The House of Mango Street, The Mother, and How Do I Love Thee

Dictionaries define love as “a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.” (“Love” 1) Love is an important component in life because this feeling can give people a support network, a feeling of worth, as well as many other positive things. Love can be a great thing but it can also be harmful. Meaning it can cause more negative impacts for the person than positive impacts but these types of relationships with people are still important learning aspects in life. Many works of literature incorporate different forms of love. The works The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cosneros, The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks, and How do I love thee? Let me Count the Ways by Elizabeth Barrett Browning are great examples of love in literature and each take to a different twist of love.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros demonstrates ideas of love. The love in this story is portrayed as more the need to have support and the feeling of worth, importance and worth rather than the materialistic objects in life. Since the family in the work do not have an excess amount of money, they cannot afford some of the nonessential things that they may want. “They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t have to move each year.” (Cisneros 99) This quote shows that the family may not have all the big house they want but they do still have a roof over their head. Although, they may not afford some materialistic things that they would long to have they have each other, they have the memories. This love is not demonstrated as a harmful love or even a romantic love, the feeling of love is that seen between families. Love between families does...

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... love of every kind, just like the works demonstrated: family, harmful and romantic. These works give reader’s a way to relate, or become familiar with different types of love. It gives a chance to become familiar with things they may not know. They were all well written and varied so differently that they are a great group to see the difference in types of love.

Works Cited

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” 1850. Voices among Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 208. Print.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. "The Mother." 1945. Voices among Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 205-206. Print.

Cisneros, Sandra. "The House on Mango Street." 1983. Voices among Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 99-100. Print.

“Love.” Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.