The philosophy of cosmic love story in this novel written by Laura Esquivel is articulated by unique cultural themes inspired by a love of Mexican foods and the spirit of sacrifice. The love story of Tita and Pedro is elucidated in a passionate manner which reflects the tragic situation when their love claims to be forbidden in the eyes of their other family members. This can be illustrated when Tita wants to present her opinion to Mama Elena when Pedro asks for her hand, but she is replied in the following words of Mama Elena, You dont have an opinion, and thats all I want to hear about it (Esquivel, 1995: 8).
The love story interweaves many issues in the curtains of multiple restrictions for women. However, the philosophy of love involves the Mexican social class into the realms of the institution of marriage, which in this story is nothing more than a form of indentured slavery for life. Therefore we can analyze how a Mexican woman fulfills her immoral love for her family till her last breath.
The character Tita is the central character that embeds her love in the form of mouth watering recipes while she knows how to transcend the requirements of existence and express oneself in love and creativity. When Pedro expresses his love for Tita and Tita also confesses her love, Esquivel mentions in the story how Tita feels it would be to desire her future husband, this way she considers and give priority to her moral values, Esquivel writes It wasnt decent to desire your sisters future husband, she had to try to put him out of her mind (Esquivel, 1995: 13). This indicates her inner positive strength of love and sacrifice is superior to anything else in the world. Titas philosophy is not limited to Pedro, in fact she loves what comes to her and even loves foremost what she considers significant to Pedro. For example she loves his nephew Roberto. Tita believes in the fact that sacrifice is the key to love and throughout her life span she sacrifices at various stages to meet Pedro.
Another interesting character is that of Titas elder sister Rosaura, who is wedded to Titas love Pedro. This is another example of Mexican love and sacrifice where Rosaura marries Pedro just for the sake of Tita, because Rosaura knows that only in this manner Tita would be able to meet Pedro. Esquivel throughout the novel has praised many signs of feminine love, but in a cultural context, like cooking, sewing, embroidery, and decoration which is embedded in Mexican womans blood in every walk of life (De Valdes, 1995). On the other hand, Esquivel has also portrayed the Mexican symbol of an independent woman which is no more than a social prison of marriage.
For Tita, love and sacrifice are interrelated. Titas love survives in sacrifices which she believes is the human exposure to contingency, Tita believes that it is the passion for her love that opens to her every door of possibility to meet Pedro. This way Tita suffers through actual misfortune which she thinks is the real source of her anxiety, she sees that her sense of fragility is in the consciousness of the uncertainty, which Pedros love has brought her with all the unpredictability. It is this element that escorts Tita for being conscious at every stage she loves Pedro, and unknown possibilities of meeting Pedro are in wake of her that makes her life vulnerable. But it is the dread of the possibility of fortune that in the end comes to her and she marries Pedro after she lost Mama Elena, Rosaura and Roberto. After many years, Tita and Pedro get the freedom to express their love, therefore on their first night when they experience their love, their souls unite forever. This depicts a passionate situation where lovemaking intensifies the excitement and passion of their romance, and since it is their first love that always kept them in love with each other, their erotic excitement of the moment and the new prospect of conquest, both lost their lives.
Tita and Pedros love Is the passion that though gets the opportunity to be free after many years but in an uncontrolled happening, that took their lives. This elucidates to us that love, is not a matter of chance or luck, but an emotion that we merely fall into and remain in that stance for the rest of our lives. Tita survived all these years to experience a passionate night that only lasted for few hours but give the lovers divine freedom to meet each other. This way we can perceive that the philosophy of love needs wait and sacrifice, to which the passion almost brings as much misery as it brings joy. It is the passion of love for the lovers that lead them to so many difficult situations throughout their lives and raised so many difficult consequences. Although they realized that they can never be happy without each other but for the sake of love for other family members, they kept on giving sacrifices, like the sacrifice Tita gave before she finally met Pedro. Likewise Pedro sacrificed his love to remain close to Tita and married Rosaura. Thus, what Esquivel wants the reader to understand is that love is all about sacrifice and happiness and passion is the ultimate destiny of love.
Works Cited
De Valdes Elena Maria, (1995) Verbal and Visual Representation of Women: Como Agua Para Chocolate / like Water for Chocolate, World Literature Today. Volume: 69. Issue: 1, p. 78.
Esquivel Laura, (1995) Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in monthly installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies.
In Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel designs the text into twelve chapters named after twelve months of the year, each describing twelve delicious Mexican recipes (Esquivel, 1993). The novel is about two main characters – Tita the subjugated and Elena the subjugator. Tita as the victim struggles to create an independent identity, free from the dominance of her tyrannical mother.
Tita is forced to subdue all her amorous feelings to uphold an unfair and old family tradition. Elena controls and represses Tita, her youngest daughter, by foiling her chances to marry Pedro, the man she loved. Instead, Elena gets Pedro married to Rosaura, her eldest daughter, and Tita’s sister (Esquivel, 1993). Elena’s vicious ascendancy finally results in Tita’s psychological and physical breakdown. The novel reverberates of three central themes – feminism, magical realism, and Hispanic culture. this essay discusses these three elements of the novel.
The presence of mythical, fantastic, and epic themes in the narration typifies magical realism. Esquivel uses the religious mythical themes of magical realism to present the suppression and the everyday life of the characters in the novel. Further, these fantastic mythical events are transposed to the domestic realm of the matriarchal household (Spanos, 1995). The symbolism used through magical realism in the novel creates a powerful narration. At the very beginning, the episode of Tita’s birth shows the strong presence of magical realism in the text.
The imagery of the ocean wave ushering in the infant on the wooden floor shows the narrative’s fantastic element: “Tita was literally washed into the world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor” (Esquivel, 1993, p. 10). In another instance, Tita cooks the rose petal sauce, while burning in desire for Pedro. When Gertrudis eats it, her whole body starts burning, and unable to resist the heat she takes a shower. The heat/fire metaphor symbolizes the sexual desire of Tita for Pedro, which is transferred to Gertrudis through the sauce: “her body was giving off so much heat that the wooden walls began to split and burst into flame” (Esquivel, 1993, p. 51).
The dramatic imagery of Gertrudis in the shower with pink sweat and powerful smell accentuates the magical element of the description (Zubiaurre, 2006). The most remarkable expression of magical realism was when Rosaura’s son was born and the infant had to be breastfed. However, due to Rosaura’s ill health, Tita was given the responsibility to look after the infant. When the crying infant started sucking on Tita’s breast, “a thin stream of milk spayed out” (Esquivel, 1993, p. 70). This imagery exposes the presence of the fantastic element strewn into the domesticity of the novel.
The narrator admits: “It wasn’t possible for an unmarried woman to have milk, short of a supernatural act, unheard of in these times” (Esquivel, 1993, p. 70). Symbolically, this drawing of milk from Tita’s breast implied that the infant was actually hers, a fruit of her love affair. The imagery returns when the boy dies and the “milk in her breast … dried up overnight” (Esquivel, 1993, p. 84).
The pain Tita felt for the loss of the child is reflected through the symbolic drying up of her breast milk. Finally, the emergence of Elena’s ghost and its continued domination over Tita symbolically showed the internalization of her mother’s tyrannical domination. Tita was no longer a subject of her mother’s commands. However, her continued subversion has molded her mind into submission, which rejected the idea of freedom. Therefore, even after her mother’s death, Tita continued feeling her domineering presence.
Like Water for Chocolate is a feminist novel. This is because it is a story narrated by a woman and is about women. Esquivel uses the matriarchal familial structure to show Tita’s subjugation. A feminist reading of the novel shows the tyranny of the patriarchal societal norms that controlled and dominated Tita through the figure of her controlling mother (Spanos, 1995). From the very beginning of the novel, the readers sympathize with Tita as the oppressed victim of an autocratic matriarch.
The very title of the novel represents a popular Mexican saying meaning the boiling point indicative of Tita’s resentment and anger at being confined within the domestic walls, especially the kitchen. Therefore, she transfers all her pent up anger and protests through her cooking. Cooking and the kitchen becomes the medium of expression for Tita’s crushed self. Her recipe book becomes an expression of her self and a way to preserve her identity. Therefore, the kitchen, which has often been conceived by feminist critics as a space of female domination and confinement, gains therapeutic and functional value (Zubiaurre, 2006).
Though feminist critics assume the kitchen as a representation of passive submission of women, in the case of Tita, this space assumes the symbolic expression of freedom (Valdés, 1995). Thus, when Pedro was to marry Rasaura, Tita silently channels her wrath into the wedding cake, which makes the guests feel “a great wave of longing” and “an acute attack of pain and frustration” that transformed into violent vomiting similar to volcanic eruption (Esquivel, 1993, pp. 39-40). Thus, Tita’s frustration to her mother’s atrocities finds voice in the kitchen and in her cooking, a space, and role traditionally conceived as one of female subjugation. Tita’s struggle for freedom and search for a separate identity through a self-discovered space within the tyrannical domestication of her mother makes this novel feminist in nature.
