Depiction of Women in Sandra Cisneros Novel the House on Mango Street

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, printed single-sided, grade: 2 (B), University of Potsdam (Anglistics/ American Studies), course: Feminist Chicana Writing, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Sandra Cisneros is one of the most popular feminist Chicana writers. She was born inChicago in 1954 as the only daughter among six brothers of a Mexican Americanmother and a Mexican father. In her early childhood the family moved a lot betweenChicago and Mexico City, where her grandparents lived, so Cisneros never felt at homeanywhere. Hence, she spent most of her time reading for the family s mobility preventedthe development of friendships. When she attended college in 1974 she started writingpoetry and prose in a creative writing class. There she created a style of writing that wasintentionally opposite to those of her classmates. After receiving her M.A. at theUniversity of Iowa she worked in a Chicano barrio in Chicago teaching high schooldropouts and later on as an administrative assistant at Loyola University Chicago.Today she lives in San Antonio and is working on a new novel.In the following the depiction of women in her novel The House on Mango Street willbe examined. This novel consists of a series of vignettes describing the growing up of theyoung girl Esperanza in a barrio in Chicago as she herself reflects it with her youthfulnaivety. She characterises different people, particularly women respectively girlssurrounding her in various situations and depicts the living conditions of the barrio ingeneral.The different female characters appearing in the novel will be analysed in reference totheir deprived situation concerning race, gender and class. To that end the author willinitially give an insight into the image and role of women in the Mexican Americanculture. Accordingly the analysis of the different characters acting in various situationsagainst the background of this will follow.The literature used for this work is English as well as German whereas indirect quotationsfrom the German literature will be translated with the knowledge of the author.Due to its limited extend the following work is not exhaustive.