North American Fiction and Film
Chapter 12: Laura Esquival
Chapter Twelve: Laura Esquival's Like Water for Chocolate
Introduction
This chapter will provide a reading of Laura Esquival's novel Like Water
for Chocolate which argues that the central image of the recipe used within
the novel is crucial for understanding its central theme: the relation between
appetite and satiation. Within the notion of the recipe lies the suggestion
of a ritual performance combined with a certain freedom of expression; that
is, a freedom in performing the rituals of women who have gone before-reinscribing
their gestures of survival, of food preparation, of love-as well as a freedom
in making one's own slight modifications based on one's own experience of
the recipe and its preparations.
This notion of ritual performance is embodied in Tita's changing experience
during the novel. She knows how to stimulate and satisfy the appetite, as
every good cook does, though she herself is forbidden to be a part of either
the appetite or its satiation. But she has to learn that passion needs to
be, like the water used for making hot chocolate, kept near but not on the
boil. Boiling water burns the chocolate and ruins the taste. Cold water,
however, fails to dissolve the chocolate. The water, therefore, must be
brought to the boil and then taken off the heat before the chocolate is
melted into it. The water is then returned to the heat, but removed before
the chocolate can scald (118). In the same way Tita must learn that excess
can ruin satiation just as abstinence can thwart it, and, consequently,
passion needs to be, "like water for chocolate," prepared, purposeful,
controlled and discrete.
Readings
Reading 12-1
Reading 12-2
The text
Magic realism
Rose Lucas argues that Like Water for Chocolate is a novel which is positioned
"within a shifting set of perspectives about North America, and the
various cultures, histories, geographies, genders and ethnicities which
constitute it" (65). In narrative style, it relies on "magic realism,"
which Chris Baldick defines as "a kind of modern fiction in which fabulous
and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains
the 'reliable' tone of an objective realistic report. . . . The fantastic
attributes given to characters in such novels-levitation, flight, telepathy,
telekinesis-are among the means that magic realism adopts in order to encompass
the often phantasmagoric political realities of the 20th century" (Literary
Terms 128). In Like Water for Chocolate, magic realism takes the form of
the power the recipes have for magically "communicating" Tita's
emotions and passions. This seems to be the only form of communication open
to her within the restrictive patriarchal regime of Mama Elena and the constraints
of her class and gender. Tita's "magic" challenges these restrictions
and constraints so effectively that it also challenges the cultural hegemony
of Mexico's giant neighbour (the novel is set in Mexico)-the United States.
Crossing boundaries
Lucas believes that the inclusion of recipes which are culturally specific
yet capable of crossing cultural boundaries (Americans fetishise cuisine
from numerous cultures) suggests "the literal and figurative permeability
of the line of delineation which so arbitrarily separates the nation categories
of Mexico and the United States" (65). In other words, food and its
preparation, as well as the domestic spaces, rituals and practices which
accompany these, produce, in the novel, metaphors and symbolisations which
both reinscribe and challenge the literal and conceptual frontiers between
the two cultures:
Food readily becomes the territory over and through which the struggles
for a variety of definitions are fought-in the same way that the home environment
and the supportive and constraining networks of the family become the microcosm
through which the individual intersects with the struggles of the civil
war, the interplay of languages and cultures, the tensions between conventional
gender and familial roles and suppressed and repressed desires. (65)
We will not be pursuing this line of inquiry in the following discussion,
but you might find it interesting to look for the many images in the novel
which reinforce yet subvert the notion that Mexico is a frontier (like the
Wild-West) of America.
Food as semiotic system
Lucas believes that food as a narrative structuring device is common to
a number of films (for instance, La Grande Bouffe and The Cook, The Thief,
His Wife and Her Lover), and that this is not surprising given its central
importance in day-to-day living and its "way of marking ritual and
defining categories of family, class and gender." She argues that what
is interesting about food in this novel is the way that it is used for "a
wide range of psychological investments and symbolic significations."
