In “The Family of Little Feet,” a vignette in the novel “The House on Mango Street,” Sandra Cisneros uses shoes to symbolize Esperanza’s new found power of her sexuality through these new adult shoes.

While playing outside one afternoon, Esperanza, Lucy, and Rachel are each given a pair of hand-me-down high heels from a neighborhood mother. At first, they are jubilant about their new shoes, trading them with one another and complimenting each other on how well they look in the shoes. When they “laugh at Rachel’s one foot with a girl’s grey sock and a lady’s high heel” (Cisneros 40), Cisneros reveals the girl’s desires of being a woman, despite their current lack of adult-like maturity. Here, Cisneros uses a contrast between the girl’s sock and the lady’s high heel. The heel high is meant to symbolize womanhood, the expanding of a girl’s maturity into a grown woman’s maturity. They are used to represent Esperanza and her friend’s curiosity about womanhood, and their desires to become a woman. For the girls, the shoes symbolize the freedom they believe comes along with being a woman; such as being able to dress however you want, talking to whatever men you want, and being as seductive as they’d like. Consequently, the socks represent the true age of the girls and their innocence. Although they try to cover up their actual age with the “lady’s high heel,” they are ultimately still innocent children experimenting with their sexuality and the power that can result from it. The socks also represent the girls inability to escape childhood no matter how much the dream of being a woman. They can try all they want to cover up their true selves, but they cannot rush into becoming a woman until they are mentally and physically mature enough to cope with being all grown up.

However, what started out as a fun, childhood game of dress up quickly transformed into a epiphany for the young girls; they can be attractive grown women in these new shoes with the power to attract men of any age, ethnicity, and social class. They discover that they “have legs. Skinny and spotted with satin scars… but legs… good to look at, and long” (40). These shoes seem to make their childish, scarred legs transform into slim, long women’s legs, fun to look at themselves and for others, particularly men. This dress-up game becomes dangerous as they walk down the streets in the high heels, past a wide variety of men. Some men, like Mr. Benny, try to warn the girls of the potential dangers of wearing those shoes around this neighborhood, saying “them shoes are dangerous” (41). However, the girls are too excited about being a grown-up, they ignore his warnings and continue walking down the streets. Other men, like the bum man, try and take advantage of the vulnerable girls young age by persuading them to do things that are inappropriate. Although the girls physically look mature because of their shoes and legs, they aren’t mentally mature enough to truly understand the dangers of giving the man a kiss. When the bum man won’t go away, Esperanza, Lucy, and Rachel realize on a shallow level the real dangers of being a woman on Mango Street. They are able to put the shoes away and delay their coming of womanhood, and return to being innocent, scar-legged children.

Thus, in the novel, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, shoes symbolize the longing for Esperanza and the young girls on Mango Street to be attractive, independent women, but their inability to do so because of their young age and lack of maturity.