The story is set in a village in Mexico during the revolution. Mexican identity is the main theme of the characters (Finnegan, 1999). This background of the Mexican revolution is used by Esquivel to explore issues of gender and masculinity in the novel (Finnegan, 1999). Pedro, the handsome hero of the novel meekly avoids going out to fight for a cause. On the other hand, Gertrudis’s ferociousness is demonstrated when she becomes the leader of the rebel army. The stereotypes of gender are broken in the novel that represents the patriarchal Mexican society (Finnegan, 1999).
Further, the use of recipes, which are mostly of Hispanic origin, reverberates the cultural backdrop of the novel (Zubiaurre, 2006). The recipes are gastronomic representation of the rich Hispanic culture. In addition, the theme of matriarchal family and the societal norm of the youngest daughter to remain unmarried to care for the parents show a minute facet of the Hispanic societal construct (Fernández-Levin, 1996). The plot demonstrates the multiplicity of restrictions on the life of women belonging to the Mexican society and provides an insight into the societal norm of the region (Valdés, 1995). Intuitively, these tropes show the masculine domination of women in the Hispanic culture that is broken by Tita, silently, using a gender-defined stereotypical role of cooking and writing.
References
Esquivel, L. (1993). Like Water for Chocolate. London: Random House.
Fernández-Levin, R. (1996). Ritual And “Sacred Space” In Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water For Chocolate”. Confluencia, 12(1), 106-120.
Finnegan, N. (1999). At Boiling Point: “Like Water for Chocolate” and the Boundaries of Mexican Identity. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 18(3), 311-326.
Spanos, T. (1995). The Paradoxical Metaphors of the Kitchen in Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate”. Letras Femeninas, 21(1/2), 29-36.
Valdés, M. E. (1995). Verbal and Visual Representation of Women: Como agua para chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate. World Literature Today, 69(1), 78-82.
Zubiaurre, M. (2006). Culinary Eros in Contemporary Hispanic Female Fiction: FromKitchen Tales toTable Narratives. College Literature, 33(3), 29-51.
The review on the novel “Like Water For Chocolate” describes a unique mixture of reality and spiritual world unveiling family relations and life struggle. The author clearly states that Laura Esquivel possesses a unique opportunity to observe and record human’s behavior and actions, through the lens of her world perception, which reflected in her work. I agree with the review that this novel is a vivid example of Laura Esquivel’s unique style of writing and extraordinary talent that becomes apparent through the choice of settings and objects, irony and symbolism. From the very beginning, readers are faced with specific structure of the book divided into 12 Chapters named after the months of the year.
It is possible to say that this structure is a symbolic one aimed to attract readers’ attention to specific message of the book. Twelve months represent four seasons which correspond with life experience of the main character, Tita De La Garza. For instance, spring symbolizes love with Pedro, summer means adult life and maturity while autumn implies wisdom. 12 months and four seasons is a life cycle which every person runs through.
The January begins with a story about Tita: “when she was only two days old, Tita’s father dies because of a heart attack” (Esquivel, 1994). The novel ends with the death of Tita. Another peculiarity of this novel is that every chapter contains a receipt and, plot development is dependent on these recipes. In every chapter, one of the episodes depicts the preparation of the dishes. Probably, these extraordinary devices help the author to underline the important of food in our life and close relations between food and memories. For instance, the petals of a rose symbolize love, and when Gertrudis tastes the dish with the petals of a rose she falls in love with revolutionary soldier.
The author of the review skillfully perceives true reality of the novel and its structure. The author analyses the role and importance of magical realism and political allegory as the core of the novel. From the very beginning, Laura Esquivel examines emotional and sexual forces, physical and spiritual needs and creates outstanding characters. Tita De La Garza is the protagonist of the novel who fights for freedom and independence from her mother.
She falls in love with Pedro, but her mother does not approve this marriage because Tita is the youngest daughter and according to family traditions she cannot marry a man till her elder sister will find a spouse. To be closer to Tita, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura. In a time, Rosaura gives birth to a child, Roberto. Tita treats her nephew as a son and takes much care about him. Although, her mother thinks that these relations can ruin her sister’s marriage and sends Rosaura to San Antonio.