Characters, situations and events are often described and in some cases
interpreted in the metaphoric language of food. In a number of instances,
food magically embodies Tita's (and others') repressed desires.
Food and the formation of the "self"
Lucas believes that food is used as a model of the self (subjectivity) which
is both potentially transgressive and dissolving: "We take in, process,
digest, refine and expel. Turning ourselves inside out we mate, defecate,
disgorge, feed, reproduce, produce ourselves" (65). Here, food is a
metaphor for the engagement of the "so-called discrete subject with
an interactive sphere" where food and its preparation and consumption
resemble the actions of the subject in the formation of the self-the means
by and through which the outside becomes the inside, and vice versa, and
the point where two apparently "immutable boundaries" meet, transgress
and dissolve.
Or to put it another way, the aphorism "we are what we eat" becomes
a third and dissolving figure in the constructivist sliding and eliding
across all apparently impermeable and binaric boundaries-self/other, either/or,
surface/depth, north/south, America/Mexico, home/away, aristocrat/peasant,
male/female, mother/daughter, individual/community, custom/desire, and so
on.
Lucas believes that the focus on food and cooking in the novel suggest the
possibilities of paradox: "that is, it indicates the conventional passage
of a subjectivity through a social and epistemological system and it also
suggests the potential for that same process to signify transgression, permeability,
a breaking of the rules" (65). The characters, particularly Tita, are
continually confronted with, interactively, both characters, situations
and events, as well as their own impelling desires.
Food and women: "A delicacy, prepared for male delight"?
Lucas argues that the novel appears to reinforce the traditional binaric
opposites of active/passive, male/female, particularly in the way that it
proffers femininity and the female body as a "feast" for the male,
"a delicacy, prepared for male delight," where the woman is the
meal and the male the enjoyer of that meal. However, as Chencha suggests
to Tita when Pedro chooses to marry Rosaura instead of Tita, while women
may be interchangeable for men-a meal is a meal is a meal-each woman is
"unique" in her flavourings:
"Isn't that something? Your ma talks about being ready for marriage
like she was dishing up a plate of enchiladas! And the worst thing is, they're
completely different! You can't just switch tacos and enchiladas like that!"
(Like Water 17)
What seems like a condescending simile is more powerful than it seems, however,
for it opposes a powerful custom from the patriarchal world (women are interchangeable)
with one from the domestic world (interchangeability is not an option in
the world of carefully prepared dishes, which is one reason recipes for
different dishes are meticulously prepared and passed on).
In other words, Pedro's mistake is to think that he can exchange Tita for
Rosaura thereby satisfying the need for social respectability on the one
hand and his passions on the other. What he ends up with is a very dissatisfied
wife (because he has no interest in her) and a very frustrated Tita (because
Mama Elena, the strongest and most visible agent of patriarchy in the novel,
recognised the hints of passion between Tita and Pedro and refused to allow
them an opportunity for any kind of consummation).
Pedro's appetite, in short, is considerable deflated. As Lucas says: "Rather
than having the soft and yielding enchilada of his choice, the passion of
his appetite, Pedro instead is force-fed the brittle taco of Madam Elena's
choosing" (66). At a fundamental level of patriarchy, then, women are
interchangeable as "objects of exchange shoring up the power and status
of masculinised establishments." However, as Lucas says, food is both
"a psychological necessity and a source of jouissance, of the excesses
of pleasure," (66) and Madam Elena's choice leaves the appetite unsatisfied.
Appetite and satiation
Tita knows how to stimulate and satisfy the appetite, as every good cook
does, even if she herself is forbidden to be a part of either the appetite
or its satiation. For instance, when Tita is preparing the wedding cake
for Rosaura's wedding, she cries into the batter (31), and when the guests
begin to eat the cake, they are "flooded with a great wave of longing"
(39). From this, the guests experience an "acute attack of pain and
frustration" which results in them "wailing over lost love,"
and which produces nausea and vomiting.
