How Is Esperanza Portrayed In The House On Mango Street

Imprisoned Because of Beauty

Esperanza is an outgoing and courageous young girl who develops in many ways throughout the book, The House on Mango Street. She experiences a variety of life changing moments that have shifted her view on not only herself, but her community as well. Throughout the book, Esperanza comes in contact with an assortment of different females, all of which have different experiences in life. Those experiences have turned them into unique individuals. These women with different pasts demonstrate what it was like to be a girl in Esperanza’s town. How did people treat them? How were they viewed? Why were they viewed this way? Through reactions and encounters, this book gives a clear representation of what it means to

Esperanza, as shown in multiple ways, does not agree with the social hierarchy between men and women in her town. Men would beat their wives and daughters, abuse innocent girls walking down the street, and keep boundaries on women as though they were objects. Women were constantly being oppressed by these roles and Esperanza experienced this unfortunate feeling at a very young age. Sally, another female character, took Esperanza to a carnival. Later in the evening, Sally told Esperanza to wait by the red clowns so they could head home. Not much later, a group of boys approached Esperanza and started to harass her verbally and then physically. “Sally, you lied. It wasn’t what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn’t want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it’s supposed to be, all of the storybooks and movies, why did you lie to me?” (99) Esperanza’s experience with sexual harassment and unfortunately rape, is just one of the many examples of how women were looked at in this

However, it is not the only one. Along with being faced with sexual harassment from strangers, there is also the theme of longing for freedom. Rafaela, another female character, experiences this sense of unwanted protection. Rafaela, “who is still young, but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at.” (79) Rafaela is forced to stay indoors and never set a foot outside. She is not allowed to do this because her husband is afraid she will leave him. Because of this, she is always confined to a certain amount of space. She listens to the sounds coming from her outside window and longs for the freedom of one day setting foot on a concrete road. The interesting thing about this is how a home, once looked upon as a safe space, is now being turned into a prison. Sally is in the same boat as Rafaela. She is hidden away because, “her father says to be this beautiful is trouble.” (81) The only difference between the two of them is their age. When Sally goes to school, she dresses and behaves differently because she is not under the tyranny of her father. But, when she goes home, she is forced to behave the way he commands her