The Women on Mango Street

The Women on Mango Street

"Esperanza. I have inherited [my great grandmother's] name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window." Young Esperanza's opening thoughts in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street begins with the introduction of a surprisingly insightful disadvantaged Hispanic girl named Esperanza, who has just moved into a poor Latino neighborhood. Esperanza's opening remarks foreshadow a theme that continues to develop throughout the entire novel, cumulating piece by piece until a complete puzzle is produced. As Cisneros' Mango Street chronicles an emotionally pivotal year in the life of a young girl, the author herself presumably draws on personal experiences of being raised in an environment in which she struggles and feels like she does not belong. It is evident that Cisneros creatively expresses her own experiences in her writing, and goes so far as to dedicate the book "a las Mujeres," or to the Women. Though not purely biographical, striking similarities of race and background exist between the author and narrator such that Cisneros establishes an understated sense of first-hand credibility to the reader. Cisneros' The House on Mango Street is a cleverly constructed series of interconnected vignettes that recounts the narrator's emotional coming of age and eventual integration of identity. By exclusively employing the first person perspective of a naпve Esperanza and her developing powers of figurative language, Cisneros depicts the young girl's struggle between her developing sense of feminine sexuality and a deep rooted desire for independent autonomy within a culture dominated by societal roles of men.

One of the first significant signs of Esperanza's emerging talents as a writer become especially apparent in the short section Four Skinny Trees. As the narrator is able to articulate her respect and adoration for the four elm trees planted in front of her house, Sandra Cisneros deliberately emphasizes the role of artistic language and its power in her character's life. "They are the only ones that understand me," Esperanza muses. Her enormous growth in the art of language is evident in her ability to identify and reflect her own image onto the objects outside her window: "Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine." The use of similes to imagine the analogous physical features of Esperanza and the jagged tree branches mark the character's unique talent with words and leave an enduring impression on the reader's mind.

Yet it is not only the physical aspects of the four skinny trees that the narrator finds so attractive. Esperanza identifies herself with the quiet resilience and ferocious independence that she desperately seeks within the trees: "Their strength is secret. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth... and bite the sky with their violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep." In one of her most powerful statements, Esperanza personifies the trees and discovers that they teach her a valuable lesson. "Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach," she openly admires. To Esperanza, the trees planted by the city do not belong in the neighborhood but continue to flourish in defiance of any obstacle. Just as the trees have secret anger and roots into the ground, Esperanza's secret power lies in her budding powers of writing. It is in this section that Esperanza gains power over her experiences by using creative and figurative language in order to discover inspiration in the mundane starkness that surrounds her.

As Esperanza finds herself gaining a measure of control over her surroundings, she also becomes increasingly aware of the widening gulf between herself and her older peers. In the vignette Monkey Garden, Esperanza and the other neighborhood children discover and invade a recently vacated family garden which has quickly become a junkyard. Sandra Cisneros uses the Monkey Garden as both a metaphorical literary device and a literal setting where the narrator quickly loses much of her innocence. To Esperanza, the garden is initially a childhood playground and a place of retreat from everyday monotony: "This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there. Far away from where our mothers could find us." When the neighborhood boys steal a set of keys from the older and sexually curious Sally, she is told that she must kiss each of them for its return. Esperanza notices the game, and she reacts instinctively. "It was a joke I didn't get," she reflects, "only how come I felt angry inside. Like something wasn't right." After failing to elicit the help of a neighborhood boy's mother, Esperanza arms herself with a brick to fend off her friend's attackers. The group laughs at her, "as if I was the one that was crazy ...and [they] made me feel ashamed." Deeply upset, Esperanza runs deep into the garden and wills her heart to stop beating. As she gets up, "[my feet] seemed far away. They didn't seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either." Cisneros' playful garden has suddenly transformed into a junkyard full of danger and confusion.

Both the indifferent mother who gives tacit permission to the boys' behavior and Sally herself who does not want to be saved reveal a major point about the women on Mango Street. The level of complicity and indifference in the women that Esperanza finds in Monkey Garden is an eye opening experience, which results in the loss of her naпve assumption that women are responsible for each other in the community. Esperanza feels responsible for Sally, but only ends up confused and angry. The garden is no longer an innocent place of retreat, and she can never return to that symbolic part of