Esperanza is describing her house a bad place to live and that a lot of things there don't work. A reader can feel how she is embarrassed to show where she lives and how her friends call it there. Esperanza wants to have a permanent place to live, her own house. The author is describing many things very good, so that you actually can feel them. For example, when Esperanza is comparing the smell of her mother's hair to a smell of fresh bread. Everybody knows this smell and every reader can now compare and feel what Esperanza is trying to describe. The smell of fresh baked bread associates with warm family relationships, with something warm and sweet. I think she was trying to describe how close she was with her Mom and how deeply she loved her. Because when a person is talking about the smell of the hair, it usually means there is a great connection between those people, so that it is not just appearance, or the color of the eyes, but something simple and special as the smell of the hair.
             Esperanza was also talking about the origin of her name. She inherited it from her great grandmother. Esperanza is saying that she doesn't want to be like her, because her great grandmother was sitting her sadness on her elbow most of her life after marriage. But Esperanza also mentioned that before marriage, her great grandmother was different, that she was free and wild, like a "wild horse of a woman". I think that Esperanza was trying to say that after that marriage, her grandmother was changed, that she was different since then. I think that her husband was treating her the way that changed that woman forever. I also think about this, that the man was thinking about Mexican woman as weak. And that he had the power to change them, and that is what he did.
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