Esperanza - Sexage

Though there are many cultures that give women equal voice, there are also many cultures, Latino being one, that are completely Patriarchal. In the Hispanic culture, women are a possession, they are a commodity to be controlled, traded, objectified. In Esperanza’s world, she is without voice. She tells us in the beginning of the piece, “The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours.” There is a definite separation between the sexes and outside the privacy of their own home, they do not cross the divide. You can see this sexage when Esperanza describes the circumstances of her birth. She is born in the year of the horse. The horse is a sign of strength, but for a female that is considered unlucky and prophecies of her future when she talks about her grandmother who was born in the year of the horse as well. Her grandmother was a woman with spirit, but that spirit was repressed by her grandfather when she was forced to marry leaving her sad and longing for a future she will never have. Though Esperanza does not want this same fate for herself, it seems hopeless to think she will escape this fate. The women in her narrative are proud of their beauty hoping it will bring them the life they crave; they long for change from the poverty they live in, but in the end they are objects to be used, abused and, at times, thrown away. As she gets older, more mature, more woman-like, she describes her desire for her own power, but that power is taken. As she is attacked, her only defenses are her pleas and they go unheeded; she can only cry for herself. She is the slave made to bend to the will of the master and the master is any man that feels it necessary to control her. “I love you, I love you, Spanish girl.”