ABSTRACT
Discontinuous narrative, the form that articulates Esperanza's experience, has the power to represent the experience of the self as marginal. The fragmented narrative of The House on Mango Street embodies this quest for freedom, a true freedom that resolves rather than eludes the conflicts faced by the Chicana subject. The discontinuous narrative form permits the creation of a Chicana feminist Kunstlerroman; it also allows the representation of a Chicana feminist protagonist. Most of the women of Mango Street are trapped inside the masculine constructs of Chicano culture; the possibility that women can subvert a masculine language and make it speak for feminine experience is enacted by Sandra Cisneros's use of a discontinuous narrative form that undermines the false coherence of patriarchal language. Within the terms of the patriarchy, women are defined by their relation to men and what meaning may be available to women is articulated by a language that carries this already-interpreted semantic freight.