All the guests vomit over everything, including the bride. Pedro seizes
the opportunity to suggest to Rosaura that they leave the consummation of
the nuptials to some other time, which turns out to be several months down
the track and then only after Rosaura tells him that she has "recovered."
Like the hypocrite that he is, he offers a prayer to God before he finally
consummates his marriage: "Lord, this is not lust or lewdness but to
make a child to serve you" (40). Tita is vehemently opposed to the
marriage, but she is forbidden by Mama Elena to express any emotion on the
subject ("and don't ever let me catch you with a single tear or even
a long face, do you hear?" 28). Nonetheless, she has managed to find
a means of communicating her sense of loss (magically though this might
be) both to Pedro and Rosaura, and to the world at large.
This communication has a double-effect for it also indirectly delays Pedro's
"infidelity" (so to speak) by ruining the second strongest symbol
of marriage (the wedding breakfast is the first because it is highly visible)-the
wedding-night consummation.
Tita pays for her "crime," however, because Mama Elena beats her
so badly, convinced as she is that Tita put something in the cake (which
is correct up to a point), that Tita spends two weeks in bed recovering
from her bruises. The only witness to her "innocence," Nacha,
unfortunately dies on the day of the wedding clutching the picture of her
lost fiance in her hand. She, too, has experienced the extreme sense of
loss occasioned by the tears "embodied" in the cake (40). The
lesson here, which Tita fails to see, is that excess (in this case of grief)
has its consequences. Tita will have to experience, indirectly, a number
of other similar experiences, including her own "anorexic" madness,
before she learns to "control" this magic power.
"Quail in Rose Petal Sauce"
Another example of how Tita communicates her repressed passion is when she
cooks "Quail in Rose Petal Sauce" (44). She makes this in part
from the roses Pedro gives her (46) which she mingles with blood from the
thorns which prick her fingers (an old fashioned image of sexual desire).
Nacha, who is now dead, appears to have taken on the role of guardian angel
or protector, and she dictates the recipe to Tita. In the act of preparing
the food, Tita learns a valuable lesson. She has up to this point been very
squeamish about killing the animals she "uses" in her cooking,
but not so with the quail she is to use in this recipe:
She realised that you can't be weak when it comes to killing: you have to
be strong or it just causes more sorrow. It occurred to her that she could
use her mother's strength right now. Mama Elena was merciless, killing with
a single blow. But then again not always. For Tita she had made an exception;
she had been killing her a little at a time since she was a child, and she
still hadn't quite finished her off. (47)
This lesson is one of recognition rather than of action, for Tita continues
in her role of domestic in Mama Elena's household. It is significant, however,
that when she finally rebels much later in the novel it is by accusing Mama
Elena of "killing" Roberto, Rosaura and Pedro's son.
In a gesture which enhances the notion of "magic" through communication,
Tita believes that Nacha, in dying, has become a part herself ("Nacha
herself was in Tita's body doing all those things" 47). This continues
the inter-generational learning process associated with the kitchen, which
has always been Nacha and Tita's sphere, and which began when Tita was born
(literally) on the kitchen table, "amid the smells of simmering noodle
soup, thyme, bay leaves and coriander, steamed milk, garlic and, of course,
onion" (9). Of all the vegetables, Tita is most sensitive to onions,
crying, allegedly, when they were being cut even while she was still in
her mother's womb (9). Aside from the prophetic "vale of tears"
such an association hints at, Tita's life experiences resemble the proverbial
"peeling" away of layers of the self as she heads towards her
breakdown, a "peeling" which appears to be a necessary prelude
to the re-formation of herself after her mother's death.
Tita's role here evokes the idea that Mama Elena's daughters each embody
some aspect of female desire and ritual: Tita the dutiful but repressed
and resentful daughter; Rosaura, the willing but ultimately dissatisfied
bride; and Gertrudis, the free spirit who cannot be contained (Gertrudis
herself is the product of an illegitimate "passion" of Mama Elena's,
as we later discover, 125). It is significant that Tita's recipes free up
the passions with rather than against the grain: that is, having expended
her grief at Rosaura's marriage to Pedro, she is the only one not affected
by the wedding cake (even Nacha dies from unexpended or unsatisfied longing).
