Characters looking for their own place: Sandra Cisneros and her idea of a frontier

• Autores: Ana María Rodríguez Mosteiro
• Localización: The Short Story in English [Recurso electrónico]: crossing boundaries / coord. por Gema Soledad Castillo García, María Rosa Cabellos Castilla, Juan Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, Vincent Carlisle Espínola, 2006, ISBN 8481387096, págs. 765-774
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper wants to explore the ethical logics behind the traditional exclusion of women from the frontier since The House on Mango Street shows the reader an unorthodox understanding of the Westering movement. In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros presents the reader a series of characters who live in very different ways the frontier experience. Instead of having found the Promised Land at the other side of the American frontier, they seem to be confined in a kind of ghetto.

    This paper proposes to explore and analyze this idea of a feminine frontier inhabited by feminine heroines. In order to do so we will use the theories exposed by Gloria Anzaldúa in her book Borderlands / La Frontera. The New Mestiza.

    Women in Cisneros’s stories are captive characters locked at home who appeal to their internal world to escape from the weariness of reality, showing that it is not necessary to travel thousands of miles to reach the Paradise.