THOMS What Would Cisneros do....?

            In the book The house on mango street the author Sandra Cisneros expresses her feelings about the gender inequality in Chicago. The main character, esperanza, travels through the story experiencing these inequalities and dissimilarities. It is clear that she notices these dissimilarities, but what is she to do about it? Does she feel that these inequalities are need? Or rather, that the walls dividing genders should be torn down? From the examples in the book, we can see that she feels that these dissimilarities are supposed to be eradicated and torn down.

            Esperanza lives the life that the author gives to her because she is a character and that’s what they do. Because of the obvious fact, Cisneros can "live" the life in her character. Therefore, she can give the character situations that either support her or dismay her own beliefs. 

           Cisneros derives the facts about gender inequality from her own beliefs. Sandra believes that genders are unequal but should still be treated the same. As we can see, Sandra Cisneros believes that are girls are girls (and boys are boys) and should be acknowledged differently but treated the same. "Nenny says she won’t wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her." (88). Sandra Cisneros implies that girls should be girls, but still holding that independence. They should still have a chance to be a "women" but still feel that they are independent and do not let their male counter parts take all the power. Power can be easily occupied by one gender, as males predominately do this. Women are assertive when it comes down to it, but because of the social advantage men have, they "have more power."

           Cisneros knows that girls are held to a higher standard than boys. Because of this difference, she believes that women and men should have the same level of standard and not have these dissimilarities. As we can see here, Cisneros talks about how she thinks that the standard of society are wrong. “All the books and magazines, everything that told it wrong.” (100) Here, we can see that esperanza realizes that all the things that told her how to be, all the internalized sexism, was a lie. She knows that this is not the way it should be, but because of society, cannot do anything about it.

             Through seeing Cisneros's view on the type of sexism, i would agree with her that there should be something done about the inequalities and dissimilarities of genders.