Brotherly envy

"I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for. Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that way either. She wants things al on her own, to pick and choose. Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty" (Cisneros, 88).

Esperanza, the protagonist in The House on Mango Street, expresses envy over her sister’s beauty and attitude in this passage. Esperanza is described as “skinny” and homely looking through out the novel, and she feels her mother prefers her younger sister. Esperanza believes “it’s easy to talk that way when you’re pretty”. She thinks that her younger sister will be able to achieve more in life because she is more beautiful. Future accomplishments are perceived by beauty rather than skill. One other example of  the envy between siblings is found in a simple written by Shel Silverstein, “Wastebasket Brother”:

Someone put their baby brother
Under this basket– –
The question is exactly why,
But I’m not going to ask it.
But someone, I ain’t sayin’ who,
Has got a guilty face,
Ashamed for lettin’ such a lovely brother
Go to waste.

It's clear to the reader that this poem’s speaker has tortured their younger brother by placing him under a wastebasket. Ironically, the speaker refers to his brother as “lovely”, suggesting that he is likely jealous of the way his parents admire their younger child. Although both the speaker and his brother are innocent children, this relationship may be a contributing factor in leading these characters  away from the innocence of childhood.

Each of these authors uses the frustrations caused by younger siblings to connect to the reader’s own childhood experiences. Although Esperanza experiences a lifestyle very different from the “typical” American child, Cisneros illustrates that there are some experiences that are experienced universally in childhood. Older siblings often feel outshined by their younger brothers and sisters. It is not an experience unique to one culture, language, or country. The House on Mango Street also shows that the transition from adolescence to experience is marked with other experiences that are globally essential to growing up. Esperanza experiences for the first time death, envy, learning, temptation, feeling alone, frustration, heartache, being misunderstood, and setting goals like any other adolescent. Although each individual transitions from child to adult through unique and personal circumstances, authors describe circumstances which resonate with the reader’s own memories.