A summary of ?The House on Mango Street?
Sandra Cisneros?s The
House on Mango Street has a minimal plot. Rather than concentrating on
external events, the author records a series of impressions and significant
moments in the life of a young girl, Esperanza, who is slowly becoming a poet.
This novel covers a year in her life, in which her family moves into a rented
house on Mango Street. The house, while in poor conditions, provides the family
with more space and more autonomy than they have ever had. The rented house
allows them to dream of someday having a house of their own , a safe and
luxurious haven for the family. This dream is particularly important to Esperanza,
the oldest child, who longs for a space in which develop her own habits and
opinions, and for a security that she has never known. The novel follows her
and a group of her friends and neighbours as they confront issues of sexuality,
domestic violence, death, creativity, friedship and racism. Esperanza is raped
during this year, but she also begins to write poetry. Her friends marry, move
away, suffer abuse and have children. Her familiy sees deaths and struggles
with poverty. In the end, Esperanza realizes that, while she may leave Mango
Street someday, she will always be obligated to come back to help those who
aren?t able to leave. Although at this stage in her life she is still ashamed
to admit it: Mango Street is an important part of her.
Esperanza
feels that she can only be succesful if she has a safe place from which to
write. Living in a patriarchal society, she feels the need for a place where
women can be free from the violence, both literal and psychological, that
accompanies sexual relations with men. She also understands how one?s home can
communicate something about oneself to the outside world, and she longs to have
a home that accurately represents her. Poor and Hispanic, she is subjected to
ridicule as a result of the places she lives.
Because
the narrator is just entering puberty, sex is a major concern in this novel.
While sexual behaviour can be powerful in a positive way, it also involves
exposing one?s self to others mentally and emtionally. In this male-dominated
society, this is dangerous: this book is full of physical assaults and
Esperanza is even raped at one point. Although sexuality can be a means of
self-expression, in a world like this it involves too much of a risk;
expression must instead occur within a safe space, a secure home.
Esperanza
belongs to a tradition of protagonism who are artists-in-development. She is
sensitive, perceptive and linguistically gifted. Yet unlike them, she also
faces the additional challenge of being female. At times she is forced to
choose between her burgeoning feminism and the patriarchal traditions of her
ethnic group. Her experiences often stir her to poetry, and as she observes the
world around her, she explores it both anthoropologically and aesthetically.
The
plot, loosely following the structure of a Bildungsroman
(a novel of education), consists of a string of Esperanza?s impressions, some
of which are beautifully poetic in nature. While the book may occasionally have
something of a ?stay in school and don?t have sex? feel to it, Esperanza?s
struggles with the ambiguities surrounding sex and life make convincing
artistic fodder. It is at the heights of her creativity that Esperanza is most
charming, as in the ?Hips? section, in which she junps rope and makes up rhymes
with friends. As she gets older, her sense of irony and of structure develops,
and her reflections grow more sophisticated and more complex.
This
book gives its own particular spin to the idea of ?a home of one?s own?,
keeping sight of both the feminist and the aesthetic (portrait of the artist)
tradition yet through the special lens of an Hispanic girl growing up poor in
America.
Us ha agradat aquest article? Compartiu-lo!