on metaphors

Since i haven't gone food tripping yet this month. (Thanks to the mountain of papers i need to complete for school.) Hence, i thought i'd take a literary food trip to Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. I have read this novel dozens of times yet i can't seem to get enough of it. This is a paper I submitted for my World Literature class. Bon Appetit!

The novel is set in Mexico in a time where women had dominance in managing the household and men were the ones running the business. The de la Garza family is quite peculiar for their time since the household was mainly composed of women. The absence of a man did not make them suffer economically. The family is the basic unit of association in communities, define social division, rights for family members, establishment of duties and responsibilities among members (Knight, 23). Esquivel portrays society through the different women of the de la Garza family.
The beauty, responsibilities, and power of women was intricately woven into the novel, showing the burdens and benefits of social cooperation through elimination of gender bias in the novel and at the same time, highlighting gender bias in society (Sterba, 263). Esquivel used the characters to represent the different women in the society.
Mama Elena was a victim of tradition. She was in love with a man but her family rejected this for the reason that the man had Negro blood. At first, she tried to be rebellious by trying to run away with Jose, her lover, but his death made her submit to her legal husband, Juan de la Garza. This turn made her the woman that we know in the novel, strong and powerful.
Like Mama Elena, Tita became a victim of tradition. The way she was born in the kitchen table was through “a flood of tears” which can be related to her destiny was to take care of her mother until the day she dies (Esquivel, 1). She was forbidden to marry. Growing up with training in the kitchen, Tita was a natural in cooking. She used her food to communicate her feelings and power. She noticed the power of her cooking after the wedding cake which made everyone weep. Tita became the source of nourishment of all the characters in the story. She provides them with the food they need, especially in the case of her nephew Roberto where she breastfeeds him. Unlike her mother, she does not want her niece to experience the same destiny as she did. She did everything she could so that her niece can get a life. She is an unselfish provider. In the scene where Tita hallucinates and becomes crazy, it can be drawn that she also has her imperfections. These imperfections make her an even stronger woman as she refuse to return home to the ranch despite the pleads from Chencha.
Pedro, on the other hand, can be seen as a man who will do anything to get what he like. In this case, since it was an impossibility for him to marry Tita, he took his next best option which was to marry her sister, Rosaura. Absurd as it may sound, this was his only way to be close to Tita.
From childhood, there was a silent sibling rivalry between Tita and Rosaura. Unlike Tita, Rosaura hated the kitchen. She was a picky eater and later on became Tita’s rival in love. She is scared that Pedro might leave her for Tita that is why she imposes the same tradition that Mama Elena imposed to Tita to her daughter Esperanza.
The name Esperanza means hope. She is the symbols of hope in the midst of challenges in life. Though she has a parallel personality and experience as Tita, being born prematurely and having the same destiny, she serves as Tita’s hope of liberation from tradition. Her life would have been Tita’s life if she were to live again.
Gertrudis, Mama Elena’s illicit child, served as Tita’s inspiration to fight for Pedro despite her commitments with Dr. Brown. Her strong will to live a life full of adventures apart from the comfortable life she lived at the ranch is noteworthy.
Nacha can be portrayed as the wind beneath Tita’s wings. She is Tita’s mentor and at the same time mother image. She, like Tita, is a victim of tradition, but is unselfish enough to want others to escape the cycle. She is Tita’s guidance amidst times that she is lost like the birth of Roberto and castrating quails.
The novel uses Tita’s cooking to portray magical realism. Magical realism is a genre that combines realism and the fantastic in such a way that magical elements grow organically out of the reality portrayed (Faris 163).
Through Tita’s food, she is able to communicate her feelings and express her power that is forbidden by her mother.
She used her cooking to disobey Mama Elena. She used the roses in cooking their dinner which had a strange effect on the people who ate it. Here, she reveals her masculinity by penetrating Pedro. It is known that it is the male that penetrates the female during sexual intercourse but in the case of Tita and Pedro:
It was as if a strange alchemical process had dissolved her entire being into the rose petal sauce, in the tender flesh of the quails, in the wine, in everyone of the meal’s aromas. That was the way she entered Pedro’s body, hot, voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous (Esquivel, 52).

