The Sexist Prejudices Affecting Women in the House on Mango Street Essay Example

The Sexist Prejudices Affecting Women in The House on Mango Street In my essay I am going to write about the Mexican gender based prejudices and stereotypes which affect the women of Esperanza’s neighborhood in Sandra Cisneros’s novel The House on Mango Street. I would like to point out the lives of the main women characters and their dealing with the prejudices in everyday occasions. Futhermore, I want to talk about Esperanza and her attitude towards the surrounding situation and also mention the historical background of the problem. From my point of view, the fact that the women come from the Mexican community has essentially influenced their lives. It has actually predetermined them in a way that the women are not able to set free for the rest of their lives. During the novel the reader gets to know some of the Mexican prejudices in relation to women which all the female characters have to face. The sexist prejudice is clear from having read few lines of the novel where Esperanza, the narrator, explains the meaning of her name with the connection to the Chinese signs of the zodiac, “I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong” (Cisneros 10). This tells the reader one important fact. The Mexicans are proprietary towards their women and wives and they tries to take over the women’s lives. It is very difficult for the women coming from the Mexican community to live their own life themselves and to be independent of their social background. This observation is confirmed by Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez in her work on the relationships of women with men in the novels based on this phenomenon, “women characters do not initiate events in their own lives; instead they endure poverty and racism from the society at large and oppression under the men in their lives. They do not get to choose their spouses, and when they do pick a boyfriend, and get pregnant, they are considered bad girls. They do not have