Gender Roles In The House On Mango Street

Throughout The House on Mango Street Esperanza learns to resist the gender norms that are deeply imbedded in her community. The majority of the other female characters in the novel have internalized the male viewpoint and they believe that it is their husbands or fathers responsibility to care for them and make any crucial decisions for them. However, despite the influence of other female characters that are “immasculated”, according to Judith Fetterley, Esperanza’s experiences lead her to become a “resisting reader” in Fettereley’s terminology because she does not want to become like the women that she observes, stuck under a man’s authority. She desires to leave Mango Street and have a “home of her own” so that she will never be forced

In today’s world there are countless social problems. People are often treated as an inferior or as if they are less important for many different reasons. In The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros addresses these problems. Throughout the story Cisneros does a thorough job explaining and showing how these issues affect the public. This novel is written through the eyes of a young girl, Esperanza, growing up in a poor neighborhood where the lifestyles of the lower class are revealed. Cisneros points out that, in today’s society, the expectation of women and their treatment, discrimination based on poverty, and discrimination because of a person’s ethnicity are the major

Steve Maraboli quoted “The empowered woman is powerful beyond measure and beautiful beyond description,” however in the novel The House on Mango Street, women do not believe it and men do not respect it. The women in this story are frequently being exploited by the men and often noticed for just their beauty. However, the women do nothing to stop the men from doing so. Especially the married women, they tend to just do whatever their husband commands without confrontation or sticking up for themselves. They continue to let it happen despite the fact they know it is not how they would choose to live. Sandra Cisneros displays that women are taken advantage of by the men, however, they restrict themselves for prevent it from happening.

Esperanza as a child takes the responsibility to fight for all the women who suffer from men discrimination, because in “Mango Street” mostly women are abandoned and the others dominated by their husband, Esperanza takes the responsibility to invite all the women to organize themselves in order to protect each other from men violence. Esperanza consider herself as the one who can liberate those women such as Minerva, a young woman who have already two children and abandoned by her husband, there is also Rafaela held indoors the house by her husband and she spends all her time in the windowsill to watch what is happen outside and many other women who undergo sufferings caused by their men, that is what characterized her commitment for the liberation of the women of her neighborhood. So as the girl, Esperanza carry the burden to deliver all women in “Mango Street” from all pains and she feels she is the right one who capable to let know her neighbors’

The theme of a patriarchal society where beauty is a weakness and having too much of it only means darkness is very prominent in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street. Esperanza, the protagonist of the numerous vignettes, highlights how this affects the young women on Mango Street.

Esperanza, a strong- willed girl who dreams big despite her surroundings and restrictions, is the main character in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Esperanza represents the females of her poor and impoverished neighborhood who wish to change and better themselves. She desires both sexuality and autonomy of marriage, hoping to break the typical life cycle of woman in her family and neighborhood. Throughout the novel, she goes through many different changes in search of identity and maturity, seeking self-reliance and interdependence, through insecure ideas such as owning her own house, instead of seeking comfort and in one’s self. Esperanza matures as she begins to see the difference. She evolves from an insecure girl to a

Society has built a role for women. And there’s no better example of this idea than The House on Mango Street, in which Esperanza describes specific moments of her life which lead her to believe in women independence and feminism. She has different ideas and thoughts on the definition of women and what they should be. Esperanza doesn’t fit into the constructed definition Mango Street has of how women should be.

In life, we are often deeply influenced by the people who surround us. Consider the age-old adage “Birds of a Feather Flock Together”; this familiar saying reminds us that, in life, we gravitate toward people who appeal to us, and those people can have a great impact on who we are and the choices we make. In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, Esperanza meets many women who play a role in her life. Some of the women impact her in negative ways, but others help her to see that she can make more of her life than what her Chicago neighborhood offers. Of all the women in Esperanza’s life, Esperanza is most influenced by her mother and Alicia because they teach her to rely on herself in order to escape Mango Street.

Yes, Esperanza does appear to have both determination to leave her circumstances and an ability to break gender roles not present in other women. However, both facts can be attributed to her young age. Children usually seem to be more optimistic than adults; if Esperanza truly believes she could leave she may seem more determined. Age may have sucked the optimism and determination out of the other women on Mango Street as they came to understand their position in life would not change. Furthermore, girls tend to experience more and more pressure to obey gender roles as they approach sexual maturation. As Esperanza seems younger, her community may not push gender roles on her as fiercely as they push gender roles on women. This could be the reason that Esperanza can break gender roles while others cannot. Moreover, considering all the evidence that members of the community find it nearly impossible to permanently escape Mango Street, the evidence that Esperanza might leave is insignificant. To focus on Esperanza’s potential to leave notwithstanding her age, background, and the other character’s inability to escape, is to ignore essential parts of the

In the novel, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza has many positive influences on her life. Hardships do not define one’s life either in a mental or physical capacity. Throughout the novel, Esperanza’s grandmother, Marin, and Rosa Vargas enable her to overcome the hardships of becoming a woman.

The House on Mango Street is the tale about a young girl named Esperanza who is maturing throughout the text. In it Esperanza documents the events and people who make up Mango Street. It is through this community that Esperanza’s ideas and concepts of the relationships between men and women are shaped. She provides detailed accounts about the oppression of women at not only the hands of men who make up Mango Street but also how the community contributes to this oppression. As the young girls and women of Mango Street try to navigate the world they must deal with a patriarchal society that seeks to keep them confined. Sandra Cisneros’s vignettes demonstrate through Esperanza’s experience of growing up on Mango Street and witnessing the oppression

Manhood is sometime characterized in The House on Mango Street and Bloodline Sandra Cisneros literally. In this book the author conveys that manhood is nothing but adult age, it is something we reach somehow by the time and Sandra Cisneros manages to show it by the notion of "hips” that constitutes for Esperanza, Nenny, Rachel and Lucy something that symbolize manhood. They all try to give the utility of hips that they see from the adult female and according to Rachel hips is for propping babies that is a role of a woman. Furthermore for Sandra Cisneros, this notion of hips enables her to show one of the sign of virility which is something for adults. The author of The house on Mango Street, without any complexity, she analyzes literally manhood

Everyone has challenges in their life, their feelings behind their actions make them who they are. In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros there are many conflicts which explore the characters, to get to know them closer. The internal conflict is used to discover the identity of the main character, Esperanza.

The 1960’s era consisted of many developmental events, one of them being the evolution of gender equality. During the 1960’s women started fighting for equality and they actually gained some things such as the right to vote. Although the gender inequality gap grew smaller it was and is still very substantial. In the novel The House on Mango Street, these gender disparities are very easy to see through Sally, one of the various characters in the book.

The novel The House on Mango Street is filled to the brim with women who are unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives. Readers meet wives who are destined to spend their lives in the kitchen, mothers who waste away cleaning up after their kids, and girls who are stuck in a hole that they can’t escape. Through Sandra Cisneros’s use of literary devices such as motifs, symbolism, and imagery, we are able to learn that the women end up in these situations by conforming to femininity, and we find the theme of women are often held back by their own gender roles.