Similarly, of those who indulge in the Quail and Rose Petal Sauce, all of
them including Mama Elena know that it is an "exquisite" dish
(48). Pedro, who has recently been forced to eat a terrible meal prepared
by Rosaura, exclaims: "'It's a dish for the gods!'" (48). Lucas
points out, nonetheless, that the dish speaks "a passion that is comprehended
by everyone at the table, yet which remains unspeakable on the level of
propriety, of conformity to roles of gender and class" (67).
The dish makes Rosaura feel sick, which is what we might expect of a dish
which conveys Tita's passion to Pedro. As Lucas notes:
food has the potential to function as both potential remedy and potential
poison; it is a topos of ambiguity and bi-valency, and thus, is revealed
as a problematic gift. The food itself embodies the desire of the giver,
even if it is ostensibly designed to gratify the desires of the recipient.
Relocated within the body of the other, swallowed and internalised by them,
the one who offers the food is not merely the servant of the desires of
the other, but the implicit shaper of those desires. (67)
Tita, in other words, is constrained by the ritual of the meal, situated
as this is in the context of her own and Pedro's desires whilst at the same
time shaping those desires indirectly through the timeless symbol of romantic
love-the rose.
However, as with the wedding cake, Tita's "magic" has unintended
consequences. Gertrudis, for instance, responds as if the dish were an aphrodisiac,
which is definitely outside her gender and class roles, and in this sense
she "speaks" the repressed desires of the others at the table.
She feels "an intense pulsing through her limbs," and she begins
to sweat with the heat of her desires and to have sexual fantasies which
include, coincidently, an empathy for the loneliness of a captain of the
troop she had recently seen at the markets. The narrator comments:
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. Pedro didn't offer any resistance. He let Tita penetrate to
the farthest corners of his being. (49)
This is the clearest statement in the novel regarding food as a sign system,
every bit as complex and as powerful as other sign systems, but also saddled
with their limitations: a sign can never be the thing it represents, and
food, whilst it possesses a materiality of its own, in the context of the
significance it might otherwise carry or possess, communicates this significance
vicariously. Tita's "penetration" is clearly a breach of her feminised
gender role, a breach which Pedro somewhat ludicrously punishes by becoming
mute at the sight of the naked Gertrudis, by ignoring Tita (who is so affected
by the meal she thinks that had Pedro asked her to run away with him she
would have done so without hesitation), and by decamping ("he quickly
hopped on to his bicycle and furiously pedalled away" 53). Like Tita,
Pedro is forced to satiate his appetites vicariously (he has never seen
a naked woman before because he and Rosaura always used "the nuptial
sheet, which revealed only the necessary parts of his wife's body"
53).
If Tita and Pedro's desire is only vicariously on display, however, it is
Gertrudis who is both appetite and satiation. She is so possessed by passion
(in this context, her own but also Pedro and Tita's) that she decides to
take the proverbial cold shower. Unfortunately, the drops of water evaporate
before they can reach her body so powerful is the heat generated by this
passion. In fact, the shower cubicle (magically) bursts into flame, and
she rushes out "completely naked" (51). The power of the scent
of roses generated in all this excess reaches none other than Juan, the
Captain of the troop, who leaves the field of battle, much to the surprise
of the man he is about to kill, and races on horseback towards Gertrudis,
who is now both "an angel and a devil in one woman" (52), and
running naked across the fields.
