Gender Roles In The House On Mango Street
Esperanza, from The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, has a twofold revelation as she conquers her fears of ending up in her community’s cycle of poverty and conforming to gender roles, then decides to help the women who cannot leave their unfortunate situations. Once Esperanza moves into her house on Mango Street with her family, she begins observing the various women who reside there. Though they are all different in their own ways, they share the same aspect: they live in poverty with a male figure, either a father or husband, who treats them poorly and suppresses their potential. Even the young girls are subject to playing the part of the woman’s role. One girl, Alicia, has “inherited her mama’s rolling pin and sleepiness…waking
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She would be so much better off if she kept walking past her abusive household and to a place where “nobody could make [her] sad and nobody would think [she’s] strange because [she] likes to dream and dream”(83). Next, Marin, Esperanza’s neighbor, stands “under the streetlight…waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life”(27) instead of going out into the world and making changes herself. The way the women of Mango Street live dissatisfies Esperanza. They have either accepted the way their lives played out, knowing that they cannot escape, or simply wait around for a miracle to take them out of their situations. Her own family is no exception. Her mother “could’ve been somebody” with her “velvety opera voice that speaks two languages” but instead, became a housewife after her “shame [kept her] down because [she] didn’t have nice clothes” (91). Her great grandmother, and namesake, was once a “wild horse of a woman” before her husband threw a sack over her head and “carried her off…as if she were a fancy chandelier”(11). Esperanza has inherited her relative’s name, but does not want to inherit her place by the window, where her great grandmother “sat her sadness on an elbow”(11) and looked out, watching her life pass her
She would be so much better off if she kept walking past her abusive household and to a place where “nobody could make [her] sad and nobody would think [she’s] strange because [she] likes to dream and dream”(83). Next, Marin, Esperanza’s neighbor, stands “under the streetlight…waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life”(27) instead of going out into the world and making changes herself. The way the women of Mango Street live dissatisfies Esperanza. They have either accepted the way their lives played out, knowing that they cannot escape, or simply wait around for a miracle to take them out of their situations. Her own family is no exception. Her mother “could’ve been somebody” with her “velvety opera voice that speaks two languages” but instead, became a housewife after her “shame [kept her] down because [she] didn’t have nice clothes” (91). Her great grandmother, and namesake, was once a “wild horse of a woman” before her husband threw a sack over her head and “carried her off…as if she were a fancy chandelier”(11). Esperanza has inherited her relative’s name, but does not want to inherit her place by the window, where her great grandmother “sat her sadness on an elbow”(11) and looked out, watching her life pass her