House On Mango Street Sexuality

The House on Mango Street In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, a young girl named Esperanza Cordero, who lives in the poor segregated Latino section of Chicago, struggles to find her sexual identity as she tries to find a means of escape from the poverty-driven neighborhood of Mango Street. Through observing other female role models and through her own experience, Esperanza learns that harnessing her sexuality and relying on others is not nearly enough to allow her to leave Mango Street. Esperanza later finds out that if she plays with her sexuality and waits for her prince charming, the result might not end in such a happily ever after. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is not quite ready to emerge from the

Esperanza is still early in her stage of adolescent, and any body signal that portrays sexuality is new and intriguing to her. Hence, she sees Marin as a role model of beauty as Esperanza is trying to figure out her own body. Esperanza is also fascinated by Marin because Marin also shares the same dream as her, to one day leave Mango Street. To Marin, all that matters “is for the boys to see us and for us to see them” (27). Though Marin provides an idea of how to escape, deep down Esperanza knows that the path Marin has chosen is not the path for her. Just like the song that Esperanza describes Marin singing, Marin is a “falling star.” Marin will always be looking for someone else to save her, always “waiting for a car to stop…someone to change her life” (27). Marin is a dreamer, an idealist with no true goals and no control over her destiny. Though Esperanza is still young, she is still smart enough to see Marin’s idealistic ways. She still shares the same dream as Marin, but Esperanza’s mentality is different. Though she is still in the early stage of adolescent, Esperanza’s mentality is slowly turning into a realist. She is still in the process of discovering her identity, but her immense passion to leave Mango Street triumphs over her sexuality. That is where she differs from Marin. Although still uncertain about which path she will take, Esperanza knows that Marin’s path will only

As she encounters marriage, she quickly learns that marrying early and waiting for that one man to sweep her off her feet might not always end in happily ever after. In the chapter “Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays,” Rafaela is a married woman who is forced by her husband to stay in her house because her husband thinks she is so beautiful she might run off with another man. The only escape Rafaela has occurs when she gives Esperanza and her friends a dollar to go to the local store and buy coconut or sometimes papaya juice, which they then send up to her in a paper shopping bag she lets down with clothesline. According to Esperanza, Rafaela is a girl “who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys”(80). Esperanza can see that Rafaela yearns for freedom, for that feeling of independence where she can have her own keys to leave and enter her house whenever she pleases, for that feeling of being free again, and to dance. Unfortunately, Esperanza also knows that Rafaela is completely helpless in her ordeal, for Rafaela simply does not know a way out. As Rafaela “leans out