House On Mango Street Gender Roles Essay

In the novel ¨House on Mango Street¨, by Sandra Cisneros, many conflicts regarding gender roles emerge throughout the novel. In Esperanza’s time, young women have certain expectations about marriage. This creates the theme that gender roles in the 1960s affected the way young women lived their lives; they either conformed or rebelled with the expectations.
In the 1960s girls were not thought as strong or independent, especially if they were a person of color like most of Esperanza´s community. Esperanza and her great-grandmother were both born in the chinese year of the horse. Females born in the chinese year of the horse were said to have bad luck. Esperanza said, ¨I think this is a chinese lie because chinese, like mexicans, don't like their women strong¨ (pg.10). Esperanza is aware that in her society men have control and power over their wives. So, when a woman is strong and independent, people don't like it. Women were still considered inferior to men during Esperanza´s time. …show more content…
“Since you always get to look beautiful and get to wear nice clothes and can meet someone in the subway who might marry you and take you to live in a big house far away¨, (pg.26), the boy crazy Marin was telling the girls that she wants to look nice so a boy will be impressed with what he sees and then marry her. Girls were almost treated like pretty objects for boys to look at. ¨And since Marins skirts are shorter and since her eyes are pretty, and since Marin is already older than us in many ways, the boys that do pass by say stupid things like I am in love with those two green apple eyes…¨, (p9.27), because of the fact that Marin is pretty and wears more risque clothes than esperanza and her friends boys are attracted to her and feel the need to shout out inappropriate comments. Boys were liking girls based on their looks and how they dressed rather than their personalities and