In a while, the family receives bad news that Roberto has died. This event is a watershed of the novel resulted in deep psychological trauma for Tita. In order to avoid undeniable consequences, Tita’s mother sends her to asylum where Tita meets Dr Brown who falls in love with her. The doctor takes care of Tita, and trying to “safe” he brings Tita to live in his house. When Tita is nearly well she receives news from the ranch about her mother’s injury and decides to come back in order to take care about her. When she arrives her mother is afraid of Tita and refuses to eat her cooking. In a time, her mother dies because of an overdose of a medicine she takes for fear of poisoning.
The review is based on close reading of the novel and detailed analysis of the min events and themes. Like “chow mein” where the balance between grains and vegetables are crucial, the balance between culture and traditions is important for this family.
Charles Michael ‘Chuck’ Palahniuk, the author of Invisible Monsters, is an American transgressional fiction novelist. His genre of literature focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who use unusual and/or illicit ways to break free of those confines. Labeled as a shock writer by critics, some of his works have become a pop culture phenomenon. Laura Esquivel, the author of Like Water for Chocolate, is a Mexican fiction novelist cum screenwriter. She uses magical realism to combine the ordinary and the supernatural. The theme of romantic love, particularly love thwarted, appears repeatedly throughout her novels, as does the setting in Mexico. She is regarded as an author who has made a noted contribution to Latin-American literature.
Main body
The aforementioned authors, and books, have created a benchmark for modern-day literature. They have individual takes on human society – present and past, with vivid descriptions of how things were and how they are. They put forward the complexities of 19th-century Mexican society referred to in Laura Esquivel’s novel, as opposed to the complexities of the 21st century materialistic society described in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel. With the added supernatural by Esquivel, and the bizarre by Palahniuk, both novels are something out of the ordinary and predicaments that the characters are in rather differently than one would expect.
Chuck Palahniuk, better known for the abnormality of the situations he writes about, and the dark humor with which he treats his otherwise abnormal characters stays true to his genre in Invisible Monsters. Shannon McFarland, whose jaw has been shot away and taken by a bird while she was driving down the highway, is essential, the oppressed protagonist. After her accident, she becomes, what she calls, a monster. She is, as the book is called, an invisible monster to people around her. Looked at, and shunned aside, paid attention to only because of her disfigurement. She has become a mere object. Rather, an animal is kept captive in a zoo. Stared at, pointed at. Due to the fact that her appearance is no longer normal, she is an outcast. Kids, on noticing her, tug at their mother’s skirt and point at her, telling ‘mommy’ to ‘look at that monster’. Shannon is shocked at how people judge someone else without even knowing the person. All she wants is for someone to really know her, and love her for who she is.
Whereas Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters centers on a physically disfigured young woman, the core of Laura Esquivel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate revolves around Tita De la Garza. The novel follows Tita throughout the course of her life and shows how she is tormented by her mother. Like Water for Chocolate, Esquivel’s first novel, released in 1989, is partly inspired by her own great-aunt, Tita, who was forbidden to wed. She never did anything apart from taking care of her own mother. Soon after the death of her mother, she passed away. The Tita in Esquivel’s novel is the youngest of three daughters. Her mother, Mama Elena, has forbidden her from marrying because, as a family tradition, the sole responsibility of the youngest daughter is to take care of her mother till the day she dies. Tita, under the ruling of her tyrannical mother, watches her love, Pedro, get married to her sister, Rosaura. Although Pedro promises Tita that his only reason for marrying her sister is so that he can be close to her, Tita and Pedro may never be together; that, especially because Mama Elena ensures that they are never ever close to each other.
Both Shannon and Tita share something in common — social constraints. If it is an age-old ‘stupid’ tradition that keeps Tita from marrying her true love, it is the fickle-mindedness of people that forces Shannon to wear a veil whenever she is in public. It isn’t odd that both characters look for solace elsewhere.
Esquivel’s novel shows the importance of the kitchen in her life. Esquivel believes that the kitchen is the most important part of the house and characterizes it as a source of knowledge and understanding that brings pleasure. From Tita’s birth, which took place on a table in the kitchen, to where she spends her time whenever she is in need of comfort, the kitchen, and food itself play a very integral part in her life. What she is unable to express in reality, be it sorrow or joy, she expresses through her cooking. This is where the magical element of the story comes in. Tita has the power to implant her feelings in the dishes she cooks. Hence, when asked for her recipe she mentions the key ingredient – “Make it with a lot of love”. To anyone that mind sounds like she simply does not want to give away her recipe, but that is not true. Tita cooks with a lot of heart. The emotions she experiences while cooking gets implanted in the food, and once eaten, into the individual devouring it. The only way she can communicate her true sentiments is through cooking. It is expected when Mama Elena accuses her of poisoning the food at Rosaura’s wedding, for on eating the cake, everyone apart from Tita started weeping, wailing about lost love. And then, in a matter of moments, nausea overtook them. Tita was the only one who did not join in the collective vomiting that was going on all over the patio. She was immune to her own spell. The spell she had cast by adding a few drops of tears to the cake mixture.
