A Recipe for Discourse : Perspectives on Like Water for Chocolate [1 ed.] 9789042031920, 9789042031913

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A Recipe for Discourse

DIALOGUE 11

Edited by

Michael J. Meyer

A Recipe for Discourse Perspectives on Like Water for Chocolate

Edited by

Eric Skipper

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010

Cover Image and Sketches by Kline Howell Cover Design: Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3191-3 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3192-0 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010 Printed in the Netherlands

Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 v

GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE

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PREFACE

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SECTION I: LWFC AND GENDER ISSUES

WOMEN, ALTERITY AND MEXICAN IDENTITY IN COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE Tina Escaja LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE: CINEMATIC PATRIARCHY AND TRADITION Jorge J. Barrueto LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE AND HUMAN NATURE Jerry Hoeg

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SECTION II: LWFC, MAGICAL REALISM AND THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO ITS USE

LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE AND THE ART OF CRITICISM Jay Corwin

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UNDER THE SIGN OF HYPERBOLE: MAGICAL REALISM AND MELODRAMA IN LAURA ESQUIVEL’S LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE Mónica Zapata

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SECTION III: LWFC AND THE CINDERELLA MYTH COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE: CINDERELLA AND THE REVOLUTION Cherie Meacham

 101

MYTH AND MARGINALIZATION IN COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE Victoria Martinez

 115

SECTION IV: RABELAISIAN APPETITES AND GASTRONOMY IN LWFC FEMALE REBELLION AND CARNIVAL: LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE Amelia Chaverri

 133

CHILE CONQUEST: LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE’S ‘REVOLUTIONARY’ IMPACT ON PERCEPTIONS OF MEXICAN FOOD IN THE UNITED STATES Ellyn Lem

 147

SECTION V: LWFC AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION NATIONAL MYTHS OF ARCHETYPAL IMAGERY IN LAURA ESQUIVEL’S LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE María Teresa Martínez-Ortiz

 167

THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION AS AN ACTIVE PARTICIPANT IN ESQUIVEL’S LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE Eric Skipper

 185

ABSTRACTS OF ARGUMENTS

 197

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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INDEX

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Acknowledgements The lion’s share of credit for this volume goes to general editor Michael Meyer for his support and advice at every stage along the two-and-a-half year editorial trek that led to this publication: for his various roles in editing and formatting the text, indexing, and inserting pictures and addenda; and most of all for his friendship I am grateful. The opportunity to edit this book on Like Water for Chocolate would not have come about if not for his belief that I might be capable of editing a scholarly volume. The final copy would not exist without the fostering approach he brings to the general editorship role. I express fond gratitude to Ernest Rehder, my dissertation director at Florida State University whose insight into literatures across the globe awakened new perspectives in a raw grad student from Monticello, Georgia. Likewise, I am indebted to longtime friend Jay Corwin for his encouragement and advice over the years, on this project and others. Thanks to Molly Kreager for helping with proofreading and formatting, to Sara Zerkel for her assistance with MS Word issues, to Christina Reed for her help with the index, and to Eric Mullins, IT specialist, whose technical savvy helped me get past sticking points. Moreover, I express gratitude to faculty and staff at Gainesville State College, in particular members of the Foreign Language Department. Un agradecimiento especial a los que han sometido su trabajo a este volumen. Contributors to this collection have been assiduous and prompt in submitting requested revisions, and their patience as they awaited the fruits of their collective efforts is much appreciated. Thanks to my father Ron who many moons ago tossed out the television and read ‘the greats’ to us on a nightly basis, and to my mother Peggy who through thick and thin has been a rock and a sanctuary. Additionally, I am indebted to father-in-law Larry Taylor whose support and unmitigated kindness has made a difference in so many people’s lives.Lastly, I express the deepest kind of gratitude to my wife Julimari and our three boys, whose love and support mean the world.

