Ignorance is bliss: exploring the paradox of knowledge and happiness

¶ … Ignorance Bliss? A Comparison and Contrast of the Characters and Themes of Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street" and "Araby" by James Joyce

Plot Summary

Character Summary

Ignorance, although comfortable is not bliss at all.

Character

Gender

Age Difference

Culture

Catholicism and sexuality in Joyce

Catholicism and family in Cisneros

Home

Significance of home in Cisneros

Significance of leaving home in Joyce

Both the protagonists of Sandra Cisneros and "Araby" by James Joyce are young adolescents, poised upon the brink of realizing that older people do not have all of the answer in life. The tales detail the coming of age of the young protagonists, as they realize that the adults in their respective worlds are not as good or wise as they seem to be. Cisneros's female heroine comes to her realization when she is contrasting the promises of her family about the house on Mango Street her mother and father purchase, and the white picket fences of the houses she sees on the television screen. Joyce's hero experiences a sexual betrayal when an older woman the young man admires asks him to bring her something from the fair at Araby. At Araby, he loses his idealized image of her as well as his money. The two young characters emerge sadder but wiser from their tales, and both authors suggest that although ignorance can seem blissful, ignorance is a state of mind one must abandon to become an adult in an often deceitful world.

However, the processes by which the two main characters come to their central realizations about the corrupted nature of adult life are profoundly different because of their genders. "Araby" begins with a very idealized vision of a young woman in the eyes of the male narrator. When he loses his money while trying to find her a gift at a cheap street fair, he begins to unfairly regard the woman as cheap and worthless. In contrast, the tale of "The House on Mango Street" begins not with a person, but with a characterization of the young woman in the context of her family of six, including Mama, Papa, brothers Carlos and Kiki, sister Nenny. The young woman is not free to wander in the lights and delights of the fair, like Joyce's young man. Sonia Saldivar-Hull in her text, Feminism on the Border: Chicana Gender Politics and Literature has noted that protectiveness rather than exploration has been the primary, foundational experience of many Latina women. (Saldivar-Hull, 2000) However, Cisneros' narrator, no matter how sheltered she may be from the world at the beginning of the tale as a young woman, is still forced to realize from an economic perspective that older people are not always good and wise, as the promises of her father and mother do not match the reality of the peeling paint of the house they move into, the first house the family has ever owned.

Both short stories are marked by a distinct sense of place and culture, that heightens the nature of the character's sense of seeing adults 'fall from grace.' Both protagonists are Catholics. Joyce does characterize Ireland quite strikingly over the course of his short story, stressing the presence of priests and also the presence of the British at the Araby fair. (Barnhisel, 1997) Home as a place and the significance of objects in Cisneros's world are even more important to her female narrator -- until the end of the story, she sees them as part of her identity, because they mean so much to the hopes of her close-knit Catholic family. In Joyce, the young man leaves home to find an artifact for a lovely girl, as if he is on a quest and returns home in shame. The title of the story gets its name from the fair, not from a place name near the home. But in "The House on Mango Street," the narrator begins recollection by thinking of the different street names on which her family lived. She is looking for a home, not a sweetheart, even though her ideal of a home may begin just as elevated as Joyce's vision of a young, pure girl.

In Joyce's vision of "Araby," the young man's ideal of the purity of a woman seems to have its roots in the heavily Irish Catholic religion of the young boy's cultural environment, more than a sense of home. Religion also plays a role in Cisneros's version of her adolescent's coming of age tale, but more as a stress upon the need for the narrator's large, Hispanic Catholic family to stay together, even in a hostile street, culture, and America -- a family ideal that is betrayed when the girl is disappointed that the reality of home ownership is not all her parents hope it will be, like on television. Likewise, Joyce experiences his adventures in "Araby" like a fall into knowledge from Eden, when the promises of the fair are not fulfilled.

Both Catholic 'falls' significantly symbolized by a loss of money as well as ideals. Joyce's young man miscalculates how much money he will need to get to and from the fair. Cisneros' narrator remembers how a nun from her school shamed her unintentionally when she asked her where she lived. Because the girl lived in an apartment over a dilapidated laundry, she felt rage and shame between how things ought to be and how they were in reality.