Esperanza's Identity In The House On Mango Street

“You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there.” The main character Esperanza, in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros feels that she doesn’t belong in the community. Esperanza is struggling to find her identity and is acquiring different things to change her identity. Her identity develops throughout the novel because of the people that surround her, her name and the house she lives in. The people that surround her helps Esperanza develop her identity. She is looking at many different types women. One of the women she looked at was her great-grandmother. “[She] would’ve liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman so wild she wouldn’t marry.” (Cisneros,11). Many women get married at a young age, but Esperanza’s great-grandmother didn’t want her life to be controlled by a relationship. But, Esperanza great-grandmother was forced to get married because her “ great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off.” (Cisneros, 11). Her great-grandmother was forced to get married. Her great-grandmother couldn’t do anything important in her …show more content…
Her house is really old and rundown “it [is] small and red with tight steps in front and the windows are so small you’d think they were holding their breath.”(Cisneros, 4). Esperanza doesn’t like how her house looks like. Esperanza and her family always had a dream house. When her family moved into the house on Mango Street they hoped it would be exactly how they wanted it to be. Many people look at their house differently like a nun asked “where do you live. There. I said pointing up to the third floor. You live there.” (Cisneros,5) She feels embarrassed because of her house. Esperanza doesn’t like how her house looks like. She never felt like she belongs and Mango Street. She didn’t think that her house was her home. Since Esperanza doesn’t like her house so much she doesn’t want to ever come back and visit