General Editor’s Preface The original concept for Rodopi’s new series entitled Dialogue grew out two very personal experiences of the general editor. In 1985, having just finished my dissertation on John Steinbeck and attained my doctoral degree, I was surprised to receive an invitation from Steinbeck biographer, Jackson J. Benson, to submit an essay for a book he was working on. I was unpublished at the time and was unsure and hesitant about my writing talent, but I realized that I had nothing to lose. It was truly the “opportunity of a lifetime.” I revised and shortened a chapter of my dissertation on Steinbeck’s The Pearl and sent it off to California. Two months later, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my essay had been accepted and would appear in Duke University Press’s The Short Novels of John Steinbeck (1990). Surprisingly, my good fortune continued when several months after the book appeared, Tetsumaro Hayashi, a renowned Steinbeck scholar, asked me to serve as one of the three assistant editors of The Steinbeck Quarterly, then being published at Ball State University. Quite naïve at the time about publishing, I did not realize how fortunate I had been to have such opportunities present themselves without any struggle on my part to attain them. After finding my writing voice and editing several volumes on my own, I discovered in 2002 that despite my positive experiences, there was a real prejudice against newer “emerging” scholars when it came to inclusion in collections or acceptance in journals. As the designated editor of a Steinbeck centenary collection, I found myself roundly questioned about the essays I had chosen for inclusion in the book. Specifically, I was asked why I had not selected several prestigious names whose recognition power would have spurred the book’s success on the market. My choices of lesser known but quality essays seemed unacceptable to those who ran the conference which produced the potential entries in the book. New voices were unwelcome; it was the tried and true that were greeted with open arms. Yet these experienced scholars had no need for further publications and often offered few original insights into the Steinbeck canon. Sadly, the originality of the lesser-known essayists met with hostility; the doors were closed, perhaps even locked tight,

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against their innovative approaches and readings that took issue with scholars whose authority and expertise had long been unquestioned. Angered, I withdrew as editor of the volume, and began to think of ways to rectify what I considered a serious flaw in academé. My goal was to open discussions between experienced scholars and those who were just beginning their academic careers and had not yet broken through the publication barriers. Dialogue would be fostered rather than discouraged. Having previously served as an editor for several volumes in Rodopi’s Perspective of Modern Literature series under the general editorship of David Bevan, I sent a proposal to Fred Van der Zee advocating a new series that would be entitled Dialogue, one that would examine the controversies within classic canonical texts and would emphasize an interchange between established voices and those whose ideas had never reached the academic community because their names were unknown. Happily, the press was willing to give the concept a try and gave me a wide scope in determining not only the texts to be covered but also in deciding who would edit the individual volumes. When Eric Skipper asked about a volume on Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate, I was quite pleased to see a proposal for a volume that would likely discuss the contributions of an author whose work had engendered questions of quality and that confronted questions of patriarchal dominance. While a volume on Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek was already in progress, I wanted to encourage a wide range of interest in the Dialogue series. The resulting essays address many of the issues that caused the novel to be such a controversial text. Are the plot and form hackneyed or innovative? Should the novel be classified as serious literature? Does it assert a message of female empowerment or patriarchal governance? Is its attitude toward social problems critical or merely revelatory? In this volume’s pages, such issues are not avoided but are addressed skillfully by authors with a variety of publication histories, some experienced, some neophytes. All are committed to a discussion of what earlier reviewers had determined were pluses and minuses of Like Water For Chocolate’s characters and plot and to addressing elements in Esquivel’s stylistics and themes that were seen as unusual or as flaws. As you will see, some of the authors break fertile new

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ground in the process, and offer approaches which will help readers see the novel from several new angles. This volume will soon be followed by studies on Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It is my hope that as each title appears, the Dialogue series will foster not only renewed interest in each of the chosen works but that each will bring forth fresh interpretations and will open doors to heretofore silenced voices. In this atmosphere, a healthy interchange of criticism can develop, one that will allow even dissent and opposite viewpoints to be expressed without fear that such stances may be seen as negative or counter-productive. My thanks to Rodopi and its editorial board for its support of this “radical” concept. May you, the reader, discover much to value in these new approaches to issues that have fascinated readers for decades and to books that have long stimulated our imaginations and our critical discourse. .

Michael J. Meyer 2010

Preface Any volume that aspires to group essays by subject matter invariably falls short to some extent due to the fact that submissions rarely fit neatly into predetermined divisions. Rather they tend to overlap in certain respects. While one essay may explore the mythological elements in a given work while offering a side glance at magical realism, another might endeavor to prove that instances of magical realism are the result of literary inheritance (or imitation). Thus a pairing has been made based on a single thematic commonality— magical realism—while the writers may have addressed numerous other concerns as well. The editor yokes two or more essays together (knowing full well the unique merit and scope of each), and there they remain for the perusal of students and scholars for decades to come. Though a student has found an essay on literary naturalism, for example, his impressions may be colored by prospects of Biblical imagery in finding the sought-for essay linked with another under that label. And is where the Rodopi Series, in its aim to offer points and counterpoints to a given topic by grouping essays thematically, does readers the fairness of including an independent synopsis of each work at the end of the volume. Thus, the reader, besides examining one essay as the antithesis of another, is also encouraged to approach the contributions contained in this volume as independent pieces, conceived with minimal knowledge about what other contributors were writing at the time; for that is, indeed, how they were written. My 2008 call for papers proposed a number of controversial issues in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, including such topics as matriarchy/ patriarchy, gastronomy, eroticism, superstition, alchemical symbolism, mythology, folklore, the Mexican Revolution and magical realism. Contributors’ essays sideswiped some of the themes, and hit others head-on. Their creativity originates from many sources, not the least of which is their situation in a range of social circumstances from around the country and the world. However, as is the case with most scholarship originating from free-speech environs,

