Gender Roles and Male/female Power in The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street highlights a number of gender disparities both in the home environment and workplace for women in the 60s and 70s. From the very beginning of the book, Esperanza realizes that men and women live in “separate worlds,” and that women are nearly powerless in her society. The culture of this time in which women had to be submissive was especially rampant in poor neighborhoods, such as Esperanza’s predominantly Spanish street. Women endured fatigue from having to rise so early, entrapment in their own homes, and the mental and physical abuse their husbands put them through. Women were even chained to men economically, not just because they earned much less. In 1970, for instance, women's earnings as a proportion of men's earnings were 54.8%, but because they often needed a signature from their father or husband to gain credit or buy bigger items. All of these issues allude to the fact that the women of Esperanza’s time had little to no freedom and had to rely on the male figures in their life, which often turned disastrous. The problem of gender roles and male/female power dynamics in the 1960s and 70s is raised in vignette 40, “Linoleum Roses”.

In this vignette, Sally, who is still in middle school might I add, marries a man to escape the tyranny and abuse of her father. Sally does indeed break free from her father, but she then becomes trapped in another man’s graces. In the book, Esperanza describes Sally’s situation as, “he won’t let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn’t let her look out the window. And he doesn’t like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless he is working. She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission”. We saw this happen to so many other women in the book, including Esperanza’s great-grandmother and Rafaela. Women were not allowed to pursue what they wanted in life because of the ridiculous power men had over them. To escape from a man, she had to be chained up by another man. Sally was so manipulated and abused in this situation that she wouldn’t even step out the door in fear of what her husband would do. On the other hand, Sally’s husband has isolated her from the rest of society so she would only belong to him. Looking out the window is the last hope and pleasure of many of the trapped women of Mango Street, but Sally’s husband denies her even that.

As far as the issue of men with their controlling natures and the patriarchal workplace and home environment goes, I feel as if every woman has experienced some casualty in this area. It has been deeply rooted in American society for hundreds of years that men typically hold the authority. I completely agree with Cisneros’ take on this issue and how she portrays it in the story through each woman on Mango Street’s narrative. For the treatment of women throughout history isn’t necessarily a topic that can be argued. It happened, it is still happening, it is that simple. The images Cisneros created of the women staring out their windows, not being able to go beyond the walls of their homes completely captures the aspects that come with institutionalized gender roles. In vignette 31 Esperanza describes Rafaela’s situation, “[she] gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at” (Cisneros 79). Rafaela has sacrificed her freedom because her role as a woman at that time was to find a man and be married off, and ultimately work as a housewife for the rest of her days. In addition, Rafaela’s husband was so threatened by her beauty that he wouldn’t allow her to leave their house which proves the absurd power dynamics in male/female relationships of this period.