Tita’s cooking takes the form of poison for Mama Elena and Rosaura. In Mama Elena’s case she says that Tita’s cooking is poisoned to kill her, however, from the text it can be inferred wrong since “Tita wanted with all her heart to give her the best possible care… so that she would recover completely” (Esquivel, 132). It can also be said that this is an application of the frustration-aggression theory in psychology. Tita’s frustration is her mother’s objection to her relationship with Pedro. This frustration causes aggression. Aggression is any act that injures a person physically or psychologically (von de Haar, 295). It can be that Mama Elena tastes a psychological poison knowing Tita’s feelings towards her. It could have also been caused by the jealousy she feels within her. She is jealous of Tita because Tita has a chance with her true love despite the hindrances they had to face throughout the story.
Tita prepared special meals for Rosaura upon her request. These meals were to remedy her obesity and foul odor. Despite the efforts of Tita, Rosaura’s case worsens. Her body continues to release gas. In this case, we can look at gas in a different perspective. It can be seen as a form of torture as Pedro has to move to separate bedroom to avoid the gas excreted by Rosaura’s body. Rosaura is tortured by the love that Tita and Pedro share. Even if she has the things that lovers have such as sex, children and marriage, she does not share love itself with anyone. The torture was magnified by the paragraphs:
… Tita tried to let go of Pedro’s hand so that Rosaura could get closer to him, but Pedro, between moans, cried out to her… “Tita, don’t go. Don’t leave me.”… (Esquivel, 201).

Later on, Rosaura dies from the torture that she felt within.

Tita’s cooking takes the form of childhood memories for Gertrudis. With Tita’s cooking, Gertrudis is swept back in time as she enjoys the meals at her home. After working as a prostitute and later on in the military, it is rare for Gertrudis to enjoy food like the ones served at the de la Garza residence. It was mentioned in the novel that Gertrudis brought with her childhood memories through a bottle of cream fritters (Esquivel, 203). Not to mention Gertrudis’ first experience with Tita’s cooking, the dish with rose petals. This dish was the reason she went away from home. It was also through this dish that she found her true love.
The entirety of the novel is a metaphor. Metaphors are essential to the conception, development and maintenance of scientific theories in a variety of ways (Lopez, 11). The metaphor of pregnancy can be noted in the novel. Pregnancy represents that the child has a special bond with the mother, however, in the case of the Roberto and Esperanza, they had the special bond with Tita. Despite Tita not being able to bring forth life through her body, she was able to make life flourish through the food she prepares and the liberation that she brings to women.
The novel subverts the tradition of fixed marriages. The marriage between Rosaura and Pedro was originally to prevent Tita from attaining happiness. However, this is subverted by the fact that true love will prevail in the end. Despite Mama Elena’s iron command in the ranch, Pedro and Tita manages to make their love for each other grow through Roberto and Esperanza. Roberto and Esperanza were products of Rosaura’s and Pedro’s intimate acts, but Tita’s provider instinct gives her the characteristics that a mother has. The marriage between Alex and Esperenza shows that there is hope for true love to come together despite the world of traditions that existed in their time. Pedro and Tita’s final expression of love gives us the final word that no matter how many obstacles it will face, love will find its way at the right time.
Like Water for Chocolate is a novel that portrays the picture of a world driven by tradition. However, it gives the people hope that they can be liberalized from this constricting practice just as Tita did. With the recipe book was passed on to the narrator of the story, Tita’s legacy of liberation lives on.

Bibliography:
Esquivel, Laura. “Like Water for Chocolate.” 1991

Facis, Wendy. “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.” Magical Realism:Theory, History, Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. 163-190.

Knight, Jack. “Institutions and Social Conflict Jack Knight” 1952

Lopez, Jose. “Society and its Metaphors: Language, Social Theory and Social Structure” 2003

Sterba, James. “Social and Political Philosophy Contemporary Perspectives” 2001

Von de Haar, Christopher. “Social psychology a sociological perspective” 2005