Beauty In The House On Mango Street

Beauty is a very powerful and prominent thing. It’s what makes you get out of bed in the mornings and makes the world go round. Despite all that, there are some negatives of it as well. “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros gives a window back in time to a point where a little girl named Esperanza grows up on the streets of Chicago. Through the numerous rapes, abusive relationships, and the absence of respect for women, Cisneros portrays a theme that beauty is a double edged sword through the characters Esperanza and Sally. Beauty is a double-edged sword for Esperanza because she’s optimistic, lacks self-confidence, and innocent. To begin with, Esperanza is a very optimistic person due to her goal of not ending up like other women

She represented the theme of beauty is a double edged sword by being “fabulous”, beaten, and abused. To start off, Sally is “fabulous” through her pulchritude. This is how Esperanza describes her, “The boys at school think she’s beautiful…when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl”(Cisneros 81)Sally’s beauty makes her happy and content. She’s pretty, elegant, and graceful, which causes everybody to rave her looks. This is a major plus point for beauty. Another much darker thing that represents Sally is how she gets beaten. In the following excerpt, Esperanza describes how Sally’s father beats her. “He hit her with his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal” (Cisneros 92). The thing about this quote is Sally’s beauty can be a plus and a negative. On the plus side, she’s “fabulous”, as I described earlier. On the negative side, boys are more willing to rape her. To prevent this from happening, Sally’s father forbids her from talking to boys. At this point, it becomes extremely ironic. Her father tries to protect her from abuse by other boys, only to beat and abuse her himself. The father’s love turns out not to be so loving after all. In this case, her beauty is a ticket to get violated either at home or outside. Last but not least, Sally gets abused by boys because of her beauty. In “The Monkey Garden”, a group of boys steal her keys. This next excerpt is the most shocking,