"The fact is, that women are in chains, and their servitude is all more debasing because they do not realize it." Sandra Cisnieros depicts women as slaves in society who are ruled by an iron fist of males in The House on Mango Street. She reveals the horror and pain and suffering women must go through in their everyday life. The House on Mango Street brings forth circumstances where women have been sought as possessions, and also become subject to oppression by the fanaticism of males in today's society.
Women find themselves being treated as if they were only a multi-function robot and only as a mere possession for men. For example, in the vignette "Alicia Who Sees Mice," Alicia, whose mother died and has now inherited her mothers obligations of being the maid of the house, has to wake up at the crack of dawn to make tortillas for her father's lunchbox. Alicia's father is always saying, "a women's place is sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star, the one that appears early just in time to rise (p.31)." The way Alicia's father treats her is an example of the macho stereotype that kept Alicia a servant in her own home like her mother. In a desperate attempt to escape this persecution Alicia decides to go away to school so she won't have to spend her whole life in a factory or more importantly behind a rolling pin. Her father's suggestion that her existence should be sleep and housework display the sexist ideal that a higher education is wasted on a woman. .
In addition, in the chapter "Minerva Writes Poems," Sandra Cisneros depicts the sad existence of a girl not much older than Esperanza. She is already burdened with "two kids and a husband who left (p.84)." And so she is left to take care of them herself because of her on and off husband. After putting her children to bed, Minerva spends her nights writing heart-breaking poems that she folds into little pieces and grips in her hand (p.
