present in the vignette "Born Bad," in which Esperanza scolds herself for mimicking her dying aunt. Aunt Lupe is thought to "represent the passivity that women are so revered for in Mexican culture, that passivity which makes women accepting of whatever it is their patriarchal society chooses for them." Aunt Lupe married, had kids and was a dutiful house wife. However, she suffered crippling illness that left her bedridden. Esperanza describes how her aunt went blind and her "bones gone limp as worms" She is thought to be representative of la Virgen de Guadalupe, as her proper name is Guadalupe. Aunt Lupe also encourages Esperanza to pursue writing, as she tells Esperanza that "writing would keep her free." Aunt Lupe eventually dies from her illness. Themes Gender Critics have noted that Esperanza's desire to break free from her neighborhood is not limited to a desire to escape poverty but also to escape strict gender roles she finds oppressive within her culture. Esperanza's discovery of her own feminist values, which contradict the domestic roles prescribed for Chicana women, are a crucial part of her character development throughout the novel. In keeping with this idea, Cisneros dedicates the novel "a las mujeres," or, "to the women." Esperanza struggles against the traditional gender roles within her own culture and the limitations that her culture imposes upon women. Scholar Jean Wyatt writes, quoting Gloria Anzaldúa, that "Mexican social myths of gender crystallize with special force in three icons: 'Guadalupe, the virgin mother who has not abandoned us, la Chingada (Malinche), the raped mother whom we have abandoned, and La Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children.' According to the evidence of Chicana feminist writers, these 'three Our Mothers haunt the sexual and maternal identities of contemporary Mexican and Chicana women.'" Every female character within the novel is trapped by an abusive partner, teenage motherhood, or poverty, except Esperanza. Esperanza finds a way out of patriarchal oppression. The lesson Cisneros wishes to express is that there is always a way out for women who are trapped in one way or another. Critic María Elena de Valdés argues that gender plays a large part in the suppression of women; it forces them to diminish themselves to the service of others, particularly in domestic life. Through her writing, de Valdés says, Esperanza creates herself as a subject of her own story and distances herself from these