Tita De la Garza expresses herself through her cooking. Shut up from the inside by her mother, she does not have much of a choice. In Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters, Shannon is the sibling who is taken for granted by her parents who grieve the loss of their only son, Shannon’s brother, Shane. Truth is, Shane was a homosexual. When a can of hairspray blew up in his face, disfiguring him, he ran away from home. Home, where his parents disowned him and told him to ‘never return’. On hearing the news of his death from AIDS, his parents realize how wrong they had treated their son. Instead of supporting him, they had neglected him completely. What they were unable to do for him while he was alive, they do after his death. To compensate for their actions, they become supporters of people who are like Shane, unaccepted in society. They become obsessed with it. All they talk about, all they seem capable of thinking about, is Shane. They don’t seem to care that their daughter has come to visit them, they don’t seem to care about giving her proper presents for Christmas. Everything they do revolves around their long-lost son. Their depiction, although very extreme, is also very real, because they perfectly divide what is normal and what is insanity – an obsession in this case. The person suffering due to this is Shannon, who cannot tolerate the fact that all she gets to hear whenever she comes home is what new ‘support homosexuals organization’ her parents have become a member of, and what new signs they are willing to display on their front yard. Shannon loses her career as a model after her accident. Who’d want a girl with half a face anyway? She contemplates becoming a foot model, but her feet are too small. Her boyfriend dumps her. She is left nowhere; alone. All she wants is for someone to care, someone to ask her who she is, how her face is the way it is, what she used to do. She befriends a pre-operative transsexual, the reason being that she was the only one who cared enough to actually ask her whether an elephant sat on her face.
Tita expresses herself strongly through what she specializes in. Her cooking is sublime, ‘fit for the Gods’, as Pedro calls it. Since she cannot show her love for Pedro in person, she captivates him through her cooking. Her specially prepared dish, quail in rose petal sauce, which Mama Elena criticizes as ‘being to salty’, only so that she can distract Pedro from complimenting the preparation. Her dish, which Rosaura hardly even tastes before asking to be excused from the table. A show of jealousy, for Rosaura herself is a terrible cook and had overcooked the only meal she had ever prepared for the family. Her dish, which her other sister Gertrudis savors to the maximum. The meal is so delicious that Gertrudis cannot tolerate imagining herself in the arms of a lover. The meal is almost sensuous, exciting her senses as she starts emanating heat from her body as she showers, in turn setting the shower room ablaze. Tita uses Gertrudis as a medium to get to Pedro. Gertrudis experiences what Tita feels for Pedro. A deep, longing love. A want for closeness:
‘It was as if a strange alchemical process had dissolved her entire being into the rose petal sauce, in the tender flesh of the quail, in the wine, in every one of the meal’s aromas. That was the way she entered Pedro’s body, hot voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous. With that meal it seemed they had discovered a new system of communication, in which Tita was the transmitter, Pedro the receiver, and poor Gertrudis the medium, the conducting body through which the singular sexual message was passed.’
It sets Gertrudis free. She breaks free from her mother’s chains, escaping with her lover. Such is the effect of Tita’s cooking.
Shannon McFarland lacks a lower jaw. She simply cannot talk. All she says sounds like gibberish, unable to pronounce anything correctly. She writes things down when needed, but generally, she just keeps quiet. She deals with her problems rather differently. She doesn’t show it, simply because she cant. She thinks. She thinks and analyzes at her own will, with her own views, about everything she comes across. Whether she wants to pay attention to her part-transsexual friend, Brandy Alexander, or whether she is really listening to what her ex-boyfriend, Manus, is saying, or whether she is looking out the car window pretending to listen whilst actually thinking about the bushes and the billboard she just saw, is all put forward to us through her thoughts. All she has to do is nod her head in front of Brandy and Manus to tell them that she is listening. Nobody expects her to speak. This, in a way, is Shannon’s greatest power. She can do what she chooses whilst interacting with people. Not only are people unaware of what she really looked like when she had a full model-pretty face, nor do they know about her in complete detail. Her being handicapped lets her take people for granted. She owes no one explanation, the basic reason being that she can’t. She cannot talk. This, also, makes her invisible; invisible in a completely different sort of way.
