The House on Mango Street

I think that The House on Mango Street is mainly a coming of age novel. The novel traces Esperanzas years at the house and portrays how she evolves. Two major parts of her development are sexuality and identity. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is confused about her identity. She decides that shw "would like to baptize [herself] under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees." (p.13) Here, she is struggling to define herself and wants to change her name to one more like her, yet I think she is still confused about who is she and who she wants to be. Also at the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is very naive about sex. She claims that "the boys and girld love in seperate worlds." (p.9) She ignores any ideas or thoughts about sexuality until Marin teaches her about boys. When Esperanza and her friends go strutting around in high heels, Esperanza experiences for the first time the feeling of sexuality. After she begins to accept sexuallity, she is sexually abused by the man at her job. I think that after this her ideas of sexuality change and she becomes more fearful of it then anything else. Throughout the novel I think Esperanza's slef-identity is strenghtened. I think she begins to accept where she lives and who she is. I think the main thing that allows her to form her identity and be content with it, is her poetry.