Women In The House On Mango Street

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Chrysten Jordan L. Hicks English 1 Pre-AP September 28, 2011 When girls are young, they start planning and dreaming about their wedding day, and can’t wait until they grow up to finally be married and experience the dream they’ve always wanted. They see it as a fairytale, and love the fact that they will get to be a real princess on their wedding day and have the best day that they could think of. However, a fairytale is not what marriage is at all. On the contrary, about 83 percent of women are in one way or another, abused by their husbands. For the truth is women are sometimes considered to be weak, and are easily overpowered and imprisoned by men, and are not able to live out their dreams, and are only left to wonder. In this…show more content…
For example, Rafaela, Sally and Esperanza are confined by Mango Street. Mango Street is described as having small, run down houses and families having to share bedrooms. In Esperanza’s family “everybody must share a bedroom- Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny” (Cisneros 4). From then on Esperanza emphasizes that “[she has] to have a house. A real one. One that [she] could point to” after living in houses where “the water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn’t fix them because the house was too old” (Cisneros 4). Esperanza’s Mama and Papa tell stories of moving to a white house with many bedrooms and bathrooms, but the house on Mango Street is far from the stories that they tell. Even though Papa says the house on Mango Street is temporary, Esperanza is skeptical, and says she “knows how those things go” (Cisneros 5). The house on Mango Street is an example of the limitations placed on Esperanza because her Papa cannot afford to fulfill the dreams he has for his family. Sally also lives on Mango Street with her father and mother. Her father is very abusive to her because “he thinks that [she] will run away like his sisters who made the family ashamed” (Cisneros 92). As he does these things to her, it drives her to want to escape from her father and the restrictions he places upon her. She sees getting married as the only option get away from her father. “She…show more content…
Young girls dream about a wedding and having the perfect day that they have always wanted and find it to be a fairytale. Cisneros portrays her own life when she explains how she didn’t want to be married, and wanted to be independent, to escape the idea that her father placed upon her by saying that she herself should be married and become a housewife. She does escape, in the book as Esperanza, and in her own life by using writing as an outlet to leave. She exemplifies what a person living the life of Esperanza, could do to change the preset boundaries that a girl growing up in her situation could have and to have the ability to achiever their goals and

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