Both Tita and Pedro witness the spectacle which follows, which is simultaneously
an embodiment of their desire and an index of its fulfilment:
Without slowing his gallop, so as not to waste a moment, [Juan] leaned over,
put his arm around her waist, and lifted her on to his horse in front of
him, face to face, and carried her away. The horse, which seemed to be obeying
higher orders too, kept galloping as if it already knew their ultimate destination,
even though Juan had thrown the reins aside and was passionately kissing
and embracing Gertrudis. The movement of the horse combined with the movement
of their bodies as they made love for the first time, at a gallop and with
a great deal of difficulty. (52)
That Gertrudis can do it naked whilst riding a horse backwards undermines
the artificial barriers which apparently prevent Pedro and Tita from consummating
their passion, a contrast which is comically heightened by Pedro's escape
on a bicycle and his failure to offer Tita the lift she would have readily
accepted.
Tita is left feeling "lost and lonely," like the last "chilli
in walnut sauce" left on the plate because nobody wanted to feel like
a glutton and eat it even though they know it contains "the secret
of love" (54). Mama, also true to form, eradicates all trace of Gertrudis
in the home, especially after she discovers that Gertrudis is working in
a brothel on the border (which she does for more than a year without, she
later says, getting her fill of men, 115). Having once again magically communicated
her passion and watched it escape her control, Tita, like Pedro, resorts
to sublimation (once again), and begins to write the cookbook which Esperanza,
Rosaura and Pedro's daughter, eventually passes on to her daughter, the
narrator of the story.
Appetite as vicarious satiation
The intimacy between Tita and Pedro continues only as vicarious satiation.
For instance, he comes upon her in the kitchen, on her knees (a powerful
image of the power of patriarchy) grinding toasted chillies, and he "possesses"
her breasts with his gaze ("Pedro had transformed Tita's breasts from
chaste to experienced flesh, without even touching them" 63). This
turns out to be a significant transformation because, when Rosaura and Pedro's
baby's wet nurse is killed by "a stray bullet" (69), Tita finds
herself mysteriously lactating and able to feed the child (70).
Pedro comes across this mother and child imago, and he experiences "a
succession of conflicting emotions": "love, desire, tenderness,
lust, shame . . . fear of discovery" (71). Pedro's inability to move
past the last of these emotions yet again comes between himself and Tita
though the spark is visible even to Mama Elena, and she arranges for Pedro
and Rosaura to move away (74).
Tita's rebellion
With this last link to her passions removed, relations between Tita and
Mama Elena sink to an all time low; Tita can do nothing right, and Mama
Elena is never satisfied with anything she does do. Tita finally rebels
when she discovers that Roberto (Rosaura and Pedro's child) has died. She
tells Mama Elena that she is "'sick of obeying'" her orders (her
first response), and when Mama smashes her across the face with a wooden
spoon, Tita accuses her of "killing" Roberto (her second response,
89). Clearly, given the comment noted earlier about Mama Elena's ability
to kill with one blow, and given that this blow has not actually killed
Tita, we can assume that Tita is referring to everything else she believes
Mama Elena has killed, particularly the possibility of marriage between
Tita and Pedro which the child vicariously represents. Clearly, also, this
incident is an index of Mama Elena's waning power over Tita.
Incidentally, the civil war, which is a continual backdrop in this novel,
evokes an atmosphere which suggests that violence is used as a form of control,
both in the social and domestic sphere. These two spheres clash many times,
never more obviously then when Chencha is raped at the ranch by a group
of bandits, and Mama Elena is paralysed, while defending her honour, by
a "strong blow" to her spine (118).
Madness and matches
Tita goes "mad" at this point (her third response), and leaves
the ranch trailing the enormous bedspread she has been crocheting since
her relationship with Pedro was first thwarted. Her period of madness is
characterised by being off her food, by refusing to prepare food, and by
silence. This anorexic silence effectively denies her the magic power of
communicating through food.
She is rescued by Chencha, who turns up at Dr Brown's where she is now living
with oxtail soup, which is one of Nacha's recipes (114-115). It is during
her time of convalescence with Dr Brown that he tells her what is to become
one of the central recipes of the novel:
"As you see, within our bodies each of us has the elements to produce
phosphorus. . . . My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said
that each of us is born with a box of matches inside of us but we can't
strike them all by ourselves; . . . we need oxygen and a candle to help.
