Function/S of Space in Sandra Cisneros’ the House on Mango Street
Function/s of Space in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street
Space occupies a central role in Sandra Cisneros’ coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street. Using the example of the house shows this very plainly. This can be seen at the very beginning of the book, namely the title. Although it is a female Bildungsroman, the novel is not named after its protagonist Esperanza Cordero, but her residence. It shows that Cisneros attached much importance to the house on Mango Street and the reader also learns that it is of central significance for the development of the young girl. On Mango Street, she develops not only physically, but also in terms of her character and her own identity. That is why I will concentrate on the function of the house rather than on other different settings in the novel.
Usually, the house is a symbol for warmth and shelter. It represents the place of the family and where one belongs to. But the first sentence of the initial vignette shows, that this does not apply to the house on Mango Street. Esperanza’s family has been constantly on the move and they lived in several apartments in different cities. The feeling of being rooted therefore never existed, just as little as the feeling of comfort. For Esperanza, the house on Mango Street does not symbolize shelter, but shame. In the first vignette Esperanza depicts the family’s house in a very negative way, run down and with cramped confines. It is neither “[…] the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket […]”, nor “[…] the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.” (Cisneros 4). The house on Mango Street is at last their own, but not the one Esperanza and her family have longed for. It symbolizes “[t]he conflict between the promised land and the harsh reality” (Valdès “Canadian Review” 57). Especially for Esperanza, who is in quest of her own identity, reality and hope (Spanish: esperanza) diverge here, which means that Esperanza has not
Space occupies a central role in Sandra Cisneros’ coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street. Using the example of the house shows this very plainly. This can be seen at the very beginning of the book, namely the title. Although it is a female Bildungsroman, the novel is not named after its protagonist Esperanza Cordero, but her residence. It shows that Cisneros attached much importance to the house on Mango Street and the reader also learns that it is of central significance for the development of the young girl. On Mango Street, she develops not only physically, but also in terms of her character and her own identity. That is why I will concentrate on the function of the house rather than on other different settings in the novel.
Usually, the house is a symbol for warmth and shelter. It represents the place of the family and where one belongs to. But the first sentence of the initial vignette shows, that this does not apply to the house on Mango Street. Esperanza’s family has been constantly on the move and they lived in several apartments in different cities. The feeling of being rooted therefore never existed, just as little as the feeling of comfort. For Esperanza, the house on Mango Street does not symbolize shelter, but shame. In the first vignette Esperanza depicts the family’s house in a very negative way, run down and with cramped confines. It is neither “[…] the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket […]”, nor “[…] the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.” (Cisneros 4). The house on Mango Street is at last their own, but not the one Esperanza and her family have longed for. It symbolizes “[t]he conflict between the promised land and the harsh reality” (Valdès “Canadian Review” 57). Especially for Esperanza, who is in quest of her own identity, reality and hope (Spanish: esperanza) diverge here, which means that Esperanza has not
Cited: List: Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. McCracken, Ellen. "The House on Mango Street: Community-oriented Introspection and the Demystification of Patriarchal Violence." In: Horno-Delgado, Asuncion et al (eds). Breaking Boundaries: Latina Writing and Critical Readings. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. 67-71. Rukwied, Annette L. The search for identity in two Chicana novels : Sandra Cisneros ' The house on Mango Street & Ana Castillo 's the mixquiahuala letters. Stuttgart: Universität, Magisterarbeit, 1998. Valdés, Maria Elena de: “In Search of Identity in Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street”, Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall 1992. 55-69. Valdés, Maria Elena de. "The Critical Reception of Sandra Cisneros 's The House on Mango Street." Gender, Self, and Society. Ed. Renate von Bardeleben. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993. 287-300. (7.01.2008) (7.01.2008)