In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, the author explores the theme of gender roles and expectations through the narrator’s experiences in her heavily-patriarchal, Hispanic familial and neighborhood surroundings. Ezperanza’s coming-of-age is essentially highlighted by the gender roles she is subjected to, making a significant impact on the unraveling of the novel.
The first section of the novel features a vignette entitled “Marin” about a girl in Ezperanza’s neighborhood who is infatuated with the idea of a man sweeping up to take her away; “What matters, Marin says, is for the boys to see us… [Marin] is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.” Ezperanza is constantly fascinated by women who feel entrapped much in the same way as she is; Marin in particular feels as if she needs a man to sweep her away and save her, revealing an underlying notion that women are damsels in distresses, incapable of their own saving. Marin buys into this stereotype, wishing for a knight in shining armor to do her biddings for her because she believes that she is not strong enough to do it herself. This fascinates and confuses Ezperanza, as many of the expectations for her gender do. Further into the book, as Ezperanza begins to grow, she begins to be subjected to the troubles too many of teenage girls go through. In particular, the vignette “The First Job” features an old Oriental man who makes her feel comfortable at first, gaining her trust in a time period where she was emotionally vulnerable such as her first day of a new job. He asks for a birthday kiss and then forces her into surprising, unwanted advances; “just as I was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go.” This vignette is a statement on what teenage girls go through in a society that heavily sexualizes them even as they just begin puberty. This is Ezperanza’s first experience being unwillingly sexualized; she trusts this man and his comfort, a young girl on her first day, and he believes that he is entitled to a lip-on-lip kiss that she does not voluntarily give. In a similar fashion, one of the final vignettes of the novel features an instance in which Ezperanza is yet again forced into an action involuntarily. The vignette is entitled “Red Clowns” and is a startling, emotional portrayal of Ezperanza’s rape. The boy raping her dehumanizes her, not only in his actions, but in words; “I love you, Spanish girl, I love you.” He reduces her to simply “Spanish girl”: a label to turn her into an object that he cannot feel bad about hurting. With this turn, Cisneros brings up some interesting insights on gender roles; rape is an all-too-common action, primarily against girls. Rapists (primarily men) see women as sexual objects to be picked for their liking, instead of sentient human beings, a theme often reestablished throughout the novel and brought to large attention through “Red Clowns.”
Ezperanza’s thoughts and insights are ones that all teenage girls can relate to, no matter their walk of life. Gender roles are something that impacts us in our everyday lives as we feel the pressure to break through damsel-in-distress stereotypes and unwanted sexual advances by men who see us as objects. Cisneros, through The House on Mango Street, makes a statement on patriarchal standards and gender roles that resonates with the reader and forces them to form form an opinion.