House on Mango Street

Beautiful & Cruel (p.88-89)

In this vignette Esperanza decides "not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain." I love this metaphor. She sees, at her young age, that women of her community and heritage are prisoners of their men. They are the most oppressed. Esperanza understands this and therefore doesn't want to follow her female neighbors' and relatives' path. She wants to get away from Mango Street, just like everyone else. But she knows not to take the route that most other girls or women would take. She doesn't want to be taken away by a man, like her friend Sally, and then "chained" to a house. Instead she wants to leave and have her own house, like almost any man can. That's why she "leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate." This is the way the men in her community do it. They simply leave - not just the table or the plate.


The Monkey Garden (p94-98)

This vignette bothered me a lot! It started out so beautifully - so innocent. But her silly. depressing, and complex friend Sally had to be too mature.
In this scene Esperanza first begins to loose her innocence. In this scene she feels that nauseous feeling. It's a feeling that's easy to relate to, but hard to describe. It feels panicky and hot and uncomfortable. It's like waking up after a nightmare. One feels it when there's something sickly wrong in the world, especially in regards to sexual issues.
This chapter is so frustrating, because she is doing the right thing but no one cares. Not even Sally, who Esperanza is trying to protect, cares.
I think that this is the scene when Esperanza really begins to see things differently. She begins to understand the strangeness of sexuality.
The last paragraph describes the way she feels after she cried. She "looked at [her]feet .... They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be [her] feet anymore. And the garden ... didn't seem [hers anymore] either." She grew out of her shoes, in a sense. Her body and her mind aren't quite on the same page yet. Things have changed all of a sudden. She's been forced to see the world from a different angle.
I remember looking down at my own legs when I was in sixth grade and feeling awkward. They seemed so far away and not even a part of me.
It's a strange feeling and the world's a strange place.