In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the
person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word
or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For
a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within
us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to
revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions
in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited
is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't
find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches
dampens, and not a single match will ever be lit." (105)
Tita acknowledges that "her own matches were damp and mouldy,"
and the combination of oxtail soup and this matches "recipe" (there
is actually a recipe included in the novel for making matches) enables Tita
to claw her way back to "sanity."
Dr Brown does warn her, though, that she must "'take care to light
the matches one at a time'", otherwise the heat generated will "'provide
a splendour so dazzling that it will illuminate far beyond what we can normally
see"; or in other words, the soul will want to return to its divine
origins (i.e. the explosion will cause death). Dr Brown with typical literalness
has been trying, he informs her, to "'demonstrate this theory scientifically'"
(105).
The spirit is relational not sui generis
What is interesting about this passage is the overtly metaphysical dimension
of Dr Brown's grandmother's idea, a dimension which confirms the suggestion
made by Lucas that food is both "a psychological necessity and a source
of jouissance, of the excesses of pleasure" (66). Apparently, the argument
runs, we do have a spirit, but it is not meant to live in isolation. It
is not sui generis (that is, rises from and gives life to itself) but relational.
What it relates to can vary from music to food to the caress of a lover,
but relate it must if it is to avoid going mouldy. The choice for Tita is
clear: mouldy means Mama Elena or Rosaura; explosion means Gertrudis but
without the necessary free spirit to contain the excess. Tita seeks the
middle path, even though she recognises that "She had to find someone
who could kindle her desire" (107).
Lucas believes that the simile of the matches indicates the dilemma faced
by all women which Tita embodies:
[T]he simile encapsulates the tension within Tita's experience: her life
is almost perpetually on a knife edge of passionate intensity, but the passions
which she excites-passions of sex, of motherhood, of the gourmet appetite-are
so often in danger of being sacrificed for another's benefit. (67)
Women, in other words, are perpetually in danger of sacrificing themselves-their
appetites and the potential for their satiation-for the benefit of others,
usually men, but also for the benefit of those women who act as agents of
the system which supports men-that is, patriarchy.
As overthrowing patriarchy is not really an option for women like Tita,
she needs to find a way to exist which is neither mouldy nor explosive.
In effect, she achieves this, after Mama Elena dies, by having an affair
with Pedro but with the constraint (imposed by Rosaura, who knows about
the affair, for social decorum) that she will not bear children. Tita overcomes
this restriction, however, by sublimating her maternal instincts through
a role change-she becomes Esperanza's "step-mother" rather than
her aunt.
Chillies in walnut sauce: The explosion
In the last chapter of the book, the time frame changes. At the end of the
previous chapter, we get the impression that Tita is going to marry Dr Brown,
an impression which is strengthened when the last chapter begins with what
are obviously wedding preparations. However, the wedding is for Esperanza,
Rosaura and Pedro's daughter, to Dr Brown's son, Alex. We have moved forward
more than a decade: Rosaura is by this time dead (she dies from a mysterious
gastric complaint-she literally farts herself to death)-and Tita and Pedro
have been having a sexual relationship, though this is shrouded in secrecy
(212).
Pedro at last proposes (213), and when the wedding guests eat the famed
chillies in walnut sauce, they respond more-or-less as Gertrudis had done
with the Quail in Rose Petal Sauce ("guests quickly made their excuses,
coming up with one pretext or another, throwing heated looks at each other"
218). Tita and Pedro are also affected, and, when the guests all leave,
they are able to make love freely "For the first time in their lives"
(219). They go to the dark room, which is now lit up with candles (as Dr
Brown had suggested, a spark requires oxygen and candles), and Nacha is
there to light the last candle. The noise of the headboard of the bed striking
the wall tells all the doves to leave the ranch, and Tita experiences a
climax so intense that "a brilliant tunnel appeared before her"
(219). This is what Dr Brown had warned her about: that if she lit all her
matches at once she would incite the soul to return to its divine origins
(sex as divine!). Pedro obviously experiences the same thing, but unlike
Tita, he does not draw back.