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little can be read into geography. The critic, like any person, sings her own triumphs and battles her own windmills on a daily basis. Her background, values, and area of expertise are no more likely to mirror those of her next-door colleague than a snowflake might resemble the thousands that fall with it. The essays are uniquely original, products of free-thinking minds. While groupings offer the reader an initial platform of juxtaposition to ponder on a preliminary basis, they also serve as stepping stones to much fuller and wide-ranging interpretations. Slender and yet panoramic in scope, historical and yet relevant to current-day concerns, Like Water for Chocolate has provoked from the outset an unusually divergent range of critical opinions. Whether or not the novel conveys a message of female empowerment or patriarchal authority has traditionally aroused diametrically opposed viewpoints. On another front, scholars debate whether the novel should be classified as ‘literature’ or ‘fiction-lite’ written primarily for public consumption. Claudine Potvine’s 1995 essay “Como agua para chocolate: ¿parodia o cliché” underscores a topic that continues to stir debate. The novel’s growing bibliography contains topics included in my call for papers, as well as themes on female identity, alteration, parody, fairy tale influence, neo-liberalism, hyperbole, dialogics, genre-crossing and self-discovery. The release of the hugely successful film version in 1992 (the screenplay was also written by Esquivel) gave birth to another realm of Esquivelian criticism. The essays in this volume continue the tradition of offering varied, and sometimes conflicting, viewpoints regarding Esquivel’s 1991 best-seller. Fittingly, they come from scholars representing a variety of locales, including Costa Rica, France and New Zealand. Domestically, they represent such institutions as Penn State University, University of Vermont, Kansas State University, and North Park University. Though the enclosed essays pick up where the critical tug-of-war has left off, they share a common bond in their thought-provoking innovation and initiative. The first grouping of essays concerns the status of patriarchal principles in LWFC. Tina Escaja argues that the novel, through displacement of traditional hierarchical spaces (to the kitchen, in particular), disrupts the male-dominated status-quo that has traditionally stymied the identity of Mexican women. Jorge Barrueto, on the other hand, contends that the narrative reaffirms patriarchal

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principles in its relegation of women to roles of suffering and obedience, and, moreover, that the film conveys a subtle misogynist attitude as well. In an approach informed by neuropsychology, behavioral genetics and other scientific fields, Jerry Hoeg asserts that the dynamics of many human relations, including male-female rivalry, are dictated by human nature rather than culture. In a section on magical realism and public perceptions if LWFC, Jay Corwin asserts that the critical praise the novel has received is due to political motivations (i.e., gender criticism, public appeal, uninformed classification under the banner of magical realism) rather than aesthetic ones. He also traces the novel’s origin and motivation to sources often neglected in critical appraisals. Mónica Zapata, while recalling early negative reactions to the novel and accusations of literary appropriation, investigates the unlikely union of magical realism and melodrama in the novel—a merger that is made possible by their common reliance on hyperbole. Next Cherie Meacham and Victoria Martínez explore the use of myth in Esquivel’s novel, emphasizing in particular the Cinderella myth. While Meacham notes similarities between Esquivel’s novel and the Cinderella story, she posits that by situating that story within the rich context of the Mexican Revolution, Esquivel both mirrors and challenges patriarchal tradition, while establishing the domestic realm as the locus of change. Victoria Martínez asserts that Esquivel employs the Cinderella motif to question roles of women in Mexico, and that novel’s mythical and fairy tale references, its undercurrent of social stagnancy, and its portrayal of indigenous servant women as simpletons, indicate that Esquivel did not have social change in mind when she wrote LWFC. In an essay informed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s studies on the works of Francois Rabelais, Amalia Chaverri underscores carnivalesque elements in the novel, including gastronomic excesses and the satisfaction of sexual needs. She argues that the transgressing nature of the carnival and the empowering effect they have on the female condition enable Tita to stand up to her mother Mama Elena. The food motif is further augmented in Ellyn Lem’s essay on LWFC and U.S. perceptions of Mexican food. According to Lem, the novel and film have come to represent ‘gastronomic nationalism’ and have helped to alter negative impressions towards food tied to Mexico.

