Women's Freedom: The House on Mango Street

This was an interpretive essay for English class about The House on Mango Street. It is about how the relationship between freedom and education and writing create freedom for the women in the book.

Kelsey Handschuh

Hon. ELA 8            

Ms. Leamanczyk

April 5, 2013

 

Women’s Freedom

            In the book The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, Cisneros sets a relationship between freedom and education/writing that she or personal friends had once gone through.  In the book, she creates a strong character, Esperanza.  Esperanza suffers through those same tough experiences.  Women on Mango Street, where most of the book’s characters live, are trapped by the men in their life.  They are to stay at home, take care of the children, and a lot aren’t even allowed to go outside. That is where the symbol for freedom comes in:  the window.  The window is mentioned more than several times and every time, those trapped women are looking out it or are not allowed to look out the window.  Now, where education and writing come in to play are many various places.

 Esperanza’s friend Minerva, who is one of the trapped at home women, writes poems about her dreams and also how they won’t come true because of her confined position in life.  Esperanza explains, “She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She is always sad like a house on fire�"always something wrong” (84).  Esperanza is trying to show how Minerva’s poems help her escape and complain about her unlucky predicament.  Just by reading the poems Esperanza can tell that Minerva has a hard life with limited freedom.  Writing may be Minerva’s only freedom.

“I could’ve been somebody, you know?  Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard…Shame is a bad thing, you know. It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn’t have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains…I was a smart cookie then” (94). Esperanza’s mother in this quote was trying to show Esperanza the importance of school and an education. She was showing that she was smart then, but now what the book said that she does was sew, cook, and occasionally sing.  Her mom, through practically an ironic tone, was trying to urge Esperanza on and show herself to the world that she had what the rest of community didn’t have:  the courage to succeed.  Esperanza’s neighborhood is very rough. Esperanza is smart to realize this though and she is not going to become like it. She will be an independent woman and get an education.

“One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.” (pg. 110)  Cisneros didn’t just say that Esperanza is leaving Mango Street, she included that Esperanza is taking books and paper. In this certain situation, books represent education and paper represents writing.  Writing and education is a freedom.  The author of this book wanted to show us that and she did definitely delivered.  Through her character voice, Esperanza, Cisneros asked the questions she knew nobody would listen to unless they were in a published book.  Not only is education and writing a freedom in this book, but in real life too. If we didn’t have education and writing, what would our freedom be? It would be practically nothing, still controlled by all the men.  No women’s rights, no say in what we would do, and no living, just sitting in a house staring out a window, just like the women on Mango Street.