Tita realises that with Pedro dead, she will have no one left to kindle
the desire in her (220), so she covers herself with her crocheted bedspread,
swallows a box of matches whilst remembering her various moments with Pedro,
and the tunnel re-appears with Pedro waiting for her. They go off together
to their "lost Eden," leaving the ranch in flames and exploding
like an "erupting volcano" (221).
All Pedro's daughter, Esperanza, finds when she returns is a layer of ash
several yards high and Tita's cookbook. The narrator, Esperanza's daughter,
notes that each of the recipes tells "this story of love interred"
(221), and we leave the daughter preparing a meal for her father using Tita's
recipes, thereby establishing the inter-generational learning process which
began with Nacha. It is within the final chapter that Tita draws the boundaries
of the lessons she has learned as a woman, lessons apparently also learned
by both Esperanza and her daughter through their interpretations of the
recipes.
Tita's lesson
Both Tita's mother and her sister are bound by tradition (they both want
their youngest or, in Rosaura's case, only daughter never to marry so as
to look after them in their old age). Both are repressed by their "containment"
within the domestic sphere, and both are uncomfortable in their relations
with their husbands. Paradoxically, both act as agents of patriarchy in
enforcing societal "norms," most of which are not necessarily
in the interests of women: Mama Elena's strict discipline, modesty and decorum;
Rosaura's pseudo-commitment to the man she marries, not for love but for
convenience (even though she knows that he loves Tita) which means that
she has relations (including sexual) out of a sense of duty rather than
of love. Rosaura, in other words, inherits her mother's sense of being a
woman, but without the sense of the illicit we saw in Mama Elena's affair
with the young mulatto José Trevino, Gertrudis' father. It is as
if they are both strangers in the domestic sphere, calculating and unsuccessfully
manipulating the boundaries between it and the public (male) sphere.
The result is unhappy lives where their "matches" are mouldy and
where nothing kindles their desire. They have no appetites other than those
allowed them by the repressive social regime, and their mistaken belief
that repression and control will either bring satiation or quell it leads
only to anorexia-like eating disorders; that is, they deny one appetite
(for food) in the mistaken belief that this will compensate for the repression
of others-the kindled appetite and satiated desire with another (love).
As Lucas points out, there is an unmistakable link in this story between
what is or is not taken in by the body, and what is expressed by it (66).
Tita, on the other hand, loves the domestic sphere in which she finds herself.
She has been there more-or-less since she was born, and she understands
both appetite and satiation from a cook's perspective. She is prevented
from marrying the man she loves by a jealous and cruel mother, and she too
suffers from an eating disorder (silent anorexia). She is revived by Chencha's
soup (i.e. prepared by a "step-mother" who both loves and cherishes
her) and by some words of wisdom from the kindly patriarch who tells her
that appetite and satiation can, if unfettered, destroy that which the host
desires (food in moderation enriches, satisfies, is a source of jouissance;
gluttony kills).
The trick is to light one match at a time thereby keeping both appetite
and satiation in balance. In a sense, Tita has learned to do this already
if somewhat magically through food. As Lucas says of Tita:
being the cook also provides her with a means of expression, an art form
through which to inscribe and encode the desires which are rendered mute
and illegitimate by her role as dutiful daughter and respectable member
of the privileged class. (66)
However, unfettered use of this power has direct and sometimes serious consequences,
and does not necessarily lead to satiation. Tita must look to one of her
recipes for a "matches" type analogy which will offer a way out
of her dilemma.
Like water for chocolate
It is as if, to use the image evoked by the title, passion needs to be,
like the water used for making hot chocolate, kept near but not on the boil.
