The House on Mango Street

In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros is able to portray various insights into the subjugation of women through the eyes of Esperanza through her use of poetic prose. In the novel, we do not follow the story of a few major characters; rather, we are shown snapshots of the various individuals living on Mango Street through vignettes.  It is through these vignettes that Esperanza indirectly tells the story of dominance and struggle of the women living around her through her knowledge and experience of their lives and her own, and her desire to escape and have a life all of her own.  In the section titled "My Name," we are first introduced to the dominance of women by males through the story of her great-grandmother.  She states, "I would have liked to have known her, a wild rose of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry.  Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. (. . .) And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. (. . .) I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window (10-11).  Esperanza's great-grandmother was kidnapped by her great-grandfather and spend the rest of her life looking out into the world with great sadness, imprisoned by a man who stole her.  Esperanza asserts that she does not want the same fate; she seeks to have a life of her own free from the dominance of another.  While there are other instances in the novel where Esperanza tells the stories of the dominance of other women, she also experiences this twice herself.  After she begins her first job at Pan Photo Finishing, she is sexually assaulted by an older coworker.  She states, "an older Oriental man said hello and we talked for a while about my just starting, and he said we could be friends and next time to go in the lunchroom and sit with him, and I felt better. (. . .) Then he asked if I knew what day it was, and when I said I didn't, he said it was his birthday and would I please give him a birthday kiss. (. . .) he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn't let go" (54-55).  This vignette shows the first instance in which Esperanza is sexually assaulted by an older man. She contemplates giving him kiss on the cheek as he has made her feel better after her lonely first day of work, but does not get the chance as he physically dominates her and kisses her. This happens again late in the novel as she is waiting for her friend Sally by the tilt-a-whirl at a carnival.  She says, "Why didn't you tell them to leave me alone?  The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn't let me go.  He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine. (. . .) Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again (100).  While waiting for her friend Sally, who is more sexually mature and advanced, goes off with another man, Esperanza finds herself a victim of rape. The talks about how the magazines and stories have lied about how it feels. She can only feel the sour breath and dirty nails of the stranger dominating her body, everything foreign of normal sexual development. While this male dominance over women shapes the identities of the women in her life and on Mango Street who are victims, Esperanza works to prevent this to be her own reality and identity. Even though she experiences sexual assault and rape, she is able to push against the struggle and asserts she will escape Mango Street and return to save those who cannot save themselves. She will not let dominance rule over her and keep her a prisoner as it has to so many other women she has met.