For centuries, many ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one must realize 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 limited freedom. Three of these women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide excellent examples. Everyone tries to escape from their terrible environment. Most of them fail, but at first Sally seems to escape from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband who is just as bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insurmountable obstacles that limit the freedom in their women's lives. Rafaela provides a good example of how husbands can confine their wives. Rafaela's husband is afraid that she will run away and thinks that his wife is too "beautiful" to go out. As a result, she locks Rafaela in the house and Rafaela's only freedom now is to look out the window and ask the children to buy her coconut and papaya juice. Dissatisfied with this situation, Rafaela longs for a way to regain her freedom. “And there is always someone who offers sweeter drinks, someone who promises to keep them on a razor's edge” (p. 80). This quote implies that Rafaela wants to run away from her husband. The juice, which he drinks every Tuesday, demonstrates his desire to escape. Coconut juice and papaya juice are already sweet drinks, but the quote says she wants more "sweeter" ones. This means he wants to move away from Mango Street and live in a place where he can drink 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 Rafaela's case, men... middle of paper... She understands that her husband gives her very little freedom. Sally's husband even forbids looking out the window, which is the only freedom many women on Mango Street enjoy. As the examples of Rafaela, Mamacita and Sally show, men living in the Mango Street neighborhood stalk their women. Men force their women to stay at home. They also limit the rights of their women by forcing them to speak a new language and, in extreme cases, beat their women. While many negative aspects of gender may have decreased in recent decades, society should still work to further reduce these negative aspects around the world, and especially in the Middle East and North Africa, because extreme gender inequalities still exist today. Treating women inhumanely should be considered extremely immoral, as we are all human beings and born to be equal.