Boiling water burns the chocolate and ruins the taste. Cold water fails
to dissolve the chocolate. The water, therefore, is brought to the boil
and then taken off the heat, and the chocolate is then melted into it. The
water is then returned to the heat, but removed before the chocolate can
scald (118).
If Gertrudis' "elopement" and, indeed, Mama Elena's youthful indiscretion,
are indicative of passions on the boil, and Rosaura's marriage is an example
of passion gone mouldy, then Tita must learn, as with the matches analogy,
that passion needs to be, "like water for chocolate," purposeful,
controlled, discrete. Excess can ruin satiation just as abstinence can thwart
it. Making hot chocolate requires a recognition of how to use both to advantage.
Paradoxically, every cook knows this intuitively, and Nacha has been teaching
her this lesson over and over as she describes the preparation. For instance,
the first two instructions relating to recipes in the novel urge this very
balance: "Take care to chop the onion fine. To keep from crying when
you chop it (which is so annoying!), I suggest that you place a little bit
on your head" (9); "The sausage for the rolls must be fried over
very low heat, so that it cooks thoroughly without getting too brown"
(12). Every recipe includes injunctions, warnings, encouragements, and they
all relate to the process of finely balancing the art of applying heat to
ingredients so as to transform them from one state to another. As food is
a model for the making of the self, so are the processes of its preparation,
and it is from the descriptions of these processes (the matches analogy,
the preparation rather than just the consumption of hot chocolate) that
Tita discovers the means to match her appetite with its satiation. This
focus on process as well as product could, if one were to stretch the point,
be read as the only apparent postmodern feature of the novel.
When Tita has finally fulfilled her duty (to her "step-daughter,"
Esperanza), she chooses to be free and to remove all the fetters by lighting
all the matches at once. She does this but not before she has passed on
her new-found wisdom to the next generation of women in the form of "recipes."
The recipe
Within the central image of the recipe lies the suggestion of a ritual performance
combined with a certain freedom of expression (that is, a freedom in performing
the rituals of women who have gone before-reinscribing their gestures of
survival, of food preparation, of love-as well as a freedom in adding one's
own slight modifications based on one's own experience of the recipe and
its preparations). At one level, this form of communication is necessary
because, as Tita learns very early, other forms of communication are restricted
or even banned by patriarchy and its agents ("Tita knew that discussion
was not one of the forms of communication permitted in Mama Elena's household"
14). Communication between those repressed by patriarchy is more complicated
than even the most observant patriarch might imagine, and it even eludes
those who might benefit from understanding its codes and conventions. Thus
what Dr Brown leaves out of his matches analogy Tita eventually adds in.
"Striking a match" which revivifies the spirit certainly includes
food, music, the caress of a lover; but it also includes the relations between
women themselves, relations so evident between Tita and Nacha, Tita and
Chencha, Tita and Esperanza, Esperanza and her daughter, and Tita and the
grand daughter she never meets but whose celebration, as narrator, of this
unstated, almost unnamable relation between women, even inter-generationally,
is embodied in the book we have been reading.
Review questions
12-1 In what ways does the novel reinforce yet subvert the notion that Mexico
is a frontier (like the Wild-West) of America.
12-2 Trace the development of one recipe within the context of one of Tita's
various experiences and show how food and its preparation and consumption
resemble the actions of the subject (Tita) in the formation of the self.
12-3 List some of the ways in which appetite and excess are counterpointed
in the novel, both as a destructive force and as a productive harmony.
12-4 What is the relation between magic and communication in the novel?
12-5 On the surface, the novel appears to be affirming traditional gender
roles. Is there anything about the novel which suggests a challenge or a
change to these roles?
12-6 Are the men in the novel portrayed as stick-figure "bad guys"
or are there redeeming features?
12-7 Do you feel tempted to try some of the recipes?
Works cited
Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990.
Lucas, Rose. "Enchiladas or Tacos?: Families, Frontiers and Food in
Like Water for Chocolate." Island 60.6 (1994): 65-67.