls, dreams of escaping an enclosed world, and the conventional ideologies of women’s roles. One instance where women are oppressed socially occurs in the vignette Marin. Marin, a neighbor of Esperanza’s, though she has a likable personality, is limited in the things she can do simply because of her gender. Marin, who is saving up and wants to get a job, is only allowed out when her aunt is home, and even then she is only allowed to stay in the front yard. Because of society’s view of women, Marin can only hope for marriage to rescue her from her situation, “Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.” (Cisneros page 32). This quote shows that Marin is not in control of her own life; she

For example, in the vignette Alicia Who Sees Mice, Esperanza’s friend Alicia studies at the University because she does not want to spend her entire life in a factory or slaving away in the kitchen. Her father, however, is not impressed with this inclination and is emotionally abusive to his daughter, “Close your eyes and they’ll go away, her father says, or You’re just imagining.” (37). Alicia, who stays up late at night to study and rises early to make tortillas sees mice everywhere, “behind the sink, beneath the four-clawed tub, under the swollen floorboards nobody fixes, in the corner of your eyes” (37). Alicia’s father believes that a woman’s place is rising early to cook and keep house, and he tries to manipulate his daughter by convincing her that the mice do not exist, that she is only seeing