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This essay explores the power dynamics embedded in the construction and perception of spatial environments in the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra ...
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Supervisor: Gül Bilge Han Södertörn University | School of Education and Communication Advanced Level Essay 15 credits English | Spring 2020
Abstract This essay explores the power dynamics embedded in the construction and perception of spatial environments in the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. With the help of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space as a socially constructed phenomenon and practice, this essay argues that the characters’ experience and perception of spaces in the novel including the house and the street are entangled with the dominating forces related to gender, identity and patriarchy in the surrounding society. The essay also argues that the novel apart from revealing these power dynamics, also, through its protagonist Esperanza suggests a new kind of space, an alternative and more just space for the individual and the community. Additionally, this essay also discusses and elaborates on the pedagogical implications of using the novel with a focus on space for upper secondary students. An investigation of how individual and social spaces functions in different ways in the novel provides valuable opportunities for teachers and students to reflect and discuss power relations, social injustices and inequities in their community, and allow them, as the protagonist Esperanza, to imagine alternative and more just spaces. Keywords: The House on Mango Street, Literary analysis, The Production of Space, Social Space, Henri Lefebvre.
Introduction Sandra Cisneros’s critically acclaimed novel The House on Mango Street explores the coming of age journey of a young Mexican-American girl Esperanza Cordera in an impoverished barrio neighborhood in Chicago. Through forty-four interrelated vignettes the reader gets to experience the social and individual worlds of the Latinx community through the young girl’s perceptions of it and her reflections on the unjust conditions under which the migrant community lives. The material conditions of the society of the poor Latinx neighborhood are spatially marked by conflicts of gender, culture, ethnicity and identity and the impact of power these conditions impose on the people living there. The story revolves around how Esperanza, through her writing and aspirations towards education, tries to find a sense of belonging and a space of her own and for her community. Her social interactions in and experiences of Mango Street lead her to imagining an alternative shared space for the community that is different from what her surroundings seem to impose on her. This challenging journey of growing up and finding one’s space in the world is something everyone can relate to, regardless of age. The novel’s preoccupation with space facilitates an understanding of the injustices and the social and cultural conditions that the novel considers with the possibility to address topics, such as gender, identity, ethnicity and class from a critical viewpoint, which may in turn challenge and change the way we think about our lived experiences of spaces. This essay will thus explore the cultural and social implications and meanings of space in The House on Mango Street with the aim of revealing the ways in which the social production/construction of space functions as a means of control, hence of domination determined by power structures and social hierarchies; to be more specific, the social, individual, and domestic spaces of the novel are presented in ways that reveal the inequities and structures of domination and power in everyday social relations; the structures of domination are related to issues including gender, cultural belonging and identity. Social and individual spaces, thus, reveal the external and internal conflicts and contradictions between the characters that Esperanza depicts in her writings, and the larger ideological and social mechanisms including those of patriarchal expectations, belonging and cultural difference, with literary and political implications. But at the same time, apart from revealing these mechanisms, the novel’s use of social, individual, and domestic spaces, such as the house and the street, goes beyond the “exposition” of how the production of space is entangled with domination and power; through its protagonist, the novel also opens up, as this thesis claims, to imagining a different type of communal and individual space, an alternative and more just space. By
observing the society and the people in it, Esperanza develops an understanding of the limits and possibilities society might offer her, as well as the expectations that are imposed on her, which become visible through her observations of different characters and the spaces they occupy. The novel, in this way, allows for an understanding of space as a social construct, meaning that the function of space is dependent not simply on neutral and natural conditions, but rather on how space is perceived and lived and determined by society. Through her reflections, Esperanza implicitly detects and acknowledges power structures in society; it is this awareness of the frames and structures of society with the help of education that enables her to reach beyond and imagine an alternative space. More specifically, Cisneros addresses the topics of gender, identity, ethnicity and class in relation to space and place throughout the novel through the young girl Esperanza’s gaze. Spaces that evidently are in the center of attention are, as the title of the novel indicates: the house and the street. This essay will specifically focus on the narrative of these spaces and investigate the power dynamics entangled their construction; particularly, the power dynamics that are related to relations of gender and of belonging. To this end, the analysis in this essay will focus on three female migrant characters and follow their trajectories of how they relate to their domestic and social spaces. As a secondary and additional focus, instances whereas Esperanza is imagining a new space, an external space beyond Mango Street will also be analyzed. Last but not least as an additional focus, this thesis will also elaborate on the pedagogical implications of a focus on the social dynamics of space as they are explored in the novel. The notion of space as a social construct is understood in this essay in accordance with the Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre, who coined the phrase in his pioneering study The Production of Space. In his study, he explores the relationship between the mental space and the real space; in other words, the space in philosophy and the physical and social space in the spheres in which we live. As this essay will further explain in the theoretical section, Lefebvre claims that “space is not an empty or neutral container – or a blank canvas upon which – social interactions take place” (Ford 178). On the contrary, space is produced by and through social interactions, repeatedly, over and over again. Hence, it is produced and therefore also productive. In this way, space can serve as a tool of action, and therefore as a tool of control, of domination and of power (Lefebvre 26). With the help of Lefebvre’s theory, where he examines the constructed nature of space, it is possible to demonstrate how our perceptions, experiences, and understandings of space are socially constructed rather than being neutral, and to pinpoint the underlying processes and mechanisms of its production; “so that we might begin,
reflect upon their own differences and how they relate to the community and spaces they live in. Furthermore, the novel highlights another related aspect, which is that the novel in itself, through the trajectory of the protagonist Esperanza’s life communicates the importance of acquiring an education for oneself for imagining alternative and just spaces, which is something particularly relevant for teachers to communicate towards their students. Background Before getting into a detailed analysis of the novel’s characters and the power dynamics of space, it is useful to introduce some background information about the Mexican American community that the novel focuses on in connection to the critical literature surrounding the novel’s characters and social spaces. Olga L. Herrera discusses the importance of taking a critical perspective informed by the social and historical location of Mexicans in Chicago when considering the novel. Such a perspective points to, Herrera argues, a transnational production of space that situates the narrator Esperanza simultaneously both in Chicago and Mexico at the same time (103). This space, “Mexican Chicago” as Herrera calls is, demonstrates “a transmigrant production of social space that moves away from binary understandings of the nation-state and that troubles the assimilationist narrative” (104). She argues, that by placing her character in this space, Cisneros allows Esperanza to navigate the multifaceted intersections between “subjectivity, identity, place, belonging, and concepts of home” through a transnational consciousness. This transnational consciousness has grown out of the migration histories of Chicago and Mexico City. As early as the 1900s, Mexican male workers went to find fortune in agriculture in the Midwest and in Chicago’s industry. During the World War I changes were made in the immigration law, in favor of Mexican workers, allowing them to enter the country without having to go through the literacy and tax requirements. The seasonal agricultural work allowed workers to seek other opportunities during the off season, which a lot of them found in the urban cities of the Midwest, like Chicago (107-108). In Chicago, Mexican labor came to determine the spatial locations of the community, whereas, when Mexicans moved in, white people moved out and significant Mexican neighborhoods emerged, next to the African American neighborhoods, as in the case of the community in The House on Mango Street. In the Southwest, there was a long tradition of a white/brown dichotomy that dominated the race relations, but the racialization of the Mexican communities in Chicago unfolded differently. Mexicans in Chicago found themselves “located along a slippery racial spectrum, where they were identified in terms of what they were not –
not African American, not quite white, and decisively non-American” (110). These notions, along with the notion of the population of Puerto Rican and Cuban immigrants affected how Mexican immigrants understood their ethnic identity. They were forced to form an identity based on their “Mexicanness” and created social policies concerning gender and class distinctions within their Mexican community (110). As it might appear, Chicago is a city divided by racial and ethnic segregation, whereas place is intimately connected to ethnic identity, which in the case of the novel, as Herrera argues, is crucial for an understanding of “perceived competition over resources, including neighborhood space and employment” (110- 112). The novel The House on Mango Street , written in the late 1970s, takes place in that period of time, when demographic changes were unfolding in Chicago. As the Mexican and Puerto Rican moved in and appropriated the inner city’s neighborhoods, white middle- and working-class people moved out (111). This is exemplified for instance, in the vignette “Cathy Queen of Cats”, where Esperanza, who just moved in to Mango Street, encounters the girl Cathy, who says she can be her friend until Tuesday, which is when her and her family “got to” move out, since “the neighborhood is getting bad” (Cisneros 12- 13 ). In sum, the presence of a migrant community in Chicago, produces a space that comes to belong both to Mexico and Chicago, which in the novel takes the form of Mango Street. In regard to the protagonist Esperanza, being a daughter of an American Mexican and a Mexican immigrant, Esperanza produces her reality in relation to her experiences of Mexico, however she recalls them (116). As Herrera concludes, the “memory of Mexico is written over the built environment of Chicago, creating a barrio space that is personalized to their own transnational experience” (116). This discussion on how the migrant and transnational experiences play part in the production and reproduction of space in the community in the novel adds to the importance of why it is important to view the novel with a focus on space and its social functions. Such a focus provides a better understanding of how the community in the novel works, which this essay seeks to understand. Previous research Particularly in the past decades, literary studies have extensively considered issues of spatiality, often referred to as the spatial turn (Tabur 18 ). Examinations have focused on the ways in which space is addressed, represented and constructed in works of literature (Tabur 11). This recent emphasis on the notion of space in literary criticism has also been reflected on in the critical work of Cisneros’s novel.
