The House On Mango Street Gender Roles

In ‘The House on Mango Street’, Sandra Cisneros uses narrative perspective to critically examine the effect of gender roles on society through the first person narrative of someone affected. She challenges our views on them by giving insight into the limitations and prejudices that they impose on individuals.The author conveys the story through a series of vignettes that utilise the first person perspective of Esperanza, the protagonist. These vignettes explore her personal experiences and conflicts that she faces, such as her own personal encounters with sexual harassment and discrimination, along with her observations, as a young girl, of the women that surround her. As the coming of age story progresses we follow Esperaza through her teen

As she develops both physically and mentally, her sexuality emerges, which should be indicators of healthy development. However, the conflicts slowly chip away at her innocence. This concept is exemplified in the chapter “The First Job”, where Esperanza gets a job at a photo developing store, where she had to lie about her age. This is the first real example that Esperanza admits to flirting. However, at her work, she is assaulted by an older man who forcefully kisses her, and does not let her go. This is Esperanza’s first exposure to sexual violence, where she is forced to acknowledge the frightening physical dominance that men hold over women. Sexuality is no longer about songs and dances as described in the earlier chapter ‘Hips’, but it is rather violent and oppressive. The severity of similar encounters gradually grow, ultimately leading to her rape by a group of boys in the chapter ‘Red Clowns’. Cisneros uses this experience to challenge the reader by expressing the traumatising effect that the rape on Esperanza. The passage is written in a stream of consciousness style, with fragmented sentences and shifting perspectives that reflect the chaos the trauma has evoked within Esperanza. Furthermore, Cisneros incorporates frequent repetitions to emphasise Esperanza’s confusion and disorientation,

We are first introduced to Esperanza’s perceptions of gender in the third vignette ‘Boys and Girls’ , where Esperanza explains that the boys and girls in her neighbourhood ‘live in separate worlds’ and her disappointment that her brothers will not talk to her outside of the house, Cisneros incorporates a frustrated tone to emphasise her negative feelings towards this. But for now, the disparity she faces is innocent and confined to her family. There are multiple other women in her community that she describes, all who have faced some sort of gender based discrimination. For example, she describes her grandma, also named Esperanza, who married unwillingly and spent her whole life sitting sadly by her window. Much like Rafaela, Minerva, and Sally, other women that find themselves in the same position, confined to their homes and sat at the window, by the controlling hand of men in their lives. This is due to the common . Before even getting to know the other women, Esperanza already knows that she does not want to ‘inherit her place by the window’. Her observations of the other women paint a more vivid picture of what she had learnt about her grandma, hardening her resolve that she does not wish to end up like them. Esperanza befriends Sally, who is beautiful and popular, and is