House on Mango Street

Esperanza is torn between deciding whether she wants to escape Mango

Street. She is embarrassed by the superficial appearance of her identity,

but appreciates her roots. Her house is a wreck and the neighborhood,

probably not much better off. However, she has loving family and friends.

Although marriage has caused the suffering of many of the women in her

neighborhood, she realizes that she needs men to fulfill the new desires

she attains as she hits adolescence.

Through the novel, Esperanza matures both physically and mentally. The

first thing that struck me about this novel was that the chapters were

very short. I realized that the narrator is young and has a short

attention span, judging from her fragmented observations. However,

Esperanza begins to mature and to develop a desire for men. While she

senses that many women are caged by men, they cannot be truly free

without them.

Most of the women Esperanza knows on Mango Street are either trapped in

their marriages or tied down by their children. For example,

Esperanza's grandmother. Esperanza does not want to "inherit her place

by the window." She neither likes what she has already inherited from

her grandmother - her name. Esperanza plays with words when she first

expresses her dissatisfaction with her name. She says that in Spanish,

her name means "too many letters. It means sadness [from the opposite

of esperar, which is desesperarse], it means waiting [from the verb

esperar]." She settles on changing her name to "Zeze the X". As

Esperanza observes, the Mexicans and the Chinese do not want their

women to be strong like horses. Esperanza hopes for a different future.

Although she likes to sleep near her mother's hair, the novel

eventually reveals that she wants to escape Mango Street. Clearly,

Esperanza's name suits her; she has hope.

In House on Mango Street, Cisneros constantly reminds the reader not to

judge a book by its cover. The idea of a dirty outside but appealing

inside is prevalent at many levels - the neighborhood, the household

and the individual. Cathy, Esperanza's first friend in the

neighborhood, tells Esperanza that her family is moving because "the

neighborhood is getting bad", because of the many immigrants like

Esperanza's family beginning to move in. Cathy says that Lucy and

Rachel, who Esperanza eventually befriends, "smell like a broom." Her

mentioning her distant relation to the queen of France makes her seem

very pretentious. In reality, she is not much better off economically

from the rest of the neighborhood. In her house, "The floors slant"

(21). "There are no closets" and the steps are "all lopsided and

jutting like crooked teeth" (22).

At the household level, Esperanza is ashamed by her house that has

"crumbling bricks", "only one washroom" and "paint peeling" (4).

However, in the second chapter, "Hairs", Esperanza writes about what

is inside the house on Mango Street: "[her mother] holding [her]",

making her "feel safe"

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