Depression In The House On Mango Street

As first lady Michelle Obama said, “Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we're scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don't have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own 'to do' list”. Women are especially vulnerable to mental health issues such as depression, and even moreso if they have certain socioeconomic factors such as low income and racial background.In Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, young women like Sally and Esperanza are at a greater risk for developing depression because they’re female adolescents living in poverty; in addition, Esperanza is of racial minority. Esperanza’s self esteem is …show more content…
Laura Berk, a retired professor of psychology at Illinois State University, says, “In industrialized nations, depression increases sharply from ages 12 to 16. Teenage girls are twice as likely as boys to report persistent depressed mood…” (Berk 617). We see symptoms of a depressed mood in Sally, an older girl whom Esperanza befriends towards the end of the novel. Sally certainly has her share of negative events due to an abusive father: “He never hits me hard…then at school she’d say she fell. That’s where all the blue places come from. That’s why her skin is always scarred” (Cisneros 92). This abuse has caused a notable decrease in Sally’s self-esteem. She is described as, ““You don’t laugh… You look at your feet and walk fast to the house you can’t come out from”(Cisneros 82). It’s reasonable to conclude that Sally’s self-esteem is low because, as the above quotation describes, she never smiles and walks quickly to her home. She’s comparable to a caged animal who has to obey her father, who’s her ‘master’. Part of this is because she’s afraid of him: ““She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission”(Cisneros