Esperanza explores different ways to explore Mango Street throughout the novel. After becoming sexually aware, Esperanza rejects her sexuality as a means of escape and decides to use her writing as a means of escape and a way of helping to free the women around her as well. However, it takes time for Esperanza to reach this conclusion. Esperanza’s views on sexuality change after she was sexually assaulted. Esperanza realizes she cannot be “beautiful and cruel” and that freedom means being free from sexual relationships with men in her community. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is still in a childlike, almost asexual state. Esperanza knows that she is a woman and that she is uncomfortable with the way that women are treated in the community but does not really have a fully formed explanation as to why or how to change how women are treated and viewed in her community. Her identity as a woman is still being formed but is wrapped up in rebellion against her community. Esperanza knows she is a strong woman and wants more for herself then a place in a window. She wants to be the wild horse of woman that her great-grandmother was and be “so wild” that she would not marry.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Category A Prompt 4: Gender Identity in The House on Mango Street
In the chapter “My Name,” Esperanza talks about where her name came from. She was named for her great-grandmother. Esperanza talks about what it is like being a woman in her community and how she does not want to be like her great-grandmother saying, “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window” (Cisneros 11). Esperanza writes how, “the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong” (Cisneros 10). Esperanza also details how her great-grandmother was once a “wild horse of a woman” and refused to marry, but Esperanza’s great-grandfather got her to marry when he, “threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s they way he did it” (Cisneros 10). Esperanza refuses to sit by the window like her great-grandmother and defies the oppressive gender roles in her community.
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Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteYou make an important claim in the second paragraph about Esperanza's sexual and gender identity. I agree that she begins in a childlike, innocent, possibly asexual state, one in which she can still opine about romantic possibilities. However, by the end of the novel, she has decided that she will be the one who laughs the men away. I think you are smart to point to the moment of her sexual assault as a potential turning point for this development. Rather than begin this response with a plot summary of the great-grandmother window scene before pivoting to your argument, it would work better to integrate your close reading throughout. Lead with the argumentative claim and then bring in summary from the scenes to support it. If you did this, it would give you room to share some of the language from that assault scene as well so we can analyze the power dynamics and the lessons Esperanza learns about gender and power in that moment.