Escaping from High Heels and Femininity’s Trap in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

초록

Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984) is a coming-of-age novel that consists of 44 vignettes. It tells the story of Esperanza, a Chicana girl living on Mango Street in Chicago. Through Esperanza’s journey, Cisneros encourages Chicana girls to challenge the societal expectations of their barrio. Cisneros’s portrayal of a Chicana girl as the main character is a significant contribution, as it is often overlooked by other Chicano writers. Esperanza can serve as a positive role model for Latina girls, including Chicanas. This paper aims to examine the problems of machismo culture prevalent in Mexican immigrant communities, focusing on the portrayal of women trapped in the house, which repeatedly appears in the novel. It critically examines how the definition of femininity in machismo culture is associated with high heels and how women’s passiveness and vulnerability lead to images of women looking out the window and waiting for rescue. Finally, this paper explores how Esperanza breaks away from the fantasy of becoming a Cinderella and fulfills her responsibilities to imprisoned women on Mango Street through her writing.

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