In Sandra Cisneros' series of short stories, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza, the narrator, witnesses many different situations in which women are victims of the dominating machismo in the Hispanic society. Among the females in Esperanza's neighborhood, many are abandoned by the men in their lives; some are trapped in abusive relationships and are waiting for another male savior to come along to rescue them, whereas a few others try to rely on their own effort to change their lives. Sandra Cisneros uses these women to show how women face painful difficulties in life, and in a few instances, she also demonstrates women's ability and power to overcome the hardship.

Abandoned and mistreated women are frequently seen in The House on Mango Street. One example in Rosa Vargas, whose poor fate is depicted through her ill-mannered children, the wild Vargas kids. "They are bad those Vargases and...