the domestic spaces in the novel reflect the imposition of the dominant Anglo culture, concerning race, class, and gender hierarchies and are represented as unprotected, simultaneously un-fixed and semi-public spaces (50). Furthermore, Martin explores how the novel attempts to give voice to the marginalized protagonists and their paths’ “to transgress gendered borders and gain corporeal mobility”, as well as how it offers “counter-poetics” of the normative mainstream domestic space (51). All in all, these critics explore important aspects of space in the novel, and provide valuable insights into its implications for questions of gender, class and race. This essay adds to this discussion by focusing on the socially constructed nature of space and its relation to issues of belonging and patriarchy, and how space functions as a tool not only for control but also for imagining alternatives as Esperanza does. Focus will also be put on issues of gender, adding to these existing critical insights with the focus on space as a social product in Lefebvre’s sense, as well as further elaborate what spaces themselves socially and culturally mean, and how power dynamics of the society affects the characters. Additionally, this essay considers the pedagogical implications of focusing on the notion of space while reading the novel, which none of the above discussed critics do. As discussed in the introduction, The House on Mango Street provides valuable opportunities for educational implications, and is considered one of the classics in the US these days. Among the critics that have taken into account the novel’s pedagogical usages, Kathleen J. Ryan discusses how the novel can be used for white privileged students to raise awareness of their cultural dominance and encourage them to recognize themselves as raced, classed and gendered. She states that through aesthetic reading and engaged pedagogy, many of her students managed to locate the gap between themselves and the protagonist Esperanza, and in that way started to gain consciousness of their own privileges in the society; “this process of consciousness raising attempts to disrupt naïve notion that race, class, and gender differences do not matter; rather, they dramatically affect the quality of all our lives” (Ryan). While Ryan discusses how Cisneros’s novel can be used for white privileged students, M. Alayne Sullivan argues for the novel’s value for students at an at-risk middle school with students of Latinx, African American, and Caucasian backgrounds with low socio-economic status. She writes that to use a book such as The House on Mango Street where students’ lives and identities are represented empower them, as well as make them more confident, both as readers and as students (154). Sullivan concludes by stating that we need to provide our struggling students “with opportunities to read and respond to literature that can engage them” (172). There are thus several studies that consider the novel from a pedagogical angle as these
critics do but they do not consider the notion of space and its social production as this thesis additionally seeks to do. Theoretical framework As mentioned in the introductory section, in order to explore the spatial environments in the novel and their social meanings, the work of Lefebvre will be used as a theoretical framework in this essay. According to Lefebvre, every society creates its own social spaces and has its own spatial practices, through which they forge their own “appropriated” space (31). This social space, thus, consists of two dialectically interrelated relations of production and reproduction: the bio-physiological relations amongst the sexes, age groups and the organization of the family, and the “hierarchical social functions” in the division of labour power. These are all elements that determine spatial relations of individuals and groups and their roles (32). To demonstrate and understand how the production of space is constituted and how it has come to dominate spatial experiences, Lefebvre introduces a triad with critical concepts which are dialectically related to each other. The triad consists of: (1) spatial practice, (2) representations of space and (3) representational spaces (33), also known as perceived space, conceived space and lived space (Tabur 22). Spatial practice (perceived space) refers to the production and reproduction of the organization of everyday life, concerning the family, workplace, the community of the society and the state. Lefebvre writes that “the spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it” (38). This notion is seen in every society and every society creates its own space and has its own spatial practices. In relation to the novel, the spatial practices are colored by the dominating structures/forces of their society, such as poverty and patriarchy. This notion is also referred to as perceived space since it concerns the way we tend to think about the spaces that structure our daily lives, such as between the daily realities and urban reality 2 (38). Conceived spaces are on the other hand tied to the “order” which the relations of production impose or try to impose on individuals and groups (33), and it is the imagined, mental space that carries in turn abstractions and impacts on the perceptions and relations to space of individuals and groups (Tabur 22). These conceived spaces are produced by the dominating forces in a society, such as city planners, scientist, urbanists, landlords, bankers, real estate developers; “-all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived with 2 The urban space is further linked to Lefebvre’s notion of utopia, a concept used by him to address the impossible in the possible in the everydayness of urban life in order to extend the possible. See Lefebvre chapter six and the article by Coleman for further reading.
