Machismo: "House on Mango Street".

Esperanza Spalding

Physical abuse in genogram

Emotional abuse in genogram

Machismo is the belief that some men have about men being superior than women. This was very common between the 60's and 70's in Mexico, and for Mexicans living in certain parts of the United States. In the novel called "House of Mango Street" a girl named Esperanza experiences the hardships of machismo and the abuse that comes with it. "House of Mango Street" is a novel that was written by Sandra Cisneros a Mexican writer. She in this novel has implied various themes one of the major ones is machismo. It talks about a girl named Esperanza and how as she is growing up is limited to do things and suffers because of machismo. Esperanza, the protagonist, is a girl that is poor but not so poor. She and her family have moved from apartment to apartment. Until she moved into a house, the house on Mango Street. There is were she started to have machismo affect her way of life. Machismo is the belief of some men that they are superior to women. This causes the men to over-react and abuse women in a variety of ways causing the abused women to get hurt, sometimes physically, other times mentally and others emotionally, their feelings get shattered and their minds corrupted.

One type of abuse done to women because of machismo is physical abuse. Physical abuse can be done by hitting the other person or even rape or sexual abuse in this case done to a woman. To begin with an example, there is a girl in the book named Sally. Her father is overprotective so when he sees her with boys he beats her up. That is because he thinks he can do that to her because he is his father and he has the right to...