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In the final section María Teresa Martínez-Ortiz notes that Esquivel’s text is perhaps more feminine than feminist, due in part to the fact that women play leading roles against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution. Concepts of the feminine in the novel, she observes, can be traced through universal Mexican archetypes such as the mother, the “soldadera” and the “curandera.” My own essay examines the Mexican Revolution not as a backdrop, but rather as an active participant in the story line. While the Revolution’s opposing factions—the Federales and the Revolutionaries—reflect divisions within the De la Garza household, the Revolution as a whole plays a substantial role in the development of the plot that is at times politically ambiguous. For its small size, Like Water for Chocolate is a thematically rich text that lends itself to a variety of perspectives, and sometimes diametrically opposed ones. The essays in A Recipe for Discourse: Perspectives on Like Water for Chocolate represent the novel’s problematic nature in their many diverse approaches, perspectives that are certain to awaken in the reader new ways of approaching the text while challenging old ones. Though any method of grouping essays for purposes of juxtaposition is not an exact science and will customarily leave gaps and overlaps in its wake, it is indeed a worthy format for presenting a diverse group of essays espousing such differing viewpoints. It certainly suits the Rodopi aim. The reader may note and even appreciate serious conflictive viewpoints within the thematic groupings, or she may use them as a springboard for deeper consideration. In any case, she will have set her teeth in a lively batch of essays derived from a novel still as critically controversial as it was commercially popular in its heyday. Eric Skipper 2010

Section I: LWFC and Gender Issues

Women, Alterity and Mexican Identity in Como agua para chocolate

Tina Escaja

Like Water for Chocolate: Cinematic Patriarchy and Tradition

Jorge Barrueto

Like Water for Chocolate and Human Nature

Jerry Hoeg

Women, Alterity and Mexican Identity in Como agua para chocolate1 Tina Escaja University of Vermont Re-creating a new modernity “La mujer ¿esconde la muerte o la vida?, ¿en qué piensa?, ¿piensa acaso?, ¿siente de veras?, ¿es igual a nosotros?” [Woman…does she hide death or life? What does she think about? Does she even think? Does she feel? Is she the same as us?]2 (Paz 79). As he explores the fundamentals of Mexican identity, Octavio Paz reflects upon the female condition, which he considers an “enigma” (79), an other, both a contrast and a complement to man (239). However, his reflection presents a conflict of meaning. On one hand, the pronoun “nosotros” [we] used by Paz in the quote “¿es igual a nosotros?” [is she the same as us?] marks the central position from which he writes and also to which he addresses his observations—a man in possession of the hegemonic discourse of power, a privilege further bolstered by his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. On the other hand, the insight of realizing an other dissociated from the “I/we” also implies a sentiment of crisis and a questioning in tune with the socalled “postmodern condition.” On publishing El laberinto de la soledad in 1950, Paz anticipated the postmodern condition by recognizing and reflecting upon differentiated entities, disregarded until then by History. This perspective is reinforced by the quote written by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado that serves as epigraph to Paz’s book. Machado asserts that, despite the insistence that otherness does not exist, “lo otro no se deja eliminar; subsiste, persiste, es el hueso duro de roer en el que la razón se deja los dientes” [the other cannot be eliminated; it subsists and persists, the gnawed bone to which reason loses its teeth] (7). Nevertheless, Antonio Machado’s words recalled by Paz are mostly referring to “La esencial Heterogeneidad del ser” [the essential heterogeneity of being], that is, to “la incurable otredad que padece lo uno” [the incurable otherness that endures the one] (7). In other

