Esperanza's The House On Mango Street

The House on Mango Street recounts the story of a young Latina girl named Esperanza Cordero. The book is written in a series of vignettes, each one telling the story of an event or a person throughout a year in Esperanza’s life. Throughout the novel, Esperanza becomes a representation of a woman that rejects what was once considered a “True Woman,” while Sally embodies it. Esperanza’s descriptions of her outer-self remain negative, and she rejects the idea of staying in one place. She values her freedom, and longs for the day that she finally leaves her home on Mango Street. But Esperanza’s descriptions of Sally are different. Sally is beautiful to Esperanza, but she becomes stuck, her freedoms taken from her in every way. By analyzing Esperanza’s

and Sally’s representations of beauty, space/mobility, and ultimately “True Womanhood,” it becomes possible to find the differences in these two women throughout their year on Mango Street.
Esperanza observes beauty frequently throughout her year on Mango Street. She reflects on the beauty of her home (or lack thereof), the beauty of her name, and most commonly, her own outer beauty. The concept of beauty comes up so often, that by the second vignette, Esperanza is already criticizing her own appearance, saying, …[M]y hair is lazy. It never obeys barrettes or bands” (Cisneros 6). For Esperanza, beauty is something that others have, and she often strives for. And this idea of striving for beauty isn’t isolated. In a real life context, humans (especially those who identify as woman) experience a drive to look their best, often taking it to extreme measures. “In Shanghai, a fashionable operation is to break the thigh and extend the leg by 10 centimeters. In Singapore, the latest craze is for the Western Nose. In Eastern Europe, thin has become a requisite for the young wishing to enter global culture” (Orbach 246). And this list goes on and on. But Esperanza doesn’t wish to take it to any extremes. Instead, she likes to wear fancy shoes with her friends that attract the attention of the men in her neighborhood (Cisneros 41). Instead, her and her friends talk about hips, and why you need them to be a woman (Cisneros 51). Instead, she likes to take notes from girls in her neighborhood, such as Alicia, or Sally. Beauty impacts Esperanza’s life in a way that it impacts many young girls. To be beautiful is the ultimate goal, to be beautiful is to be the ultimate woman. And for Esperanza, one person that personifies this goal, is Sally.
Sally is a character that isn’t introduced until later in the book. But once she is, she makes a large impact on Esperanza’s life, and how she sees her own beauty. The first thing observed about Sally is her appearance. “Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke. The boys at school think she’s beautiful because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers…” (Cisneros 81). Sally’s own expression inspires Esperanza in many ways. “I like your black coat and those shoes you wear, where did you get them?” (Cisneros 82). But it’s soon realized that Sally’s beauty is dangerous, Sally’s beauty is what traps her in her own home, both before and after she gets married. And this limit in mobility, this limit to space, is something that Esperanza desperately tries to avoid.
Throughout the novel, escaping Mango Street and getting a space of her own, is Esperanza’s goal.

In the beginning of the novel, she talks about her family’s current home on Mango Street, and why it isn’t the home she thought they would have. She says in the first vignette, “The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn’t a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it’s not the house we’d though we’d get” (Cisneros 3). And later on, Esperanza talks about her neighborhood as a whole, “All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight” (Cisneros 28). By the end of the novel, Mango Street is a space that provides safety as well as restrictions. And many of the restrictions in the book are parallel to restrictions that many real women face. Throughout time, women have had to deal with restrictions on transportation such as bikes, horses, driving, and clothes (Domosh 116). But the restrictions most prevalent in the book, are the ones that confine women to their own homes. Most often, it is the husband or father that puts these restrictions in place. And these are the restrictions that Esperanza wants to escape more than anything. She speaks of the restrictions her great-grandmother had, “She looked out the window her whole life, the way that so many women sit with sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window” (Cisneros 11). And later on, Esperanza explains how these are the same restrictions placed on

Sally.
Everything that Esperanza observes about Sally has something to do with her restrictions. Sally’s father is both physically and sexually abusive (Cisneros 81 & 93). To escape her father, Sally gets married to a marshmallow salesman. But this marriage has trapped her once again. Only this time in a different house by a different man (Cisneros 101). While Esperanza strived for Sally’s beauty, she does not strive for her space. Both Sally’s father and husband limit her space and mobility to the home. And this restriction of space is one that is common to the idea of “True Womanhood,” and whether Sally likes it or not, the trajectory of her life is leading her to live by this concept.
The idea of “True Womanhood” is the idea that a woman has four cardinal virtues. Piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. The core of a woman’s virtue was piety. If a woman had piety, they had all of the most sought after virtues. It was thought that religion belonged to women and that “woman’s purifying passionless love bringing an erring man back to Christ” (Welter 153). The next virtue was purity, because, “its absence as unnatural and unfeminine.” A woman’s wedding night was the most important event of her life (aside from bearing children, which was a “True Woman’s” most sought after duty). And that throughout a woman’s life, men would try often to take away her purity, but it was her job to resist these temptations to maintain her purity for her husband. Therefore, meaning that the men could sin, but a woman could not (Welter 154 – 158). The third most sought after virtue, was submissiveness. While religion was woman’s, the man was still superior, because that is how god wanted it to be (Welter 159). And to be submissive, a wife should only worry about domestic affairs, and they shouldn’t offer any advice unless asked (Welter 161). Lastly, domesticity. Domesticity was thought to be the sphere of women. From the home, she could control her entire life, and keep her husband and sons close to god and out of trouble (Welter 163). And in this domestic sphere, the “True Woman” was expected to do morally uplifting work. This work included housework, needlework, crafts, and tending to flowers. And a truly domestic woman should avoid books, because they ultimately threatened all of her most important virtues. Throughout The House on Mango Street, Sally had these virtues thrust upon her, while Esperanza rejected them.
Without her will or consent, Sally’s father and husband thrusted the idea of “True Womanhood” upon her. Her father has restricted her throughout her life under the pretense of religion, and was the one that controlled her purity until he sexually assaulted her. And her husband forced submissiveness and domesticity upon her, because of his domestic violence and control. Even Sally’s beauty played a part, because it was her beauty that allowed her to escape her father only to land in the arms of a violent husband. The life that Sally has been forced to live, has been one that has forced her into a life of “True Womanhood.” But Esperanza’s life is different. She has freedoms that granted her the ability to reject the concept of “True Womanhood” and instead leads a life that she can control.
The concept of “True Womanhood affects Esperanza’s life much differently than if affects Sally. Esperanza’s family is religious, but it doesn’t control her life the same way that it controls Sally’s. And only strangers police Esperanza’s purity, but this is only fleeting. As for submissiveness, Esperanza says, “…[B]ut I think this is a Chinese lie (in reference to being born in the year of the horse and being unlucky) because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong” (Cisneros 10). In this quote alone, Esperanza rejects the idea that a woman should be submissive. Lastly, is Esperanza’s rejection of domesticity. She is eventually able to leave Mango Street and therefore leave behind the concept of domesticity.
Throughout the novel, Sally and Esperanza live lives that are close in proximity, yet vastly different. Esperanza’s own self-described lack of beauty is in contrast to Esperanza’s description of Sally’s beauty. And Esperanza’s freedom of space and mobility, is so different than Sally’s confinement and restriction of space and mobility. And lastly, the over-arching concept of “True Womanhood.” Esperanza rejects this concept whole-heartedly, while Sally’s situation forced it upon her. By analyzing each concept in these characters’ lives, the discrepancies become apparent. And ultimately, these discrepancies are what trap Sally and allow Esperanza to finally be freed of Mango Street’s grasp.