The House On Mango Street Women Analysis

In Mexican American society , women are deemed inferior to men, evident in traditional family roles, the male is the head of the family who provides for the family , while the woman stays at home to look after the children she is expected to provide for her husband . In the third vignette of ‘The House on Mango Street’ titled ‘Boys and Girls’ the reader is informed of the division between men and women when Esperanza refers to herself and her sister Nenny , and her brothers, “They’ve got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can’t be seen talking to girls”. The male dominance begins at a very young age.

The House on Mango Street is set in a poor, primarily Hispanic neighborhood. Author Sandra Cisneros creates an atypical, yet easily digestible world for the reader to experience while learning about Esperanza’s childhood. The culture of her environment influences Esperanza’s development as she becomes a young woman, and contributes to the book’s driving theme of self-empowerment. Mango Street is the source of Esperanza’s growth through her childhood, and it hides sadness and longing underneath stereotypes of Hispanic people. The characters that live in the broken-down neighborhood all seem to represent pigeonholed views of Latino individuals.

Many girls desire a female role model from a young age. The way these women are treated, and deal with this treatment can heavily impact the way young girls view themselves, and their future as well. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street brings attention to issues of sexism and gender roles. This is done through a series of vignettes about the main character Esperanza navigating life by the example of her many role models. Each role model impacts Esperanza in a special way, Sally who is married at 13, Marin who is waiting to be rescued by a man, and Alicia who is balancing school and home responsibilities.

The House on Mango Street is a touching and timeless tale told in short vignettes. It tells the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago. Her life, and the lives of the people around her, are laid bare to the readers in this touching novella. In the beginning, Esperanza is not accepting of herself. Her family’s poor financial situation, the sadness of the people around her, and the problems she faces in her daily life make her very cynical. However, Esperanza’s negative view of herself slowly changes as she begins to focus on her larger community and her place within it. Through this, Cisneros shows that knowing and accepting where we have come from is an important part of growing up and determining who we are.

In The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, the main character, Esperanza, begins a silent fight against gender roles. As a woman, she is expected to be quiet and polite. Esperanza, a passionate young girl, desires to be stronger than that.

However, much like Esperanza, in recent years people have offered their own views to the world in hopes that traditional and considerably out-dated women’s roles will change. These individuals hold a key to a better home for themselves and for others far away from Mango

The claim/thesis that I have picked is that Esperanza has a variety of female role models in her life. Many of those role models in her life are in a trapped abusive life. They come from a poor family and are not the cleanest people in the town. But they have something all in common and that is that they all want a change. Some want their change in a different way than the others, some want someone else to change their life, and the others want to change their lives themselves.

Esperanza Rising Research Essay Though many who have read Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan believe that Esperanza and her mother should have stayed in Aguascalientes, Mexico, on the contrary, I believe that they were right to leave for California. If they stayed, they would have had to face several consequences, one being having to live with Esperanza’s uncle, despicable Tio Luis. At the same time, when they went to California, they did not have to leave everything behind, it was a choice they made. After all, as Esperanza herself said in the book, “Do not ever be afraid to start over.” (p. 253)

Thomas Jefferson once said,“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” This quote can be taken much deeper, with the understanding that the past is just that, history. Of course history still affects the future today, but people focus more on moving forward rather than dwelling on the past. In Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” the author illustrates the idea, using her family members’ past, other residents of Mango Street, and Esperanza discovering who she is, that while the past can make up parts of a person, it does not have to be their whole identity. Instead it can be a way in which the person can develop in the future.

The main protagonist Esperanza, matures from a childish girl to a young confident woman through many critical and life changing events in the story. Ultimately, the author, Sandra Cisneros implements the symbols of confidence, the house on mango street and the metaphor of shoes to show how Esperanza develops into a more mature state. Sandra Cisneros

Role models are an important aspect in Esperanza’s life. For example, In Esperanza’s life Sally is a negative role model. In order for Sally to have freedom from her apprehensive father; she married a man to escape, who will not let her talk to anyone or look out the window (102). This shows Sally is kept, traditional woman that used her sexuality for freedom, unfortunately failed.

Cisneros emphasizes and reveals the sexual and emotional concepts of womanhood in this text. Things such as wage gaps, work, and basic feminism are the concepts of womanhood that aren’t revealed in this text. Over all Cisneros directly connects with women and explores womanhood in her writing through the narrator, Clemencia. The rejection Clemencia experiences throughout this text causes a change in her that is understood and experienced by most. At the end of the story Clemencia seemed to bounce back from her bitterness and embraced the more mature side of herself showing that she had grown wiser from what she had

Esperanza tries to wear high heels like a woman, tries to have a boyfriend like an older woman, and she tries to get a job like an adult. Esperanza’s longing to grow up quickly causes her to confront the reality of being an adult. Although Esperanza desperately wants to be an adult, she is not prepared for the responsibilities that accompany adulthood; she is unable to successfully make the transition

“In the meantime they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in (Cisneros 13).” This quote is a significant part of the story because it shows how Esperanza truly feels about herself and her family. She thinks that because she is poor and lives and a bad neighborhood people move away from her family. Esperanza doesn’t think very much of her or her family at all. She thinks that it is because of their race that people do not want to be near them.

The reaction to this small house affects her to dream of living in a house of her own (Cisneros 4). Esperanza isn’t all that wealthy; this is evident when they can’t afford lunch meats so she makes a rice Maggard 3 sandwich (Cisneros 44). Overall Esperanza learns to cope with her living situation just talking to people and she also works really hard in school and at home and eventually moves away. These three characters have proved to all be very unique and different.