There are then two main reasons as to why Lefebvre’s theory is useful for an analysis of the novel that focuses on the social meanings of space and its relation to societal structures. Firstly, this theoretical framework helps to show how environments in the novel are imagined as not just being empty or neutral containers where individuals and groups exist in. The social spaces of Mango Street, the house, and the various spatial environments the characters exist in are instead socially constructed in the sense that their meanings are highly determined by and entangled with larger structures of power hierarchies that exist in the community and in the larger society, whether this is related to gender, class, or issues of belonging. These in turn have a direct effect on the character’s perception and experiences of space. Secondly, Lefebvre’s theory allows for an understanding of how in their perception of and uses of spaces, individuals participate in the reproduction of the meanings of space that are conceived and ordered by larger structures; in this sense, individuals and groups as in The House on Mango Street are not passive recipients, neither are they free from those structures, but they are active agents that are entangled with such structures in their individual practices and self-perceptions and roles. In this sense, as in the case of the protagonist Esperanza, the individuals (and groups) have also, by requiring an understanding of the power relations and structures, the potential to imagine spaces differently to bring change. As will be shown in the analysis, this refers to the differential space Esperanza dreams of. To use this theory for literary analysis was not primarily what Lefebvre had in mind, but he states that: “any search for space in literary texts will find it everywhere and in every quise: enclosed, described, projected, dreamt of, speculated about” (15). For the interpretive points in this essay, then Lefebvre’s concepts are useful to the process of analyzing the spatial practices of the society and in relations that the protagonist Esperanza reflects upon. Analysis There are many spaces in the novel that are interesting to analyze, and one of the most frequently described, illustrated and represented spaces in the novel is the one of the house. Esperanza reflects upon the different housing arrangements and the meaning of a house and a home for herself and the different characters throughout the story. By “’[w]itnessing her friends’ movement in transmigratory circuits, Esperanza contemplates the meaning of home through the lens of their travels” (Herrera 115). The house becomes a symbol for belonging, both of her resistance to belong, as well as her longing for a place where she feels true belonging: a place of her own. Through her reflections on the women’s lives on Mango Street, she successively maps out the frames and structures of her society in order to find her own path.
In the vignette “No Speak English”, Esperanza reflects upon the life of the Hispanic woman “Mamacita”, who against her will recently immigrated to America with her baby boy, and moved in with her husband on Mango Street. The apartment where they live functions in a way that reflects the migrant experience of being torn between two worlds: between the place left behind and the new place. These notions are significant for understanding what home and belonging mean. Mamacita’s new home seems to function as a space of confinement where she seeks to protect herself from the influences of the outside. At the same time, the apartment, the new migrant home, seems to be a space that controls her movement. She stays inside and seems unwilling to go out, being trapped in her new space; her new space where she is doubly marginalized; being a woman and an immigrant. Through Esperanza’s reflections Mamacita’s confinement and oppression are evident: Somebody said she’s too fat, somebody because of the three flights of stairs, but I believe she doesn’t come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so since she only knows eight words. She knows to say: He not here for when the landlords comes, No speak English if anybody else comes, and Holy smokes. I don’t know where she learnt this, but I heard her say it one time and it surprised me. (Cisneros
Esperanza believes that Mamacita does not want to go out since she is afraid of speaking English, and most likely, there is something to it. Even so, it might not be the language in itself that scares her, but the implications that follow by not being able to speak the standard language of a society when she is out on the street. As Lefebvre argues, in order to access a space “individuals (children, adolescents) who are, paradoxically, already within it, must pass tests. This has the effect of setting up reserved spaces, such as places of initiation, within social space” (35). In the spatial practice one “must either recognize” oneself or “lose” oneself in that space in order to access the reserved spaces (35). The spatial practice of the Mexican barrio that Mamacita paradoxically is a part of–since she is in it but unwilling to participate–is a space she must recognize herself in and participate in or she loses herself within it. Language in this sense, becomes a barrier Mamacita has to overcome to enter the reserved space of society. In Lefebvre’s terms, the test is then the English language, and the reserved space in this instance is the Mexican American neighborhood whereas English is the standard language. Not being able to speak the language in the society becomes the marker of her confinement. For Mamacita, this new situation is frightening, which is seen in the end of the vignette when she gets