Tita, however expressive she might be through her power over people through her cooking, is overshadowed by Shannon, who is more expressive, though not in reality, but in her mind. The fact that we have greater access to Shannon’s thoughts of how people are like consumer products than we have to Tita’s response to the news of her sister getting married to the man she loves is of great importance. How clearly Shannon states:
‘Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a book. Probably that goes for killing anyone in the world. We’re all such products.’
Tita, however, is not as expressive. The only bit of raw emotion, without the presence of any kind of medium, we get bursting out of her is when on hearing the news of her nephew’s death she is restricted from crying by her mother:
‘Tita felt a violent agitation take possession of her being: still fingering the sausage, she calmly met her mother’s gaze and then, instead of obeying her order, she started to tear apart all the sausages she could reach, screaming wildly.
“Here’s what I do with your orders!” she said,” I’m sick of them! I’m sick of obeying you!”‘
Thus reflecting the name of the novel, which is a phrase meaning ‘boiling mad’.
How Shannon expresses her emotions as if she were facing a camera, and the photographer was giving her directions to pose for every shot:
‘Him yelling. Give me lust, baby. Flash. Give me malice. Flash. Give me detached existential ennui. Flash. Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. Flash.’
As opposed to how Tita expresses her emotions, when after yelling at her mother about how fed up she was with her, after getting a bleeding nose because her mother had smashed her across the face with a wooden spoon: ‘She ran from the room, wiping the blood that dripped from her nose. She took her pet pigeon and a pail full of worms and climbed up to the dovecote.’
Tita’s reactions and emotions are more physical in nature. Shannon’s, more silent. She keeps things to herself. Tita broods, cries, Shannon abuses society. That is where their differences in character lie. It is the way they treat their situations by the end of their respective stories. Tita, achieving peace by sacrificing herself in order to be with her true love; and Shannon, who sacrifices her own identity to do something humane for someone she loves, something that no one did for her; both achieving joy through sacrifice.
Conclusion
Both Tita and Shannon are individuals restricted from doing as they please. One is not allowed to weep, the other cannot show her face in public. One is stretched to the limit of her tolerance by her mother, the other is frustrated to all ends with the way her parents treat her. They are both the lead characters in their respective stories. Their views are given full flow. If one does not agree with age-old family traditions, terming them as stupid; the other criticizes the sheer heartlessness of people, labeling them as mere products. One symbolizes the suffering of a woman bound by social customs; the other, suffering from a lack of attention or care from people around her. Both, prevalent in their respective times. It is not a question of how different they are as people, or how different they are because of the time periods they were living in. It is a question of how similar they are when it came to their suffering, and how unexpectedly they dealt with their respective problems. It is about how magical and how bizarre their individual stories were.
The philosophy of cosmic love story in this novel written by Laura Esquivel is articulated by unique cultural themes inspired by a love of Mexican foods and the spirit of sacrifice. The love story of Tita and Pedro is elucidated in a passionate manner which reflects the tragic situation when their love claims to be forbidden in the eyes of their other family members. This can be illustrated when Tita wants to present her opinion to Mama Elena when Pedro asks for her hand, but she is replied in the following words of Mama Elena, “You don’t have an opinion, and that’s all I want to hear about it” (Esquivel, 1995: 8).
The love story interweaves many issues in the curtains of multiple restrictions for women. However, the philosophy of love involves the Mexican social class into the realms of the institution of marriage, which in this story is nothing more than a form of indentured slavery for life. Therefore we can analyze how a Mexican woman fulfills her immoral love for her family till her last breath.
The character ‘Tita’ is the central character that embeds her love in the form of mouth watering recipes while she knows how to transcend the requirements of existence and express oneself in love and creativity. When Pedro expresses his love for Tita and Tita also confesses her love, Esquivel mentions in the story how Tita feels it would be to desire her future husband, this way she considers and give priority to her moral values, Esquivel writes “It wasn’t decent to desire your sister’s future husband, she had to try to put him out of her mind” (Esquivel, 1995: 13). This indicates her inner positive strength of love and sacrifice is superior to anything else in the world. Tita’s philosophy is not limited to Pedro, in fact she loves what comes to her and even loves foremost what she considers significant to Pedro. For example she loves his nephew Roberto. Tita believes in the fact that sacrifice is the key to love and throughout her life span she sacrifices at various stages to meet Pedro.
