Mango Street Identity

In “The House on Mango Street” gender socialization is a major theme incorporated throughout the novel. Accordingly, Esperanza expresses her own feminist views through her storytelling of her female friends and role models that are in her life. These women help Esperanza build her own identity through giving her awareness of what is expected of women and therefore helping her embrace women empowerment and the breaking of gender roles.

Sandra Cisneros’ novel, “The House on Mango Street,” is about the adventures and ways of a small side street. We get to see how the main character, Esperanza grows and matures throughout her time on Mango Street. Since the book is written in first person, Esperanza expresses her thoughts and feeling straight to the reader. In the novel, Mango street typically houses residents with poor backgrounds, and is used as a temporary home for most. Although many people who live on Mango street move out in a short period of time, Esperanza stays in the house she hates longer than anyone else. She constantly watches her friends leave, and has to make new friends every time someone moves in. After experiencing this many times, I believe that Esperanza no longer continues to see herself as a resident on Mango street, but a part of Mango street. This is her distinct point of view compared to the others 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

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’

In all aspects of life, women are pressured to be someone they are not. They are put in situations that force them to chose a path of life. In “The House on Mango Street”, Esperanza is forced to think about leaving Mango Street in the future, because she is surrounded by women who are pushing her to become an adult.

In the collection of vignettes, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops the theme that people should not be devalued because of their financial circumstances through metaphors of classism, the motif of shame, and the contrast between minor characters Alicia and Esperanza’s mother. Esperanza, the protagonist, is a Mexican-American adolescent living in the rural Chicago region. She occupies a house on Mango Street with her father, mother, two brothers, Carlos and Kiki, and little sister, Nenny. Mango Street is filled with low-income families, like Esperanza’s, trying to adapt to their difficult circumstances. Esperanza realizes it is difficult, but she dreams of leaving her house and Mango Street altogether.

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

It is true that in many of the stories in The House on Mango Street there is a man holding back a woman from being free. Esperanza is often feels sympathy for these women. These stories are used to show us how trapped behind her culture and expectations Esperanza feels. The helplessness Esperanza sees mirrors her own feelings of weakness. While I do believe many of the stories Cisneros gives us depict a rather stereotypical view of the Mexican American household, I also believe it is a tool used to reflect her main character’s struggle to break

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.

This relates to the theme of the struggle for self definition, because at first Esperanza was under the impression she could change a man, but as she’s exposed to these horrible encounters she comes to the conclusion that boys and girls live in different worlds.

Esperanza is able to look at her great grandmother and realize what she does not want to become, but also she realizes what she does want: to become a strong, independent woman.

The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, is a novel about a young girl growing up in the Latino area of Chicago. It is highly admired and is taught in a plethora of grade schools and universities. The House on Mango Street expresses the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is full of harsh realities and jarring beauty. Esperanza doesn’t want to belong- not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza’s story is of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing what she will become for herself. While Esperanza and the other women have many differences, as in the way she is fortunate to avoid the pitfalls of her environment and others are not, there are just as many

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.

In The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a little girl from a Latino heritage is given birth to. Not literally, but in the sense of characterization. Esperanza is a fictional character made up by Cisneros to bring about sensitive, alert, and rich literature. She is the protagonist in the novel and is used to depict a female’s life growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Cisneros creates the illusion that Esperanza is a real human being to communicate the struggles of growing up as a Latina immigrant in a modern world, by giving her a name, elaborating her thoughts and feelings, and illustrating her growth as a person through major events.

Throughout one’s life, all have gone at least one time through a paradigm shift, a radical change of idea or a distinct belief from the usual way of thinking. Indeed, the majority of people tend to change when there is no other option caused by circumstantial reasons. This happened to Esperanza, the narrator of the story The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The development of Esperanza starts when she begins to observe the reality of her neighborhood, poverty, the submission of women, and what it means to be ' Chicana '. She belongs to a minority group being a Mexican-American and on top of that she is a woman within a patriarchal culture. It is also necessary to take into account her childhood experience within the social, sexual, and cultural. During the process of development and growth there is a change in: her perception about sexuality, the search for self-definition, her dream to be a writer, and the desire to have her own space.