Esperanza In The Vignette: My Name By Sandra Cisneros

In the vignette “My Name” by Sandra Cisneros, one can clearly see that the main character, Esperanza, is an intelligent, independent, determined young woman. To begin, Esperanza spends much of the vignette “My Name” reflecting on the life of her grandmother, whose name she inherited, a seemingly odd choice of topic. However, in discussing her grandmother, Esperanza better defines her own personality. One aspect of Esperanza’s personality, her intelligence, can be seen in the passage in which she reflects upon her grandmother that “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” In this metaphor, Esperanza refers to inequality between men and women in society and the way that many women are …show more content…
Her intelligence shines through in this passage because not only does she acknowledge the unfair treatment of women in society, but she even goes further as to understand that her own grandmother was oppressed by her grandfather, and that she was not able to achieve her full potential. Also, by using the phrase “sitting their sadness”, Cisneros helps to establish a melancholy association with this idea of oppression. This mood helps us to understand that Esperanza is upset by the events of her grandmother’s life and that she is determined not to follow in her footsteps, despite the fact that she has her grandmother’s name. That she, unlike her grandmother, will fight for her independence, and will not allow others to decide her path in life for her. That she, unlike her grandmother, is not content to watch the splendours of the world from afar, while she herself sits cooped up behind the “window”. Esperanza wants her life to be defined by her own successes, not by the failure of others. This fear that her name and its history define her becomes apparent to the reader when she states “I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees.” In this metaphor, the name Esperanza is compared to sin and unholiness, the sins of her name being her grandmother’s