Another interesting character is that of Tita’s elder sister Rosaura, who is wedded to Tita’s love Pedro. This is another example of Mexican love and sacrifice where Rosaura marries Pedro just for the sake of Tita, because Rosaura knows that only in this manner Tita would be able to meet Pedro. Esquivel throughout the novel has praised many signs of feminine love, but in a cultural context, like cooking, sewing, embroidery, and decoration which is embedded in Mexican woman’s blood in every walk of life (De Valdes, 1995). On the other hand, Esquivel has also portrayed the Mexican symbol of an independent woman which is no more than a social prison of marriage.
For Tita, love and sacrifice are interrelated. Tita’s love survives in sacrifices which she believes is the human exposure to contingency, Tita believes that it is the passion for her love that opens to her every door of possibility to meet Pedro. This way Tita suffers through actual misfortune which she thinks is the real source of her anxiety, she sees that her sense of fragility is in the consciousness of the uncertainty, which Pedro’s love has brought her with all the unpredictability. It is this element that escorts Tita for being conscious at every stage she loves Pedro, and unknown possibilities of meeting Pedro are in wake of her that makes her life vulnerable. But it is the dread of the possibility of fortune that in the end comes to her and she marries Pedro after she lost Mama Elena, Rosaura and Roberto. After many years, Tita and Pedro get the freedom to express their love, therefore on their first night when they experience their love, their souls unite forever. This depicts a passionate situation where lovemaking intensifies the excitement and passion of their romance, and since it is their first love that always kept them in love with each other, their erotic excitement of the moment and the new prospect of conquest, both lost their lives.
Tita and Pedro’s love Is the passion that though gets the opportunity to be free after many years but in an uncontrolled happening, that took their lives. This elucidates to us that love, is not a matter of chance or luck, but an emotion that we merely fall into and remain in that stance for the rest of our lives. Tita survived all these years to experience a passionate night that only lasted for few hours but give the lovers divine freedom to meet each other. This way we can perceive that the philosophy of love needs wait and sacrifice, to which the passion almost brings as much misery as it brings joy. It is the passion of love for the lovers that lead them to so many difficult situations throughout their lives and raised so many difficult consequences. Although they realized that they can never be happy without each other but for the sake of love for other family members, they kept on giving sacrifices, like the sacrifice Tita gave before she finally met Pedro. Likewise Pedro sacrificed his love to remain close to Tita and married Rosaura. Thus, what Esquivel wants the reader to understand is that love is all about sacrifice and happiness and passion is the ultimate destiny of love.
Works Cited
De Valdes Elena Maria, (1995) ‘Verbal and Visual Representation of Women: Como Agua Para Chocolate / like Water for Chocolate’, World Literature Today. Volume: 69. Issue: 1, p. 78.
Esquivel Laura, (1995) Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in monthly installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies.
In Latin America, the Spanish culture is filled with customs, celebrations, and intriguing superstitions. There are several reasons why Spain’s traditions are so distinct. The cultures of Latin America have significantly benefited from the peculiar traditions of Spain. Several elements in Spanish beliefs and culture have played significant roles in influencing their way of life. The book Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel elucidates some of the essential elements in Spanish-speaking culture. Equally, it elaborates on Latin American people’s cultural norms, traditions, ways of living, gender roles, and interactions.
Laura Esquivel uses the protagonist’s family customs to illustrate the novel’s primary conflict: the Family traditions. Couples and their unmarried offspring form the typical home in Spain. Children in Spain are more likely to stay home into their late adulthood, like 30 and above years. Nonetheless, the high standard of living and economic hardships suffered by new populations in Spain from the previous decade have forced this cultural norm. In the book, Tita is informed that she would never be permitted to marry or establish her own family, as a family custom requires the youngest daughter to devote her life to caring for her mother until she dies. This way, the book depicts a traditional image in Spain’s culture that deprives younger daughters of leaving their homes and getting married. Parental authority remains the primary source of accountability for most children under the old system, even when they reach maturity (Garrett 48). In Spanish-speaking culture, this parental vigilance towards children is mainly vested in women while men engage in other income-generating activities.
