This is because she is not his wife at all. It is a different prostitute every time. (70,71) If this doesn't through emphasis on sex then nothing in this novel does. Emphasis was put on beauty in "Beautiful and Cruel"(88). Specifically, in the opening statement, Cisneros addressed the issue directly. This vignette opens with "I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for." So, obviously, Cisneros means to drill the idea about beauty into our heads. This line was meant to explain why Esperanza was so drawn back from associating with boys. She knew that in her society, ugly girls were not something necessarily desired by the boys. Additionally, in "The Family of Little Feet"(39-42), the ideal of beauty was reinforced. This vignette used shoes as an avenue to approach this topic. The shoes made the girls look beautiful and like full grown women. As a matter of fact, Mr. Benny warned them against wearing them at the grocery store (41). He said the shoes were dangerous. This foreshadowed the event of Esperanza's rape. The shoes on their feet grabbed the attention of everyone, even a bum. These shoes were truly dangerous. The beauty attracted men to young girls. This counterfeit physical beauty was the cause of many problems, as were most of the other negative feminine ideals in this novel.
The subsequent feminine ideal was the "window" motif. Esperanza's grandmother was the first in the novel to experience this "lock-down"(10). She was a wild horse that didn't want to be tamed by marriage. Her husband had to come and steal her to marry her. She spent her entire life sitting at the window looking out. She looked out at the world that she could have been in if she had not been taken like she was from her life of freedom. The same spirit of a wild horse existed in Esperanza. She wanted to live free. She was determined to never sit next to the window as her grandmother had. She lived her life with her goal being to never become what her grandmother.