The Window In Esperanza's The House On Mango Street

In “The House on Mango Street” the windows are directly correlated to five different women in the book. For some it shows their nativity or even their dreams. Most of those women are a direct correlation to Esperanza’s growth and development as a person and character. Still, they all have one thing in common. These women including Esperanza are all imprisoned in the novel by different aspects in their lives. The first window we see in novel is about Esperanza’s grandmother. In the novel she sits by the window just like, “the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow (11).” She later goes onto say that she doesn’t want to inherit her grandmother’s place by the window. Esperanza doesn’t want her life to be wasted away in misery. Her goal

Her barrier or imprisonment is language. Mamacita spends her days “by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that sounds like a seagull (77).” She only speaks Spanish and does not know English. Her husband brings her and her child from Mexico with the intention of giving them a better life. People in the neighborhood usually make fun of her because of her weight. They assume that she does not leave the house because of that. The reality according to Esperanza is that she does not leave the house because she misses Mexico and does not know English. Mamacita misses a home, yet is constantly arguing with her husband because she is home. She struggles with accepting her home and does not realize that her home is where she is. Even though she misses Mexico and does not know English, she can still leave her house. Yet her refusal to do so prevents her growth. She instead chooses to sit by her window and miss something that she can no longer have. Esperanza throughout the novel does the same. She misses a home, even though at that moment her home is Mango Street. She is constantly repeating throughout the novel that Mango Street is temporary and not her home. Esperanza does not realize that by her doing those things, just like Mamacita she is stopping her growth. If Esperanza would have kept with that constant cycle and not accepted her home and what she was

Even though there’s very little mention of windows, they still represent her ignorance to the situation. She says “but Louie’s cousin said he was gonna make us walk home if we didn’t stop playing with the windows (24).” This is kind of ironic seeing as they did end up walking home but it was because he ended getting arrested. Later it says that the waved at him goodbye through the cop car. Still Esperanza does not get what is going on at this point. She is still so naïve and innocent. Sometimes the reader forgets how young she actually is because of the things she is going through at such a young age. Her mind and her decisions are moving at a faster pace, but she is still so blind to the world.
We see this type of situation again in the “Earl of Tennessee” chapter. Everyone in the neighborhood thinks that he has a wife, when the reality is that is just prostitutes. They assume that his a very private person and that his “blinds are always closed during the day (70)” because of that. You can connect that to the neighborhood being blind to his actions also. None of them question it just because he is a man.
The windows are a representation of what Esperanza does not want to be. Her goal is to leave Mango Street and become something better. She does not want her life to be sitting by a window wishing for something better. She wants to be able to live her life without being tied down to something. She overcomes that,