Shoes Symbol in The House on Mango Street Essay Example

Shoes are generally seen as a way to show off our personality and express ourselves without saying words. The ‘’House on Mango Street’’ has Esperanza trying on high-heeled shoes and the social stigma of wearing them. The book uses shoes as a symbol for identity and emotions through the Esperanza’s social interactions, conflict between independence and sexuality, and emotional development.

The shoes shows a theme of identity through Esperanza’s social interactions. On page 41, a man says to the girls walking by ‘’if I give you a dollar will you kiss me?’’.  The girls run back to the house and takes off the shoes, saying ‘’we are tired of being beautiful’’ .This interaction shows them that they now understand the risk of increasing their sexuality in public. On page 47, her mother forgets to buy new shoes for a Baptism party and Esperanza says ‘’Everybody laughing except me, because I’m wearing the new dress, pink and white with stripes, and new underclothes and new socks and the old saddle shoes I wear to school, brown and white’’. She shows in this scene that the appearance of her shoes is important to her, and she is worried of being ridiculed at the party. These pieces of evidence demonstrates that social interactions involving shoes all had identity as an underlying theme. 

The shoes show a theme of identity through Esperanza’s emotional development. On page 108 Esperanza imagines her with a house all of her own and says ‘’A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed’’. This quote suggests that she does have or will a measure of control of her own sexuality, and even if it’s only in her imagination. On page 40, she says ‘’Lucy, Rachel, me tee tottering like so. Down to the corner where the men can’t take their eyes off us. We must be Christmas’’. Esperanza shows in this quote that she understands her new sexual attractiveness she gets when she puts on the heels and her identity in public has completely changed. Esperanza finding herself in the public eye by men and her imagining the shoe by her bed shows identity is an occurring theme.