From Ignorance To Transcendence

The masterpiece The House on Mango Street leads Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros to the front of the mainstream literature in the United States. It became an immediate success and met with various criticism which is either directed toward such ideological issues as ethnicity, female identity, cross-cultural presentation, or toward such formalistic issues as genre and postmodern thinkings. Few have ever combined the ideological with formalistic studies. The present paper, with the assistance of narratology, tries to redress this critical balance by combining them together, in a bid to reveal the relationship between narrative techniques and the construction and transformation of the female identity.The thesis consists of three parts: Introduction, Conclusion, and the main body. Chapter One is concerned with the na(?)ve narration of Esperanza's first identity as an ignorant girl, as typified in her diction, sentence length and sentence structure. Moreover, two shameful events are taken as examples to show Esperanza's silence in speech. As an ignorant girl, the female protagonist has to stick with the constantly moving family leading to her lack of self-esteem for an independent identity.In Chapter Two, the manipulation of narrative perspectives, narrative situation, the use of present tense and narrative commentary as tactics are discussed to help reveal the formation and evolution of the protagonist's second identity as an acuminous observer. With the maturing of her body, Esperanza not only notices her puberty changes, but also begins to observe the people on the Mango Street, especially women. The analysis of the shifting narrative perspectives and narrative situation demonstrates the temptation of growth and loss of maturity. By employing present tense and narrative commentary, Esperanza deliberately chooses to contemplate life. She's not only concerned with the impermanence of human life, but with the maltreatment of women in Latino patriarchal society. Her observation in this phase paves the way for her identity transformation in the last period.Chapter Three focuses on revealing Esperanza's new identity transformation: a conscientious writer. Through her keen observations of the people on the Mango Street, she realizes that only keeping on writing can help her and her kinsmen improve the living conditions of the Mango Street. She is thus determined to leave only for a possible returning. Esperanza in the final analysis completes her identity transformation from an ignorant girl to a conscientious writer.In short, the present study forms an attempt to connect the female identity transformation process with the narrative techniques and tactics employed by the author in the hope of contributing something new to the already large critical efforts on Chicana literature.