One character, Marin, is a perfect representative of this concept throughout the book. "She's going to get a real job downtown because that's where the best jobs are, sinse you always get to look beautiful and wear nice clothes and can meet someone in the subway who might marry you and take you to live in a big house far away." (p.26) But if getting married means an escape than why are so many women unhappy in their marriages? .
"My Grandmother, she was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse- which is supposed to be bad luck if you are born a female- but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong."(p.10).
Esparanza can identify with her grandmother in many different ways. She admires her spirit, and thinks of her as "A wild horse woman, so wild she wouldn't marry." (p.11) but her grandfather threw a sack over her head and forced her into marriage. "And the story goes, she never forgave him. She stared out the window her whole life. The way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be.(p.11) This story disturbs Esparanza because it shows how suffocating marriage can be to a woman like her grandmother. Marriage turned her into something she was not. Marriage caged in her wild horse spirit and so she sat by the window forever. Esparanza can see that many of the women on Mango Street, like her grandmother, have been held down by the men in their lives. Rafaela's husband locks her indoors when he is gone at work because she is "too beautiful to look at" and because he is afraid she will run away. Rafaela also sits by the window, because she, like all the rest, is a victim of a traditional household where the women are subordinate. Esparanza is noticing this trend and the different roles men and women have.