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words, the entities residing on the margin of power—these “others” dissociated from the One, as differentiated entities—continue without existing. A woman, finally, Paz concludes, “nunca es dueña de sí” [is never her own master] (240). The novel Como agua para chocolate, written by Mexican author Laura Esquivel and published in 1989, presents an extraordinary affirmation of otherness as a differentiated one. This affirmation is accomplished through a multiple re-distribution of traditional hierarchical spaces. However, if readers take into account the liberation of difference pointed out by postmodernists, we should also infer that these new voices that had been disregarded by history need the creation of a new center to legitimize them; that is, they need the re-invention of a lineal modernity in order to manifest themselves. And this “new modernity” cannot be innocent since it departs from the hegemonic discourse in order to express itself. In other words, in order to recreate themselves, these entities need to use the language and space of power, which, traditionally, does not include them nor belong to them. The new center presented by Como agua para chocolate consists of the traditional universe of women, usually considered secondary and marginal. The fundamental spatial pole—the kitchen—within which the novel develops is symptomatic. The kitchen represents the new center of interpretation where the reality of such marginality is created and re-constructed; it represents in some ways the identity of Mexican women. Since the protagonist of the story, Tita de la Garza, is born on the kitchen table, she is automatically relegated to the margins of the household, thus forfeiting her original position as legitimate daughter of the farm’s owners, direct European descendants and representatives of patriarchal order. This first instance of subversion transgresses the traditional order and installs a new one to which a variety of marginal entities traditionally disregarded now gain power. In the kitchen, Tita coexists with Chencha, the servant and illiterate peasant, and particularly with Nacha, a Native American who raises Tita as her own, and who, as surrogate mother, instills in Tita her pre-Hispanic knowledge. It is in the kitchen where one cooks, summons, breast-feeds, weaves and gives birth. However, this abdication of the traditional center to the universe of the kitchen is not univocal, and the limits therein maintain a systematic process of continued displacement and “alteration.”

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Through the elements associated with the universe of the kitchen, many other limits are altered, i.e. those of the house, the body, and topographic and historic geography. It is precisely this relativity of limits that creates the new linearity ultimately proposed by Laura Esquivel in her novel. In this study, I intend to consider some of the meta-discursive limits infringed upon or altered in Como agua para chocolate. The principle of “alteration,” in its multiple allusions to otherness, to alterity, to adulteration, to exaltation or change, imposes itself as an instrument of redefining the canon of modernity, and by doing so, deconstructs the patriarchal principles that have defined and marginalized the identity of Mexican women.

1. Textual/Sexual Alteration: Humor and Parody The novel Como agua para chocolate usually appears with this subtitle (or pre-title in some editions): “Novela de entregas mensuales, con recetas, amores y remedios caseros [A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies].” The fragmented structure of the story in months and recipes breaks with the expectation of linearity typical of conventional novels while, at the same time, it proposes and legitimizes a variety of narrative discourses considered marginal by the canon of modernity. Associated with and added to these is the body and discourse of women, equally disregarded by modern meta-narratives. The addition allows legitimizing the woman’s space within the imbrications of approaches proposed by Esquivel’s story. Moreover, in the very articulation of these approaches (implied among them the totalizing notions of high and low literature; of newspaper serial and novel), is located the discrepancy, the distant and ironic perspective that celebrates multiplicity and fragment over the univocal, authoritarian and masculine discourse of power. Como agua para chocolate presents itself as a crossroad of popular genres and topics, many of which are traditionally associated with the feminine: a novel in “installments” (newspaper serial/soap opera), “monthly” (menstrual), “with recipes” (recipe book), “romances” (romance novel) and “home remedies” (domestic handbook). A Spanish-language proverb serves as epigraph and

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anticipates the erotic component of the plot: “A la mesa y en la cama / Una sola vez se llama” [To the table and in bed/ One is called but once]. Some editions of the novel include a picture of a nineteenthcentury kitchen, an image that makes reference to the novel’s time period and also to the nineteenth-century feminine magazines (de Valdés 78)—precursors of modern magazines for women that also include recipes, remedies and romance stories. The novel’s structure refers as well to popular culture and to calculated fragmentation. The novel is divided into twelve months/chapters responding to an equal number of recipes. The ingredients and steps of the recipes allude to episodes in the life of Tita de la Garza, episodes evoked by the reading-interpretation of Tita’s grandniece. The instructions for the recipes are incorporated in the narrative, creating a dual suspense in the reader that is at once culinary and narrative (Glenn 41). The culmination of the recipe coincides with the narrative anticipating a new crisis in the next recipe/chapter (Jaffe 221). Therefore, the novel itself responds to a recipe that would include the main crisis: “The narrative itself becomes a kind of recipe—a how-to book on surviving a mother’s tyranny, of finding love in the midst of familial and social struggle,” Cecilia Lawless states (263). This self-contained aspect of the novel emphasizes the circular structure of the story, which leaves open the possibility for re-initiation even at its end. The book starts and concludes with the same recipe, the making of which corresponds to parallel occasions. In the last page of the book, Tita’s grandniece, the narrator of the story and alter ego of Tita, says that she is cooking “tortas de navidad” to celebrate her own birthday (CAPC 247). This echoes the first recipe/chapter of the novel, “Enero: Tortas de navidad” (CAPC 1), which responds to the occasion of Tita’s sixteenth birthday, vertex of the main crisis around which the plot develops: on the eve of Tita’s birthday the engagement between Rosaura (Tita’s sister) and Pedro (Tita’s boyfriend) is announced. That night, Tita finishes weaving the bedspread for her trousseau, a weaving that she had started a year before, disregarding with her knitting the law of the Garza family that forbids her from marrying and therefore becoming engaged to Pedro because she is the youngest daughter and therefore obligated to care for her mother. To this fabric, Tita decides to add a variety of yarns and colors that will create a kaleidoscope reflecting the fragmentation, excess and parody of the

