Function/S of Space in Sandra Cisneros’ the House on Mango Street

Function/s of Space in Sandra Cisneros The category on mango road Space occupies a substitution role in Sandra Cisneros coming-of-age novel The House on mango Street. victimisation the example of the digest shows this precise plainly. This can be seen at the very beginning of the book, namely the title. Although it is a female Bildungsroman, the novel is non named after its protagonist Esperanza Cordero, scarce her residence. It shows that Cisneros attached much importance to the rest home on Mango Street and the reader as well learns that it is of central significance for the ripening of the young girl.On Mango Street, she develops non only physically, but also in terms of her character and her confess identity. That is why I pull up stakes concentrate on the function of the house rather than on new(prenominal) different settings in the novel. Usually, the house is a symbol for warmth and shelter. It represents the enjoin of the family and where unity belongs to. save the first sentence of the initial vignette shows, that this does not apply to the house on Mango Street. Esperanzas family has been constantly on the move and they lived in several a circumstancesments in different cities.The feeling of existence rooted therefore never existed, barely as little as the feeling of comfort. For Esperanza, the house on Mango Street does not present shelter, but shame. In the first vignette Esperanza depicts the familys house in a very negative way, run d proclaim and with cramped confines. It is incomplete the house Papa talked about when he held a drawing cardtery book , nor the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us forward 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 the conflict surrounded by the promised land and the unsmooth reality (Valdes Canadian Review 57). Especially for Esperanza, who is in quest of her own ide ntity, reality and hope (Spanish esperanza) diverge here, which means that Esperanza has not found her individualized reality yet. She wishes to have a real house. One I could point to. (Cisneros 5). This go for shows that the house also symbolizes the American Dream of having a comfortable groundwork of ones own, something the sight of Esperanzas community will believably never attain.Esperanza experiences that instead, they are often confronted with the fact that the house also functions as a symbol of female restriction. This proves the given traditional role of a Chicana, whose business concentrates on the household and on being wife and mother. In the novel, female restriction is also depicted in a more(prenominal) extreme way Several women like Marin and Rafaela are restricted physically because they are locked indoors by their husbands. Esperanza heart-to-heartly comes out against such a male-dominated home.Although she is not sure who she is and still searches for he r own identity, she clearly dwells what she wants a house all on her own, not a mans house. Not a daddys. A house all my own. (Cisneros 108). According to that, having her own house stands for her longing for a self-determined space as an independent woman, in which she can be free to be herself, unconfined by both a husband or a father and without any cordial expectations. There is something, Esperanza didnt realize yet the fact that the house she seeks is, in reality, her person. (Valdes Canadian Review 58). Thus, the house functions as a metaphor for Esperanzas identity formation. Apart from its importance for self-identification, the image of the house functions as a synecdoche it is part of the community, a place of ones own amidst the self-colored community and barrio. By interacting with the community, meaning communication and observation, Esperanza learns that she can only furbish up herself by dint of her relationship to the other people of her community.She orient ates herself by some dictatorial role models like Aunt Lupe or Minerva, but she also distances herself from cracking or the women sitting by the window like her great-grandmother or Mamacita. Nevertheless, Esperanza learns through their experience. This shows Esperanzas ability to distinguish between the different role models. She recognizes that she does not want to be a copy of somebody and this is why she sees others just as partial role models. The social interaction with the community in reality is of utter importance for Esperanzas identity formation.The fact that she defines herself through people she lives with shows the close interaction between community and Individual. The house stands for the community because it is part of it and thus functions as a synecdoche pars pro toto the term community is replaced by a narrower one, thus the house. This also works vice versa, totum pro parte means here that the house is used to represent the community. For Esperanza, the rela tionship between individual and community is a mutual one. She recognizes that there is a green goddess she learned and experienced while living in the house on Mango Street and in the ommunity. At the end of the novel, both what the tercet sisters and Alicia say to her induce Esperanza to acknowledge her indebtedness to the community and her role as mediator and negotiator between worlds. (Rukwied 63). So she decides to give something back, to help others with her experience. In the vignette Bums in the Attic she pleads One day Ill own my own house, but I wont forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? Ill offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house. Cisneros 87) Esperanza shows great sympathy for other people who are, by some means or other, lost like she was when wondering who she is. She describes this state with the word homeless (Cisneros 87). Having no home means having no house or apartment. And as I argued before, the house is the central metaphor for self-identification. In the end, Esperanza finally finds her voice by beginning with writing. She now has a clear vision of how her promised house should be Only a house fluent as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem. (Cisneros 108). This is another way of contributing something to the community she writes about it. As I argued, the house is of central importance in The House on Mango Street. Esperenza first refuses to accept that she belongs to Mango Street and thus to the whole community. But in the end she recognizes that it was there her identity fully developed because our environs always shapes our identity. I focused on the function of the house, but there are further reasons for the importance of space in general.In my opinion, one of them is highly visible indeed The fact that Sandra Cisneros left a lot of space on the pages of the novel. In chapter 7 for example, there is both recto and setback in a large part unprinted. Works 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). recess Boundaries Latina Writing and decisive Readings. Amherst University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. 7-71. Rukwied, Annette L. The search for identity in dickens Chicana novels Sandra Cisneros The house on Mango Street & Ana Castillos the mixquiahuala letters. Stuttgart Universitat, Magisterarbeit, 1998. Valdes, Maria Elena de In pursuit of Identity in Cisneross The House on Mango Street, Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall 1992. 55-69. Valdes, Maria Elena de. The Critical Reception of Sandra Cisneross 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)