She is 14 year old girl struggling with becoming a woman in a male dominated world, as well as choosing whether she wants to be popular or not. In the the book The House on Mango Street Esperanza is shown to become a dynamic character throughout the story. This is shown by how she is at the beginning when she changes and why. In the beginning Esperanza cares about popularity her appearance and boys. This is all shown in the chapter “Chanclas”.
The windows are a representation of what Esperanza does not want to be. Her goal is to leave Mango Street and become something better. She does not want her life to be sitting by a window wishing for something better. She wants to be able to live her life without being tied down to something. She overcomes that,
Interestingly, she seems to lose this confidence when speaking to adults outside of her immediate family. Perhaps this points to some traumatic incident with a stranger? But I digress. Esperanza pesters her mother for three days, asking for a note to eat in the canteen. She tells her mother “You will see me less, and like me more.” This tactic seems to be rooted in making her mother feel like Esperanza feels unloved, which to a child’s mind will make the adult in question bestow gifts and reassurance upon the child to prove their love.
Her mom teaches Esperanza many life lessons throughout the story. The reader learns that the mom dropped out of school because she “didn't have nice clothes” (91). The mom regrets this decision as staying in school could have let her lead a better life in a wealthier place. Esperanza quickly realizes that she wants to stay in school to move out of Mango Street. This mom is also there for emotional support when Esperanza needed it.
So she didn't really care about those people, but as Esperanza had to live the lifestyle of fear for deportation, she felt bad for the people who were deported. To sum it all up, Esperanza went from riches to rags, bratty to well behaved, and from not working at all to working very hard thanks to her experiences throughout the book. Looks like being poor was more beneficial than being rich. I think kids nowadays could learn a thing or two from Esperanza about working hard, not having an attitude, and respecting/ helping people not as wealthy as
The author establishes a contrast between Esperanza’s reality and fantasy through imagery. When her family first moved to Mango Street, Esperanza had high expectations for a “real home,” but she was disappointed to live in a tiny, run-down house. She depicts her current house on Mango Street as “small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in” (Cisneros 4). The negative description Esperanza gives of her house shows how trapped she feels because she describes the windows as very small.
For example, Cisnero writes about. “Rafaela [who] leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel’s… Rafaela [who] wishes she could go [to the bar] before she gets too old” (79). Rafaela is trapped by her husband and wishes she could be free. All of the women influences that Esperanza knows are suppressed females that take on the role that society gives them. This leaves the women at a serious disadvantage to the men, which stresses how awful it is to live without independence.
Seeing not only her mother but her female friends and family members regret their choices, Esperanza is deeply affected and succeeds on making changes that allow her a better life. Esperanza realizes that what other females in her life regret the most is their lack of independence. She summarizes her thoughts of her own independence when she states what she wants, “Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own.
However, Esperanza does show some happiness for where she lives, unlike Chayo who doesn’t express any happiness whatsoever. Evidently, the vignette “Those who don’t” from the House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek are character defining moments for Esperanza and Chayo and they compare and contrast the theme of
Esperanza loves her mother very much, and explains her hair's appearance, like a mother loving her child. Esperanza expresses how her mother’s hair is like rosettes when she puts her hair up. She describes her hair beautiful and pretty after she puts her hair up in little circles which make her hair look curly. And every time Esperanza hugs her mother, she can smell the warmth of bread before it is baked, to Esperanza is smells like home and she feels safe. Her family may seem the same because they all look the same but in reality each hair holds a story with different