Restricted Freedom of Women in Cisneros', The House on Mango Street

For centuries, a great deal of ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one should realize that none are more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three such women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide great examples. All try to escape from their dreadful environment. Most of them fail, but at first, Sally seems to succeed in escaping from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as equally bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insuperable 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 his wife is too ‘beautiful’ to go out. As a result, he locks Rafaela indoors, and Rafaela’s only freedom now is to look out the window and ask kids to buy her coconut and papaya juice. Unhappy with this situation, Rafaela wishes for a way to gain her freedom back. “And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string” (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 that she wants to move out from Mango Street and dwell in a place where she can have sweeter drinks. She wants to live in a more comfortable and free environment where there is someone that can sincerely care for her.

Like Rafaela’s case, the men ...

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...She figures out that her husband gives her very little freedom. Sally’s husband even prohibits looking out the window, which is the only freedom that many women on Mango Street have.

As Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally’s examples show, the men living in the Mango Street neighborhood persecute their women. The men force their women to stay home. They also restrict their women’s rights by making them speak a new language, and in the extreme case, they beat their women. Although many negative aspects of gender may have lessened over the past few decades, the society should still work toward lessening more of 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 as extremely immoral, since we’re all human beings and born to be equal.