paradoxical; even though he tries to dominate her, he also seems to want her to be part of their new society. This might say something about the general migrant experiences of belonging and not belonging, about what home means and where it is located. Mamacita’s husband might have reached to the point where he considers himself to belong both to Chicago and to their lost home, the notion that Herrera discusses as a transnational consciousness (105)—a transnational consciousness he evidently does not share with his wife. Nevertheless, he wants her to gain access to their new society and pass the test to put it in Lefebvre’s terms. This dominated space that Mamacita’s husband tries to regulate, by painting the walls in the color of her lost home and by demanding her to speak English, he wants to master and appropriate the space of his house (Lefebvre 28). In the end of the vignette, Mamacita’s double marginalization becomes especially visible in the aforementioned scene, when her baby boy starts to sing the Pepsi commercial in English. Mamacita exclaims: “No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears” (Cisneros 78). Her baby boy, speaking, not in his mother tongue, but in the language favored by his father, and the dominant society, which she does not feel she belongs. Her heart breaks as she realizes that her son now is entering the dominant society which she does not want to belong to. The spatial practice of everyday life for Mamacita and her family are colored thus by the values and codes of the dominating forces in the space of the society. In accordance with Lefebvre, it is the power of the outer world of the house, as well as, the patriarchal power within it that determine the perceptions of the characters, and their actions and control Mamacita (Lefebvre 26). Lastly, this vignette says something about the spatial practice of the neighborhood. For one, it indicates that the life of Mamacita is something the people of the neighborhood are concerned with. Probably there is a lot of gossiping, and people wonder why she is not part of their community. Also, the notion that she is not mentioned by name, but by a pseudonym says something: Indeed, Mamacita is not just any pseudonym but is used in mock-Spanish for “sexy” (Mendoza-Denton 146), mostly used by men catcalling women, thus, sexually objectifying them. This notion exemplifies how the objectification of women has become neutralized in a particular way in this societal space, especially since Esperanza does not reflect upon or question it. This exemplifies Lefebvre’s notion of how the spatial practice of a society secrets its space, how “it produces it slowly and surely as it masters to appropriates it” (31). Another character that is faces marginalization much like Mamacita, yet in different ways, is Rafaela in the vignette “Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays” (Cisneros 79-80). Rafaela is a woman locked indoors by her husband because he is afraid that she will run away since she is “too beautiful” (79). Only on Tuesdays, when her husband is out,
is she able to bend the rules he set up for her by asking some kids to go and fetch her a drink from the shop. The meaning of home for Rafaela is in alignment with Mamacita’s, a reflection of being torn between two worlds, except, for Rafaela, these two worlds are the inner and outer spaces of her apartment. The space of her home is controlled by her husband, hence a product of his dominance, but through Esperanza’s reflections we get to know what Rafaela might be dreaming of beyond patriarchal dominance. Esperanza’s reflections suggest that space not only functions as a means of control, but also as a means of expressing desires, which allows for a new kind of space to emerge: an imaginative, alternative space. On Tuesdays Rafaela’s husband comes home late because that’s the night he plays dominoes. And then Rafaela, who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at. Rafaela leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel’s. (Cisneros 79) The fate of Rafaela is determined by the gender dichotomy of the barrio, whereas the social space is ruled by gender stratification and holds different spaces for men and women (Saber 80). Whilst her husband can do whatever he wants, she is forced to adapt to his rules and stay indoors at all times. For her husband, it does not stop by having set rules since he even assumes her to break them if she gets the chance; he evidently does not trust his wife, so he locks the door to be able to control her. This domestic space, controlled by the husband, tells Rafaela what she can or cannot do. This brings Lefebvre’s discussion of “the general fact that walls, enclosures and façades serve to define both a scene (where something takes place) and an obscene area to which everything that cannot or may not happen on the scene is relegated” (36). The scene is their apartment where she is locked in, and the obscene might be illustrated in the case of Rafaela, through her imagination. She leans out of the window; the window being a symbol throughout the novel of “the dialectics between outer and inner spaces”, hence for Rafaela it becomes her gateway to get a taste of the outside world, as well as a gateway that allows her to dream of what her life could be like (Saber 81). Dreaming she was Rapunzel, who awaited a prince to free her with a happy ending (Cisneros 79). Only when her husband is away is she able to use the gateway, with the help of the kids who buy her a drink and send it up in a paper bag through the window (80). Lefebvre states that the things that are not allowed to happen at the scene are relegated and that “whatever is inadmissible, be it malefic or forbidden, thus has its own hidden space on the near or far side of a frontier” (36). Her leaning out the
