The House On Mango Street: Seeking Independence

In the book The House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros presents a series of vignettes that involve a young girl, named Esperanza, growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza Cordero is searching for a release from the low expectations and restrictions that Latino society often imposes on its young women. Cisneros draws on her own background to supply the reader with accurate views of Latino society today. In particular, Cisneros provides the chapters “Boys and Girls” and “Beautiful and Cruel” to portray Esperanza’s stages of growth from a questioning and curious girl to an independent woman. Altogether, “Boys and Girls” is not like “Beautiful and Cruel” because Cisneros reveals two different maturity levels in Esperanza; one of a wavering confidence with the potential to declare her independence, and the other a personal awareness of her own actions and the decision to take action and wage her “own quiet war (Cisneros 89).

Author Sandra Cisneros was born in 1954 in the Latino section of Chicago (Encarta 1). Cisneros is an “American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and poet (Encarta 1).” Her works have brought the perspective of the Mexican American woman into the “mainstream of literary feminism (Encarta 1).” She earned her Bachelor’s Degree from Loyola University in 1976 and her Master’s Degree from the University of Iowa in 1978 (Encarta 1). The House on Mango Street is Cisneros’ first novel, and “is her most critically acclaimed (Encarta 1).” The novel is constructed with a “series of short interconnected chapters (Encarta 1).” Cisneros writes of the “hopes, desires, and disillusionments of a young writer growing up in a large city (Encarta 1).” After reading The House on Mango Street, the reader is left with a greater sense of the everyday oppressions the “roles created for women in Hispanic society (Encarta 1).” Cisneros decides to accept the oppression as part of culture, but also detach from this view by telling women, old and young alike, to find their own independence. Cisneros uses Esperanza as a vehicle to express the power of womanhood and determination to reach certain goals.

In “Boys and Girls,” Cisneros introduces a gender separation that dominates Esperanza’s experiences. Esperanza is dissatisfied that she and her younger sister Nenny are paired as playmates; Nenny is “too young to be my friend (Cisneros 8).”

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... first identifies her difficulty with her society, and then accepts and at the same time defies it. In “Boys and Girls” the reader sees a young girl that is investigating her possibilities in life. In “Beautiful and Cruel” the reader sees a woman who has become independent from the boundaries of her society. Esperanza is tied down by the “anchor,” and then casts it off with her refusal to wait for the “ball and chain.” Esperanza changes from a little girl who makes wishes about her future, to a woman who takes her future in her hands as she begins a “war” on the limitations that she face in her Latino society.

In conclusion, Esperanza makes the ultimate change of becoming independent. As Sandra Cisneros wrote The House on Mango Street, she too further realized her role as an influential woman of her heritage; this realization mirrors Esperanza’s journey to womanhood. Esperanza is “alienated from the rest of society in many ways (Hannon 1).” But she uses this alienation to become “strong and inspirational (Hannon 1).” Esperanza is a very strong woman in herself. Her goals are “to not forget her reason for being . . . so as to achieve a freedom that’s not separate from togetherness