Tracing the Symbolic Importance of Houses in House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

In the partially autobiographical novel The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros tells a story about the turbulent events of young Latina Esperanza Cordero and her life at Mango Street, Chicago. Like Esperanza and unlike many American authors, Cisneros has the advantage of different experiences from another culture in order to give her the unique way she defines the idea of a house. During a college workshop on Gaston Bachelard, Cisneros realized: "Everyone seemed to have some communal knowledge which I did not have--and then I realized that the metaphor of house was totally wrong for me...I had no such house in my memories"(Matuz 143). Therefore Cisneros decided to invert Bachelard's image of "felicitous space...[where] the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace"(Olivares 145). Rather than writing about something she was unfamiliar with, Cisneros decided to write about her reality as a Chicana: "about third-floor flats, and fear of rats, and drunk husbands sending rocks through windows, anything as far from the poetic as possible"(Olivares 145). Thus, the central motif of architecture in The House on Mango Street becomes the means by which Cisneros expresses her experiences of cultural oppression, socio-economical oppression, and a fighting hope for freedom from all oppression.

Initially, Cisneros places Esperanza as the central observer of her Latino culture on

Mango Street. Through Esperanza, other Chicana women are introduced in order to show the patriarchal dominance as the source of their cultural oppression. Annie O. Eysturoy points out in her book Daughters of Self Creation: The Contemporary Chicana Novel, that by examining the lives of other women, Esperanza is able to realize that a woman's house is often a "confining patriarchal domain"(105). The female characters introduced through Esperanza are trapped in a domestic prison because "the Mexicans, don't like their women strong"(Cisneros 10). The first example is Esperanza's name-sake, her great-grandmother, who had been "a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry"(Cisneros 11). However, once she was carried off by Esperanza's great-grandfather and forced into marriage, her great-grandmother "looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow"(Cisneros 11). The change evident in Esperanza's great-grandmother and Esperanza's wondering "if she [was] sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be," illustrates Esperanza's realization that in her culture the men are the rulers(Cisneros 11).

Another woman who remains trapped within her home is "Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays." In this vignette, Esperanza tells a Rapunzel story about Rafaela who is "still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much"(79). Rafaela is physically locked indoors because "her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at"(79). Just as Cisneros' felt her "house was a prison for [her]"(Dasenbrock 302), so is Rafaela a captive of her own home. Rather than enjoying and praising her for her beauty, Rafaela's husband keeps her trapped in a domestic prison. As a man, Rafaela's husband is able to confine her and deny her freedom. Thus, Rafaela's place becomes a source of anguish and alienation.

In addition to the other women in the novel, Esperanza presents a young girl who is the same age as herself, Sally. Like Rafaela, Sally is initially punished for being beautiful and thus alienated, but by her father and not husband. Sally is confined to her home because her father will not let her go out since he believes "to be this beautiful is trouble"(81). Esperanza is able to relate to Sally and connect with her feelings of entrapment when she asks: "Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking and take you far away from Mango street, far away and maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one"(82). Esperanza's continues to give an intimate description of the dream home, which suggests her and Sally's shared desires for freedom where "there'd be no nosy neighbors watching....
Another woman introduced by Esperanza is a girl who has "inherited her mama's rolling pin and sleepiness"(31). In the vignette titled "Alicia Who Sees Mice," Alicia is a girl whose mother has died and thus passed on the domestic position to her daughter. Alicia's father asserts that a "woman's place is sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star"(31). Merely by being born female, Alicia is trapped within her home because of the cultural beliefs that a woman is there to "make the lunchbox tortillas"(31). Yet, although her home is an area of repression, Alicia is one of the few women fighting for a chance to escape by attending the university and working for an outside education.

