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How Is Esperanza Trapped In The House On Mango Street

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The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, centers on Esperanza struggling to define herself in a way that will differentiate others she observes on Mango Street. Esperanza’s observations of the women of Mango Street, as they are all trapped in some way or another, is what drives Esperanza to want to be independent. Throughout the book Esperanza struggles with the idea of self-identification and differentiating herself from those in her family and neighborhood. Esperanza's first defining moment is when she decides to rename herself. She claims the name ZeZe the X and wishes she could shed her name which belonged to her great-grandmother. She believes her name carries too much baggage due to her great-grandmother being forced to marry …show more content…
She begins to identify herself with Sally, another girl from her neighborhood, who is unlike the other women in ways that others tell Esperanza to look down upon. Esperanza sees her as strong and independent. Esperanza wants Sally to teach her to be like her. However Sally, too, is trapped. She is trapped by her father and their religion. Sally is two different people, Esperanza explains. When she goes home she straightens her skirt and wipes off her makeup but people tell stories about her and the “bad” things she does. Esperanza says, “all Sally wanted to love and to love and to love and to love” (83). Esperanza comes to the conclusion that she wants to be independent but cannot do that if she is tied down to what others think she should be or tied down to a boy, even as she begins to come into her own sexual identity. She decides in the chapter “Beautiful and Cruel” that she will be just that, because there is always a beautiful and cruel woman in the movies, with power that is her own and the men love her but cannot hurt her. Esperanza becomes sure of who she wants to be. This, however, changes when Esperanza is sexually assaulted at a carnival while waiting for Sally, who she had looked up to so much. Esperanza finds everything she once believed about Sally to be a lie. “They all lied. The books and magazines, everything that told it wrong….Sally, you lied, you lied” …show more content…
Before Esperanza wanted a house she could belong to, a house she could be proud to say she lived there. Now, having her own house represents complete independency, not only from her family and her culture’s gender roles, but also from Mango Street. Mango Street, as everyone tells Esperanza, is who she is. They say she will never leave, not really. “A circle, you understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street.”(104). This does not necessarily mean Esperanza will always live on Mango Street but that, although she never wanted to, she belongs to Mango Street and it is part of who she is, who she will become. The Three Sisters tell her that she will go very far but she must come back for the other women who can’t leave as easily as she can. This becomes another defining moment that puts Esperanza back on the track to working for her independence from men and Mango Street as a whole. Esperanza decides she will, in the future, have a house of her own, not a house for a family or a house belonging to a husband, but a quiet house for only her. She wants to forget the house on Mango Street, as if forgetting could “undo the year [she’d] lived

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