might be a way to try to convince her self that it is not as bad as it seems. Similarly, her mother does not seem to interfere with her husband who hits their child, she just cares for the wounds and “rubs lard on all the places where it hurts” (92) like she is supposed to do. The relations in Sally’s family go in line with the stereotypes of Mexican family relations that Laura Paz discusses, where the traditional roles of women and men are strongly rooted; the women are supposed to be submissive to the male figures of their lives (11), a stereotype that the main character definitely steps outside. The women are forced to go along with the patriarchal show, which actually unfortunately contributes to the production and reproduction of it. Sally dreams of falling in love and escaping the judgments and prohibitions that control her life. The conceived space of a happy marriage is what makes her endure the situation she is in, and she needs her escape so badly that she marries “young and not ready” with “a marshmallow salesman” that she met at a school dance (101). Once again, she tries to persuade herself that everything is in order, since “she says she is in love”, but Esperanza sees through it and thinks she did it to escape her father and her abusive home (101). In her new home, she is now stuck with another abusive violent man who dominates her life. This new home is once again, as for the character Rafaela, a product of the male dominance which is seen clearly in the end of the vignette “Linoleum Roses”. Except 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 unless he is working. She sits at home because she is afraid to go out without his permission. She looks at all the things they own: the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes. She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as a wedding cake. (Cisneros 102) Once again, Sally’s life is determined by what she is not allowed to do, which exemplifies Lefebvre’s notion that “the ultimate foundation of social space is prohibition ” (35). Prohibition in these scenes is enacted both through individual authority figures such as Sally’s father and her husband, but they are also maintained by the ideological structures embedded in the gender relations in society, which by extension, in the case of Sally, make spatial environments like walls, windows, and home, spaces of control and domination. In the case of prohibition being the defining feature of social space, this is seen when individuals, in this case Sally, attempts to navigate in space and the most influential aspect for her is that of what she is not allowed to do or what she is not allowed to have. Sally’s husband does not even let her look
out the window–the window that for Rafaela became a gateway that allowed her to dream of the outside world. Instead Sally is forced to look at the things that she dreamt of, the roses on the floor and the ceiling that reminds her of a wedding cake, which constantly reminds her of the disappointments of her illusion of a happy marriage (Cisneros 102). Sally’s horrible fate represents the cycle of domestic violence, the production and reproduction of it, and how ingrained it is in space. Her desperate attempt to escape leads to another confinement. So far, the analysis has focused on how space functions as a means of control, dominance and power in the domestic spaces of the characters Mamacita, Rafaela and Sally and how these spaces represent the patriarchal perceived, conceived, and lived space. Esperanza’s reflections on the dominated spaces (the conceived spaces) surrounding her becomes the birthplace of her initiative of finding/creating an alternative and more just space. In Lefebvre’s terms, this brings in the notion of differential space, which in contrast to the abstract space, which tends to uphold hegemony at all means, emphasizes differences (52). For instance, in the vignette “Bums in the Attic” Esperanza imagines a differential space, an inclusive space that defies social hierarchy. She wants “a house on the hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works” (86), except she will not be like the ones who live there; the ones who “sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth” (86). Esperanza has always dreamt of a “real house” such as the ones up on the hill, except she realizes that she does not want to forget who she is and where she comes from when she attains that space of desire. She does not want to be like those people, who look down on people like her, as if people like her were not worth as much. She wants to challenge the class hierarchy and not simply imagine a space for her individual fulfillment and desires, by welcoming anyone in her future home. She imagines, that she will happily and proudly perform the kind act of housing homeless people in her attic: “Bums, I’ll say, and I’ll be happy”. Moreover, she knows “how it is to be without a home”, and has come to realize that the quality of one’s house does not equal one’s worth, as she states: “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am and where I come from” (Cisneros 86). Additionally, the alternative and more just space that Esperanza creates/imagines calls for the patriarchy to be questioned and paves the way for women to gain power. In Esperanza’s perception of society, it is the men that own the world: they are the ones that dominate the social practices. But Esperanza defies this, stating that “[h]er power is her own” and “[s]he will not give it away”, she will not get stuck like the other women on Mango Street, and that she is too strong for her (Mango Street) to keep her (110). This differential space is reached through her writing, which is the very act that sets her free. But she is determined to use her power not only
