Patriarchal House as a Physical and Metaphorical Prison in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street

Abstract

Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros explores in her novel The House on Mango Street the construction of the patriarchal house as a physical and metaphorical prison for the female characters that inhabit this text. In this way, the writer highlights the situation of many Chicano women in the United States who struggle, from their barrios, to build a place in a society that excludes them because of their ethnic origin and discriminates against them because of their condition as women. This causes a double sense of marginality that imprisons them in the private space of the house.