Leaving Mango Street: Speech, Action and the Construction of Narrative in Britton’s Spectator Stance

This paper attempts to unite The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros with the participant and spectator theories of James Britton and D. W. Harding in the hopes that such a union will provide new insights into each. In particular, this article explores how the speech acts of Esperanza, the novel’s protagonist, are indicative of a shifting stance during the course of the novel. This shift, from participant to spectator, enables Esperanza to objectify her experience and eventually narrate her departure from Mango Street. Aside from its attempts to join theory and literature, this argument has implications for the classroom as well, a space in which the value of the spectator stance is often overlooked.