The House On Mango Street Gender Analysis

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.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, over a half million people are homeless in the United States. Although Sandra Cisneros, the author of The House on Mango Street, had a house, she felt like she was still homeless and contributed this feeling to the main character. In The House on Mango Street, a Latina girl named Esperanza talks about experiences and people that appear in her life while living in a worn down house in Chicago on Mango Street. Cisneros uses a variety of literary devices to highlight Esperanza’s perspective on herself and others around her. The literary devices being focused on are character comparisons, allusions, figurative language, and sensory detail.

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.

The House on Mango Street portrays a young girl named Esperanza growing up and becoming a woman. During her childhood Sandra Cisneros stated that she felt out of place. She didn’t feel like she fits in as a Latina women in America, and went through some tough times; therefore she wrote about Esperanza to express how Cisneros grew up as a woman and matured through out her childhood. This novel expresses a coming of age story, and the goal of Esperanza to gain understanding of both herself and her community/culture. Throughout the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Esperanza attempts to become an adult and tries to overcome the obstacles that allow her to be comfortable in her own skin.

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.

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.

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.

In The House On Mango Street, the metaphor of the “[red] balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros, 9) helps reveal the theme of how societal roles limit women. The anchoring of the red balloon demonstrates how gender roles oppress women. Cisneros uses red to indicate sexuality as in the “Red Clowns” and “red lips” (88) of the femme fatale in the chapter “Beautiful & Cruel”. Additionally, the red balloon represents women because the anchor keeps the balloon from being free and in a similar way, gender roles keep women from being free. Women on Mango Street enter a stifling cycle of taking up the typical roles of women. Society expects women to “wait... for a husband” (88) and to “spend [their] lives… behind a rolling pin.” (31-32). In Sally’s case, she is dependent on men and she marries “young and [unready,] but married just the same.” (101). Sally marries “to escape” (101), entering the cycle that women on Mango Street go through, and ends up a prisoner of her own home. Sally is the red balloon tied to an anchor because she can’t escape and she doesn’t have any freedom. By submitting to the gender roles of her

People from all over the world change, change in either mentality, thoughts, maturity, physically, mentally, appearance, feelings and etc. What causes the transformation of that person is important, but how much did it affect them is also crucial. In Sandra Cisneros novel, entitled The House on Mango Street,the story depicts a Latina girl who transform throughout her time being on Mango Street. The girl named Esperanza is to faced obstacles of female oppression that she witnesses in the life of women on her street who they depends on men to bring them out of the street. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros uses characterization to express the

In The House On Mango Street, the metaphor of the “[red] balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros, 9) helps reveal the theme of how societal expectations limit women. Cisneros uses red as the balloon’s color to indicate sexuality as in the “Red Clowns” chapter and the “red lips” (88) of the femme fatale in the chapter “Beautiful & Cruel”. She also uses the anchor to symbolize the double standard and the objectification of women. The anchoring of the red balloon represents the oppression of women’s sexuality because the anchor keeps the balloon from being free. The red balloon floats, but it can not fly. In a similar way, the double standard and objectification keeps women from being free. Women on Mango Street are able to express their sexuality to a certain degree, like a floating balloon, but they face abuse and judgement. The judgement and objectification keeps women from expressing themselves, acting like an anchor. Cisneros also expresses this idea through the act of wearing heels. When the girls wear the heels, they feel more feminine and excited, claiming that they’ll “never go

"The House on Mango Street," by Sandra Cisneros is a book about the obstacles Latin women encounter while residing on Mango Street. Men dominate their community and women are treated as if they as inferior human beings to the men. A woman's merit is placed on her outward appearance, as well as her loyalty to the men in her life. Throughout "The House on Mango Street," Sandra Cisneros utilizes the first-person frame of reference, portraying her struggle to augment her sexuality in a feminine fashion along with the firmly embedded longing for independence, amongst a community influenced by societal male gender roles. Cisneros scrutinizes the women who surround her within a parlous and male-dominated community, in which each women's circumstances are predestined by social as well as economic restrictions. For the large majority of the women living on Mango Street, these limitations are too formidable to conquer. Nevertheless, Esperanza exemplifies the potential to look past her lot in life, while the women surrounding her become victims of their society, continuing its vicious pattern.

Sandra Cisneros’, “The House on Mango Street” focuses on the narration of Esperanza, a young adolescent growing up in Chicago. Throughout the novel, Esperanza strives to develop her own sense of identity, while searching for the means out of her poverty-stricken neighborhood. With the help of her friends and family, Esperanza discovers how the world works, and what she needs to do in order to successfully better herself. The novel features several concepts of gender and sexuality studies including that of class structures, red-lining, gender, sexuality, intersectionality, and beauty. Those listed are simply a few more prominent features, as each character Esperanza introduces displays many more concepts within each scene. The concept of gender is portrayed widely throughout the novel and creates a foundation for the expectations the girls are about to face as they grow. Intersectionality interplays within the daily lives of each girl, and is seen within every page of the novel. Finally, beauty standards play an important role in the transition from adolescent to young adult each girl faces. Together, gender, intersectionality, and beauty standards, make up the novel, as it portrays the importance of each of these three core concepts of gender, women and sexuality studies.