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Gender Roles In The House On Mango Street

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Gender Roles In The House On Mango Street
Sexuality roles have always influenced the world just as Esperanza experiences sexuality and gender roles in The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros. Sandra Cisneros’s novella filled with vignettes following a young girl, Esperanza’s, experience with moving to a new house which is to her dislike. In the novella, The House on Mango street, Cisneros is trying to develop through Esperanza that in order to become an adult, or coming of age, Esperanza and young adults must understand sexuality and gender roles in real life experiences, just as seen in chapters “Family of Little Feet”, “Red Clowns” and “The Monkey Garden”.
Through the vignette, “The Family of Little Feet”, Esperanza starts to see how her gender fits into the world by her looks. With heels the girls find in this chapter, Esperanza starts to understand how she looks. Esperanza is figuring out where her gender roles are in life by wearing the heels and how great she looks. “We have legs. Skinny and spotted with satin …show more content…
Esperanza’s friend Sally is told “You can’t get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes. It was simple. I don’t know why, but something inside me wanted to throw a stick” (Cisneros 96). Esperanza is starting to see sexual interaction between genders. Esperanza is not comfortable with Sally’s sexuality role and portrays it as Sally needs help. Sally has to kiss the boys to get her keys, so Esperanza tries to help. “Sally needed to be saved. I took three big sticks and a brick and figured this was enough. But when I got there Sally said go home” (Cisneros 97). Esperanza is realizing she does not like certain sexualities and interactions between genders is portrayed in Sally as her needing Esperanza’s help. Esperanza is experiencing sexuality in her friends showing her more experiences in her tale of coming of
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