Additionally, it is possible to see the auxiliary theme of socio-economical oppression in The House on Mango Street by knowing Cisneros' feelings about her childhood home and the inescapable poverty. In an interview with Reed Way Dasenbrock located in Interviews With Writers of the Post-Colonial World, Cisneros said: "I used to be ashamed to take anyone...to my house because if they saw that house they would equate the house with me and my value"(302). By associating the yearning of Esperanza for the ideals of the American society, ie. the middle class house"like the houses on T.V."(Cisneros 4), and Cisneros' fear of being equated with her poverty stricken home, one can understand the connection of how "houses define and represent social status"(Kuribayashi 166). One example of the combined feelings of Esperanza and Cisneros is found in the first vignette "The House on Mango Street." One day a nun from Esperanza's school passes by and notices Esperanza playing in front of her home. When asked which home is hers, Esperanza points to the third floor flat. As the nun asks Esperanza, "you live there,"(Cisneros 5)Esperanza sees the house as a "symbol of poverty that she associates with...humiliation"(Eysturoy 91). The nun causes Esperanza to "feel like nothing" and then to

realize that she "had to have a house...One [she] could point to"(Cisneros 5). Because of her family's poverty, Esperanza feels shame and, according to Annie O. Eysturoy, regards the house on Mango Street as the "emblem of the oppressive socio-economical situation that circumscribes her life"(92).

However, although the image of the "small and red [house] with tight steps in front and windows so small...they were holding their breath"(4) appears to symbolize oppression and confinement, Esperanza's desire for "a real house"(5) shows her knowledge that she needs a different house to liberate her (Eysturoy 106). Esperanza's rejection of her parent's house on Mango Street, is also a rejection of the system of oppression, not only cultural but economic as well. The system that Esperanza denies is a structure that endangers her sense of self and so, Esperanza's rejection allows her to "take the first step toward claiming her right to self definition"(Eysturoy 93). For example, in the vignette "Beautiful & Cruel," Esperanza has "begun [her] own quiet war"(89). Her plan is "simple" and "sure"(89). Instead of taking her rightful place in the continuing hierarchy of patriarchal domination, Esperanza is the one who "leave[s] the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate"(89). In her own small way, Esperanza is beginning to assert herself and attempting to define her own destiny so that she can inhabit her own house of freedom.

By wanting to control her own home, Esperanza is also wanting to own herself. Tomoko Kuribayashi claims that "one cannot become oneself without having one's own place"(167). The dream alive in Esperanza's heart is one of a home and a place of her own. Unlike the overbearing, controlling domiciles of those located on Mango Street, Esperanza dreams of one to be her personal shelter. Overrun by the multiple negative influences of the crushing patriarchal homes in her neighborhood, Esperanza seeks hope from "Elenita, witch woman" through the spiritual reading of tarot cards and palm reading (Cisneros, 63). The only faith Elenita gives Esperanza to her inquiry regarding a home is "a new house, a house made of heart"(Cisneros, 64). Unlike those built with dominance and misery, Esperanza covets the home of her dreams.

"Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at...... Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go"(Cisneros, 108).

Esperanza's desires for her own space in a culture crowded with shame and oppression expresses her ardent craving for her independence and freedom. Away from the patriarchal Latino culture found on Mango Street where women are pushed into homes and kept there to serve their husbands and/or fathers, Esperanza acknowledges that she is not like those women who remain weak and in the control of those commanding men. As an anomaly to the rule that seems to enthrall Mango Street, Esperanza wants to become a strong woman and believes she is capable of escaping the harsh fate that so many others are subjected to. Also, in defiance of the dominating culture and the socioeconomic hierarchy, Esperanza declares that "one days [she'll] own [her] own house" and take in "passing bums" who have been rejected by society (Cisneros 87).

For an episode of Esperanza's life, the house on Mango Street is "not the young protagonist's dreams house; it is only a temporary house (Olivares, 90). The multiple references to the idea of house and home in Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, establish a view to challenge against the common pleasant references the word home inspires. Most individuals are blind to the lives of those less fortunate than themselves. To some a home is a place of refuge and belonging; to others a prison of domination and shame. Sandra Cisneros creates a coming-of-age novel that presents her Latino culture through the eyes of a young girl determined to reject the societal oppression surrounding her.

Bibliography

Cisneros, Sandra. The House On Mango Street. New York: A Division of Random House Inc. 1984.

Dasenbrock, Reed Way, Feroza Jussawalle. Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World. Jackson & London: University Press of Mississippi. 1992.

Eysturoy, Annie O. Daughters of Self-Creation: The Contemporary Chicana Novel. Albuerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1996.

Kuribayashi, Ed Tomoko, Julie Tharp. Creating Safe Space: Violence and Women's Writing. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1998.

Olivares, Julian. "Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street and the Poetics of Space". Arte Publico. 1998.