Them on Us, Us on Them: An Examination of the Views of One Sex on Another

In the grand scope of literature, the theme of male versus female has shown up time and time again. In fact, upon review of a handful of random texts, one may find it hard to pick one that had no form age-old concept. In their works, Sandra Cisneros and N. Scott Momaday, use a unique form to portray this battle, the short story cycle. Using this literary structure, these two authors portray male and female relationship in The House on Mango Street and The Way to Rainy Mountain through the views of one sex on another.

In order to accurately compare and contrast the voices used in each book, I believe it is necessary to first examine the overall similarities and differences of the works as well as how those similarities and differences relate to the interaction of men and women. Overall, Cisneros’s and Momaday’s writings had some very important similarities; first and most obvious being that both are short story cycles. Each book is made up of a number of individual stories that collectively work to define the text – as opposed to a novel that lives primarily as one giant mass. The structure of the short story cycle relates well to the lives of men and women alike because no person’s life is regarded as a seamless mass; rather, it is regarded as a collection of relationships and experiences spawning from a lifetime of interaction with others. Secondly, the works of these two authors are similar in the point of view they portray – that of a minority. Cisneros’s writing shows the thoughts and emotions of a young Latina girl, and Momaday’s work comes mostly from the voice of small Native American tribe. This similarity holds importance because the dynamics of male in female interaction is different within a minority group than an overpowering majority group. Finally, both works show the efforts of either a person or a group in the midst of a struggle. Whether it is the complex fight of a Hispanic girl against poverty in big city or the basic battle to survive off the land, conflict always affects the interaction within and between sexes. These similarities pay a vital role in linking the masculine and feminine voices between the two collections.

Equally as important as the similarities of the two books are their overall differences. As I mentioned before, both books depict the voice of a minority group, and while the voices of minority groups are similar to one another in comparison to a majority, they each hold their own unique characteristics. Obviously, the biggest gap between these two minority groups is in cultural heritage. While the Kiowa share a hunter-gatherer culture, the Hispanic American people hold different customs living in a big American city, leading to a slight difference in the way people within each culture interact. With that in mind, another discrepancy in Cisneros’s and Momaday’s work arises – that of time. Obviously a tribe roaming around the open American plains must have lived in different time than a group of immigrants in a modern American city, and with a drastic time difference identified, we can imagine a communication difference exists as well between the two books. Finally, the issue of age comes into the examination of the voices in the works. As Esperanza is only a young to adolescent girl for the duration of The House on Mango Street, her view of male and female interaction may be slightly different from that of the grown men dominating the stories of The Way to Rainy Mountain. Luckily, with the careful regard for these differences, I have chosen to explore a topic that is colorless and timeless, as well as a good bit ageless. As though it is a part of our DNA, the overall portrayal of males through the female voice as well as females through the male voice changes little from person to person and from time to time.

Focusing specifically on The House on Mango Street, we can get a clear idea of the way the female voice portrays the male. As the book was written by a woman and told through the eyes of a girl, it immediately holds weight in the scope of this exploration. From the beginning, Cisneros declares that males and females “live in separate worlds” (8). This solidifies the idea that the author believes men and women are different and thus may view each other in a varied way. Cisneros establishes throughout her text that women see men as overpowering. In one specific case, the character Alicia has trouble with her father in the story “Alicia Who Sees Mice” (32). This story insinuates that her father has some sort of overpowering role in her life, even though we are left in the dark as to what the role is. Another character that interacts with an overpowering male figure is Sally, who comes to school wearing bruises on several occasions because her father is afraid she will run away (92). Later, after Sally is married, she is bounded within the walls of her husband’s house because “she is afraid to go outside without his permission” (102). The text regarding the men in Sally’s life is a clear scope of the generalized way the female voice views the male in this short story cycle, as well as elsewhere, but one passage does break the mold. In “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark,” Cisneros shows a much more positive view of a man. Esperanza reflects on how she would feel if “her own Papa” died, a though that moves her to “hold and hold and hold him” (57). While this contrasting portrayal of the male character is a breathe of fresh air from other passages, it still holds small weight when compared to the larger scope of negative male illustrations throughout the book.

Looking at The Way to Rainy Mountain, we can spotlight the view of the male voice on the woman. While there is no direct quote in Momaday’s text regarding the difference of men and women or each sexes’ role in society, the implications of his stories are hard to ignore. A negative vibe towards women in the writing starts immediately with story of how the Kiowa came to be. As the Kiowa “came into the world through a hollow log,” it was a woman that stopped their becoming by getting “stuck in the log” (16). Momaday’s text continues to shed negative light on the female labeling them as objects. As though the women are material goods, Momaday explains that in Kiowa culture, “bad women are thrown away” (58). An examination of the implication of this passage shows that men in that Native American culture portray women in a material way. Although a following passage tells the story of Kau-au-ointy, a women who rose from slavery to a prominent member of the tribe, the passage implies that she surpassed the typical “part of a Kiowa woman,” meaning most women of the tribe held lower roles than the males (59).

I raise the point of male portrayal of the female and female portrayal of the male to shed light on an age-old issue of sexual inequality. While the authors of these two texts may not share the views I have touched on, their story cycles show that the issue is alive in the past, as well as the present. The medium through which these ideas were conveyed, the short story cycle, works well to give an accurate depiction of how these issues fit into regular life because of how closely the short story cycle correlates to regular life. Fortunately, each author included a hint of positive view toward the opposite sex, evidence of hope for change and more equally viewed genders.