Liberated Voices of Aztec Subjugation: Female Subjectivity in The House on Mango Street
This article deals with Sandra Cisneros’ debut novel, The House on Mango Street (1984), and proposes a deconstructive reading of the two major archetypes which have traditionally shaped Mexican and by extension Chicano understanding of the role of women in Latin American cultures: 1) La Malinche and 2) La Virgen de Guadalupe. Transforming the degrading configurations of Malinche as a willingly violated traitor and the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe as the self-sacrificing Mother, Cisneros reconfigures these paradigmatic icons as empowering figures of female agency so as to provide a fresh perspective on the sexuality, creativity, and political consciousness of Chicanas in general. By tracing the bildung process of the 12-year-old protagonist, a Mexican-American girl named Esperanza Cordero, towards acquiring such consciousness, as opposed to the conventional representations of the two folkloric icons, this article illustrates the ways such opposition has long served ideologically in creating a patriarchal version of history, religion, folklore and literary tradition so as to subjugate Latin American women. In offering a close reading of the selected sections from the text, the study concludes with the argument that there lies a contact zone, a border zone or a gray area between the so-called opposing poles of the dichotomy, from whence the new Chicana subject should draw her inspiration and creative energy in order to finally emerge as an independent woman, no longer bound by the age-old “either/or” syndrome forcefully imposed upon her by patriarchy.
Azteklerin Susturduğu Kadınların Mango Sokağı’ndaki Ev’den Yükselen Sesleri
Bu çalışma, yapıbozucu bir okuma yöntemiyle, Sandra Cisneros’un ilk eseri olan Mango Sokağı’ndaki Ev (1984) romanında ele aldığı iki kadın arketipini inceler: 1) Kirletilmiş hain Malinche ve 2) Kutsal Bakire Guadalupe. Latin Amerika, Meksika ve sınırın kuzeyindeki uzantısı Chicano toplumlarındaki kadının rolü ve kimliğinin, tarih boyunca kutuplaşmış bir karşıtlık üzerinden kurgulanmasına yol açan bu iki arketipi sil baştan yeniden yazan Cisneros, ataerkil söyleme özgü cinsel kısıtlamaların karşısına alternatif bir değerler dizisi çıkartır. Romanın odağında, Meksika kökenli Amerikalı bir kız çocuğunun basmakalıp iyi/kötü kadın tipolojisini aşmak adına çıktığı bilinçlenme yolculuğu vardır. Yolculuk, romanın başlığını teşkil eden “ev” ve “sokak” kilit öğelerinin ilkinde başlar. Süreç, özel alandan kamusal alanı işaret eden mahalleye taşındığında ise artık bilinçlenmiş olan anlatıcı, dünyasını ikili zıtlıklardan arınmış bir bakış açısıyla anlamlandıracaktır. Çalışmanın ilk aşamasında, sözü geçen arketiplerin Aztek kültürüne uzanan köklerine dair folklorik ve tarihi bulgular üstüne kurulu arka planından bahsedilmektedir. Bu bilgiler ışığında romandan seçilen bölümlerin yakın okuması yapılacaktır. Sonuç olarak, kutuplaşmış bir karşıtlık olarak kurgulanan bu iki arketipin özüne inildiğinde, barındırdıkları zıtlıkların esasında iç içe geçerek muğlâklaştığı bir sınır-diyarını işaret ettiği vurgulanmaktadır. Karşıtlıklar üstünden devamlılığını sürdürebilen ataerkil machismo söylemine meydan okuyacak bu yeni ‘temas’ alanı, bağımsız Chicana kadınının yaratıcı gücünü ve cinsel kimliğini keşfetmesi adına yeni bir ifade biçimine dönüşecektir.
This article deals with Sandra Cisneros’ debut novel, The House on Mango Street (1984), and proposes a deconstructive reading of the two major archetypes which have traditionally shaped Mexican and by extension Chicano understanding of the role of women in Latin American cultures: 1) La Malinche and 2) La Virgen de Guadalupe. Transforming the degrading configurations of Malinche as a willingly violated traitor and the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe as the self-sacrificing Mother, Cisneros reconfigures these paradigmatic icons as empowering figures of female agency so as to provide a fresh perspective on the sexuality, creativity, and political consciousness of Chicana women in general. By tracing the bildung process of the 12-year-old protagonist, a Mexican-American girl named Esperanza Cordero, towards acquiring such consciousness, as opposed to the conventional representations of the two folkloric icons, this article illustrates the ways such opposition has long served ideologically in creating a patriarchal version of history, religion, folklore and literary tradition so as to subjugate Latin American women. Therefore, the major ideological driving force of The House on Mango Street is primarily instigated by the young protagonist’s quest for a voice of her own and an autonomous identity, which is analogous to finding a house of her own from whence she re-writes herself. As the title of the book signals, the two major determinants in the course of the protagonist’s coming-of-age quest, namely her “House” as the private sphere and the normative barrio, which is called “Mango Street,” as the public domain, are both going to play a significant role throughout the process. Esperanza’s journey towards finding a new “home” will also be a way to resist the pre-established order of the machismo discourse that has its roots in both Mesoamerican Aztec civilization and the Catholic doctrines of the Spanish conquistadores. Due to her role as the translator, advisor and concubine of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortes, Malinche has been stigmatized as la chingada (the screwed one) and blamed for the fall of the Aztecs, hence representing the monstrous side of the “Virgin/Whore” dichotomy.
However, Malinche’s metaphorical role as the indigenous mother of all Mexicans as a new mestizo nation, born of Native American women and Spanish fathers, becomes more problematic in light of such an ambiguous mother-traitor paradox. In contrast, reinforcing a feminine ethos of humility, purity, self-negation, submission and devotion, the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe (the Mexican incarnation of the Virgin Mary) has been hailed as the paragon of Latina womanhood. Therefore, the novella focuses on the plights of the more than two dozen silenced barrio women who will, in one way or another, help the protagonist transcend this age-old dichotomy. Since it was published, the novel, which is an autobiographical recollection of Cisneros’ childhood memories, has become a border-defying primer of Chicana literature, expanding the actual act of border-crossing to encompass a wider spectrum of cognitive sites located at the conflicting crossroads of ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. Therefore, by offering a close reading of the selected sections from the text, the study concludes with the argument that there lies a contact zone, a border zone or a gray area between the socalled opposing poles of the “virgin/whore” dichotomy, from whence the new Chicana subject should draw her inspiration and creative energy in order to finally emerge as an independent woman, no longer bound by the “either/or” syndrome forcefully imposed upon her by the patriarchal tradition.