The book covers the aspect of oppression and abuse of women. According to the narrator, it is required that the youngest daughter devote her life to caring for her mother until she dies. Tita accepts a life of service to her mother out of desperation, even after Pedro offers her at the novel’s outset (Esquivel 4). The book demonstrates the oppression many young girls face because of the existing norms and traditions. Spanish-speaking people always regarded women as housewives who are critical to the well-being of their families and children but not to the development of their communities (Chinchilla 180). Usually, oppression is often followed by a revolt by the downtrodden, leading to chaos. For example, a gang of rebels assault Mama Elena’s house and damage her family’s food supply. Later, taking advantage of the turmoil, a gang of outlaws attacks the ranch. Conversely, revolution can promise constructive social transformation and emancipation from oppressive rulers and institutions (Chinchilla 181). Tita, who despises tyranny in all its manifestations, backs the rebels.
The book also places a strong emphasis on femininity and the duties of women. Traditionally, in Spanish culture, males have been the breadwinners in families, while women have traditionally been in charge of household chores and child-rearing. Nevertheless, women are still primarily responsible for taking care of their children. In the book, When Tita and her siblings were little, Mama Elena instilled in them a strong sense of obedience and respect for the societal norms that govern correct female conduct. Furthermore, their mother teaches them self-sacrifice and obligation as a show of love. From this context, it is evident how Spanish women teach their daughters to become desirable women.
Esquivel also emphasizes food and cooking as a central issue in her book Like Water for Chocolate. Each chapter opens with a dish for a meal prepared within the chapter. As a regular in the lifestyles of her characters, Esquivel utilizes food to illustrate many different realities via extensive culinary instructions interspersed with her narrative. In Spanish-speaking culture, the majority of the dishes are produced using ingredients sourced from the area or from crops that are naturally cultivated there. However, there are a lot of regional differences in the recipes that are used in Spain. Each chapter begins with a recipe for preparing a different kind of food in the book. For Tita, the kitchenette is the one place where she feels most strongly and frees from Mama Elena’s abuse. She and Nacha, the chef, spend a large portion of their upbringing in the kitchen. She is relieved to have her zone, where “flavors, odors, textures, and the impacts they may have were outside Mama Elena’s “iron rule” (Esquivel 7). Tita enjoys imagining and delving into the secrets of the kitchen.
In Spanish-speaking culture, food aids in forming and maintaining all types of relationships. The Latin American people place a significant priority on food. As a result, women are held to a high standard for food preparation. They value food; hence, they have several sessions where people gather together and eat. For instance, coffee culture is essential in Spain regarding breakfast and brings people together. Preparing food is an everyday activity for women before weddings, funerals, and baptisms in the book. When relations between mothers and their daughters are complicated, the tradition of preparing food, as seen in the book, brings them together (Folgado-Fernández 3). It is also essential in recognizing the significance of life events such as weddings and births. When a person can cook, enjoy their food, and digest it, they are considered alive. In contrast, those who cannot do so are considered less lively or incapable of adoration in the novel.
According to the book, there are vital points to bear in mind regarding Spanish-speaking society. First, the book highlights mothers’ relationship with their daughters in Spanish culture. I have learned how women in Spanish- speaking cultures suffer from oppression and violence perpetrated by men or fellow superior women. In the book, the relationship between Tita and her mother is unhealthy. Her mother, Mama Elena, abuses her emotionally and physically anytime, she expresses her desires (Esquivel 29). It is possible that the cruelty Mama Elena employs to maintain order in her family is her response to the male violence that already exists in her society. Instead of questioning the patriarchal society or its underlying violence, Mama Elena uses violence against less powerful people than her to replicate it. Ultimately, the book shows the culture of celebrating events among Latin Americans, such as weddings, funerals, and baptisms, which brings them together.
It is beyond question that the book Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel explores some of the cultures and traditions of the Spanish-speaking people. The book highlights crucial aspects, such as the importance of food in bringing people together. It also mentions some religious practices that bring them together, such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Notably, the book emphasizes family customs while analyzing how males mistreat women and young girls.
Works Cited
Chinchilla, Norma Stoltz. “Feminism, Revolution, and Democratic Transitions in Nicaragua.” The Women’s Movement in Latin America. Routledge, (2018): 177-197.
Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Hot Chocolate. London: Black Swan, 1993. Print.
Folgado-Fernández, José Antonio, Elide Di-Clemente, and José Manuel Hernández-Mogollón. “Food Festivals and the Development of Sustainable Destinations. The Case of the Cheese Fair in Trujillo (Spain).” Sustainability 11.10 (2019): 1-14.
Garrett, Larisa. “Towards an Understanding of Femicide: Contemporary (patriarchal) state violence in Juárez, Mexico.” The End of Religion. Routledge, (2020): 44-59.