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textures/texts proposed by the equally kaleidoscopic articulation of the novel. This elaboration of a “dialogic” quilt chronologically foreshadows the recipe-book and diary that Tita will begin two chapters later (CAPC 58).3 Such foreshadowing implies on the one hand the priority given to weaving and knitting, tasks that also have been traditionally delegated to women, and on the other hand the fragmentary episodes and expectations that are repeated throughout the novel. In fact, the expression of certain concepts in Como agua para chocolate frequently presages the prompt discrediting of those same concepts, a trend that points to notions of postmodernity and discontinuity, of fracture and in particular to the use of parody as defined by Linda Hutcheon and applied by Kathleen Glenn to Esquivel’s novel: “repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signaling of difference at the very heart of similarity” (Hutcheon 26). Actually the “feminine” discourses of culinary art, of weaving and sewing, of the manual for etiquette, of melodrama and romance, are subverted and parodied in the novel. The same happens to the principles of “serious” and popular literature, of high and colloquial language, and of hierarchies of gender, class or race. Even notions such as “magic realism” are reinterpreted through humor and parody.4 Josefina de la Garza, called Tita in the novel, represents the excentric axis for this parodic redefinition.5 From her marginal condition as woman (without the right to have an opinion), youngest daughter (destined to remain single), and cook (within the marginal space of the kitchen and servitude), Tita insists on disqualifying the rules imposed by Mama Elena and the patriarchal order she represents: “[Tita] no podía evitar la tentación de transgredir las fórmulas tan rígidas que su madre quería imponerle dentro de la cocina...y de la vida” [Tita could not resist the temptation to transgress the rigid rules that her mother wished to impose on her in the kitchen…and in life] (CAPC 199). As asserted by Linda Hutcheon, postmodernism questions the universal and trans-historic values of modernity, values “no longer seen as based—as claimed—on reason or logic, but rather on a solid alliance with power. In addition, any feeling of ‘inevitability’ of form was shown to be historically and culturally determined. The ‘inevitable’ was not eternal but learned” (26). Likewise, Esquivel’s novel questions many of the statements of power considered

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indisputable. That is the case with Tita’s revision of the Garza family’s law, exposing its irrationality or “fault” (“falla”): Sin embargo, Tita no estaba conforme. Una gran cantidad de dudas e inquietudes acudían a su mente. Por ejemplo, le agradaría tener conocimiento de quién había iniciado esa tradición familiar. Sería bueno hacerle saber a esta ingeniosa persona que en su perfecto plan para asegurar la vejez de las mujeres había una ligera falla... (CAPC 10).6 [Nevertheless, Tita was not convinced. Doubts and anxieties filled her brain. For one thing, she’d like to know who started this family law. It would be good to let this genius know that there was a slight problem in this perfect plan of guaranteeing that women reach a ripe old age…]

In the same way, Tita questions (while predicating) the rules of the Carreño’s etiquette manual (CAPC 57), alters ingredients in her recipes after warning against the dangers of doing so (CAPC 45, 47), tells the story of Gertrudis immediately after the prohibition of naming her in the house (CAPC 58), and explains her sister’s episode as “liberation” when conventions would suggest it is an offense (CAPC 56). Likewise, Pedro marries Rosaura “sintiendo un inmenso e imperecedero amor por Tita” [feeling a great and undying love for Tita] (CAPC 14). While Gertrudis worries about the syrup for her fritters in the midst of the Tita’s revelation of her presumptive pregnancy (CAPC 190). Even the intensively emotive embrace between Chencha and Tita, after six months of the latter’s reclusion at John’s house, is parodic in nature: “fue breve, para evitar que el caldo se enfriara” [was brief, so the stock wouldn’t burn] (CAPC 124). Humor also functions as a mechanism of parody in a double sense of the term. On one hand, the etymology points to the Latin humor alluding to corporal fluids that are used to physically categorize people. Using this meaning, Esquivel’s novel prioritizes the discourse of the body, its natural needs and secretions, over the artificial discourse of moral conventions. Besides the gastronomic approach of the story, the novel abounds in references to corporal functions traditionally considered inferior or taboo. For example, the novel makes correspondences between the needs to urinate, to quench thirst and make love (CAPC 98); between menstruation and liberation

