 As Esperanza matures during the year that makes up The House on Mango Street,  she experiences a series of awakenings, the most important being a sexual awakening.  At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is not quite ready to emerge from the asexuality of childhood.  She is completely ignorant about sex and says that boys and girls live in completely different worlds.

 She is so much a child that she cannot even speak to her brothers outside of the house.  When she becomes an adolescent, she begins to experiment with the power she, as a young woman, has over men.  Marin teaches her fundamental facts about boys,  the first major step in Esperanza’s awareness of her sexuality is when she and her friends explore the neighbourhood in high-heeled shoes.

 She relishes the power the shoes seem to give her  She plays with the idea that physical beauty could help her escape the squalor of her surroundings.  Esperanza quickly learns, however, that the patriarchal society in which she lives denies the power of female sexuality.  The bum who attempts to kiss Rachel is the first in a series of men who will use force to take what girls don’t want to give freely.

 Esperanza’s final and most important awakening is her realization of her writing ability  Which gives her the means to escape from Mango Street.  Esperanza is a writer, she is a keen observer, and we see her powers of observation mature.  She is present in all of the early stories she narrates, but by the middle of the novel she is able to narrate stories based wholly on observation of the people around her.  This change shows that she is becoming an artist, and also that she is becoming more detached from her neighbourhood,

 When Esperanza begins desiring boys, she seeks out a friend in Sally, whom boys find desirable. Sally seems to be beautiful and cruel, like the women Esperanza admires in movies.  She leans against the fence at school and doesn’t talk to anyone. Rumors about Sally’s promiscuity circulate, but Esperanza doesn’t believe them.  Instead, she thinks of Sally as a kindred spirit, someone who also spends her time dreaming of escaping the neighborhood.

 Sally, however, is not interested only in driving boys crazy and then laughing them away, as the women in the movies do.  Instead, she finds safety and comfort in sex, feelings she does not find at home with her abusive father.  Sally’s sexual exploits make Esperanza uncomfortable, since at this point Esperanza is interested in sex only abstractly.

 As the younger sister, Nenny is often Esperanza’s responsibility, and though her innocence is a major source of annoyance for Esperanza, it also signals Nenny’s independence.  In many ways, Nenny is a pesky little sister. Esperanza must introduce Nenny to her new friends and keep her away from bad influences, such as the Vargas kids. \  Nenny also has qualities that Esperanza covets, including two names (“Nenny” is short for “Magdalena”), pretty eyes, and shiny, straight hair.

 Nenny and Esperanza don’t seem very much alike, but their differences in age and sociability mask their fundamental similarities.  Nenny and Esperanza laugh at the same things, even those things others don’t understand are funny.  More important, Nenny and Esperanza are both dreamers. While Esperanza imagines a world outside the barri.