For centuries, many ethnic groups were deprived of their power and persecuted by others. However, it must be understood that none is more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three of these women, Rafaela, Mamacita and Sally, provide excellent examples. Everyone is trying to escape their terrible environment. Most of them fail, but at first Sally seems to succeed in escaping her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insurmountable obstacles that limit freedom in their wives' lives. Rafaela provides a good example of how husbands can confine their wives. Rafaela's husband is afraid she will run away and thinks his wife is too "beautiful" to go out. As a result, he locks Rafaela inside, and Rafaela's only freedom now is to look out the window and ask the children to buy her coconut and papaya juice. Unhappy with this situation, Rafaela wants to find a way to regain her freedom. “And there’s always someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver thread” (p. 80). This quote implies that Rafaela wants to escape from her husband. The juice, which she drinks every Tuesday, proves her desire to escape. Coconut and papaya juice are already sweet drinks, but the quote mentions that she wants "sweeter" ones. This means she wants to move out of Mango Street and live somewhere where she can have sweeter drinks. She wants to live in a more comfortable and free environment where there is someone who can sincerely take care of her. As in the case of Rafaela, men ...... middle of paper ...... She understands that her husband gives her very little freedom. Sally's husband forbids even looking out the window, which is the only freedom many women on Mango Street have. As the examples of Rafaela, Mamacita and Sally show, men living in the Mango Street neighborhood persecute their wives. Men force their wives to stay at home. They also restrict the rights of their wives by making them speak a new language and, in extreme cases, they beat their wives. Although many negative aspects of gender may have lessened in recent decades, society should still work to further mitigate these negative aspects around the world, and particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, as inequalities Gender extremes still exist today. Treating women inhumanely should be considered extremely immoral, since we are all human beings and born to be equal..