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(CAPC 200); and between scatology and the antagonistic presence of a character such as Rosaura. Based on the etymology of the term, humor is colloquially associated with mood (to be in a bad or good mood; “estar de buen o de mal humor”), and also between humor and comedy, to provoke laughter. Both values of the term coexist in the title of the novel. The expression “like water for chocolate” associates the literal meaning, water at boiling point, to the sentiment of irritation and annoyance, but also alludes to sexual excitement and desire. The relation between substance (liquid at boiling point) and flesh (the person excited), turns into parody when presented as literal articulation of a literary text. The variables associating corporal fluids in the novel therefore coexist with the parody of discourses approached from this very same articulation (historic, popular, gastronomic, etc.) through the purgative mechanism of laughing, of humor. Also, the presumptive use of socalled “magic realism” extends these meanings of humor to an ultimate connotation, that of excess, caprice. and fantasy that the novel reverts into the culinary.7 Therefore, narrative conventions are subverted through their own use. Parody and humor revise the romantic allusion to ideal love represented by the feelings between Tita and Pedro through scatological means or allusions to fluids and spices. The ending of the story is not typical of fairy tales either: while the story does end in a marriage, it is not between Tita and Pedro; the “happy ending” does not occur either. On the contrary, the excess and the dialogic discourse manifest in the allegorical form of fireworks; the fire in the kitchen consumes the rest of the house, burning it to a cinder in a climatic ending that obliterates the culinary excess presented throughout the story. The result is a dialogic product that incorporates multiple discourses for the consumption of a variety of palates. The commercial success of Como agua para chocolate is unusual, invading academic, culinary and geographic territories. The novel is included in university requirements, is discussed at conferences, and inspires critical studies like this one. Its recipes are advertised and cooked in restaurants. The “best seller” appears in the Spanish version of Anchor Books as “Nacional” (“El Bestseller nacional”), while its English counterpart presents it as “National” (“National Bestseller”). This duplication insinuates an interest for territorial appropriation

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while implying the association of two countries, Mexico and the USA, by pointing to the bilingual and cultural heterogeneity of American reality. Nevertheless, the barrier that in reality exists between both countries overlaps geographical borders based on the marketing of the book and coincides with the fluidity of the border typical of the period in which the novel takes place.8 In this sense, the carnival of profanations and parodic innuendos reaches the social and editorial terrain, showing as well the supposed dangers of cultural exchange that seem to prevail over the questioning of limits presented by the novel. In the preliminaries to Como agua para chocolate, both the Spanish and English editions at Anchor Books warn: “The recipes of this book are based on traditional Mexican recipes and have not been tested by the publisher.”

2. Altering Body Limits: Transubstantiation From the very moment that Nacha, the Indian cook of the Garza’s family, resolves to “formarle el estómago” of Tita [develop Tita’s tastes] (5), the identity of the ranch owners’ youngest daughter will be associated with the marvelous universe of the kitchen. Tita will exercise an absolute authority over this space as opposed to Mama Elena, her adversary in controlling the destinies of the family members. The natural territory of “humores,” in its variety of references to corporal fluids, mood, hilarity and excess, will replace the external territory of the house, associated to the artificiality of bourgeois conventions. The consanguinity that relates Tita to the Garza’s family becomes, therefore, altered in order to establish a new and truthful connection with pre-Hispanic culture in culinary and feminine terms, as foreshadowed by Tita’s spectacular birth. From the beginning of the story, elements of excess and wonder are almost exclusively associated to Tita. The residue of the tears shed by Tita at her birth, “rellenó un costal de cinco kilos que utilizaron para cocinar por bastante tiempo” [filled a five-kilo sack, which was used for cooking for a long time] (CAPC 4). Her “second birth,” that is, the one happening after Tita’s confrontation with Mama Elena and her convalescence at John’s house, is also characterized by tears that run like a stream from the same room where Tita recovers her voice and identity (CAPC 124-125). Likewise, Tita is the only character that

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witnesses and converses with spirits and who recovers the ancestral pre-Columbian memory through cooking and home remedies. The recipes that she cooks possess qualities that radically alter events, such as Gertrudis’ running away or the collective reactions from the people who consume Tita’s dishes while attending special ceremonies: the vomiting episode at Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding (CAPC 37-39), the euphoria at Roberto’s christening (CAPC 81), and the passionate elopements at Esperanza and Alex’s wedding (CAPC 242-43). Likewise, the enunciation of a word by Tita, coming as it does from the mouth—the site for tasting—acquires a certain demiurgic function comparable to the power of creation and interpretation that Tita conjures through her dishes. This happens with the wishes expressed by Tita before the porcelain doll used for the Three Kings’ day bread, most of which will come true: “Ojalá que su madre dejara de atormentarla. . . . ¡Ojalá que Esperanza se casara. . . . ¡Ojalá que Gertrudis regresara a casa . . .” [She wished her mother would stop tormenting her!...She wished Esperanza would be allowed to marry!…She wished Gertrudis would return home!…] (CAPC 17576). The same happens when Tita “accidentally” puts a curse on her sister: when Rosaura insists on continuing the Garza’s cruel tradition with her daughter Esperanza, Tita’s rage makes her wish that her sister “nunca hubiera dejado escapar esas repugnantes, malolientes, incoherentes, pestilentes, indecentes y repelentes palabras. Mas valía que se las hubiera tragado y guardado en el fondo de sus entrañas hasta que se le pudrieran y agusanaran” [had never uttered those repugnant, foul, incoherent, contaminating, indecent and repulsive words. It would have been better if she had swallowed them and kept them inside her until her guts were rotted and infested with worms] (CAPC 150-51). As we know, Rosaura dies in a flatulent and grotesque way, due to “congestión estomacal aguda” [acute stomach congestion] (CAPC 233).9 Tita’s exercise of her demiurgic power from the realm of the kitchen invades the patria potestas’s territory that has been invaded by Mama Elena. Mama Elena usurps the patriarchal space when she exercises authority from her position as woman who intends to exclude men: Nunca lo he necesitado para nada [a man], sola he podido con el rancho y con mis hijas. Los hombres no son tan

12

Tina Escaja importantes para vivir padre—recalcó. Ni la revolución es tan peligrosa como la pintan” [I’ve never needed men for anything; I’ve been able to take care of the ranch and my daughters alone. Men are not necessary for survival—she stressed. And the Revolution is not as dangerous as they say, either] (CAPC 82).

In the same way, Mama Elena transgresses the limits of moral conventions of class and race by having maintained an adulterous relationship with a mulatto from slavery origins. As opposed to Tita, the falsification of Mama Elena’s discourse implies the systematic negation of the enunciations she utters. As we know, reality contradicts Mama Elena’s words in terms of the Revolution (she will become a victim when attacked by bandoleers); her strong disposition against Tita has little effect (she does not manage to avoid Tita and Pedro’s relationship); her curses and predictions equally fail, such as when she curses the presumptive child of Tita: “¡Lo maldigo yo! ¡A él y a ti, para siempre!” [I’ll curse him! Him and you both, forever!] (CAPC 173). Once confronted with the illegitimacy of the model presented by Mama Elena, Tita manages to exorcize not only the phantom of her deceased mother, but also the relation of dependence to her: -¿Qué es comportarse decentemente? ¿Como usted lo hacía? -Sí. -¡Pues eso es lo que hago! ¿O no tuvo usted una hija ilícitamente? -¡Te vas a condenar por hablarme así! -¿No más de lo que usted está! . . . (CAPC 200). [-What is decent behavior? The way you behaved? -Yes. -Well, that’s what I’ll do! You did have an illegitimate child, didn’t you? -You’ll be condemned for talking to me like that! -Not any more than you already are!]

As happens with Mama Elena, Rosaura’s judgments likewise won’t have any consequence throughout the story: Rosaura’s determination to remove Esperanza from Tita’s influence won’t

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succeed (CAPC 215), and her intention to maintain control over her daughter’s education will also fail (CAPC 238). On the contrary, Tita exercises a quasi-absolute dominance on the relations and destinies of the ranch’s members. In the moment that Rosaura marries Pedro, Rosaura, who was already perceived negatively due to her bond with Mama Elena and her dislike of cooking and food in general, begins to have nausea and gastric trouble. The ingestion of the nuptial cake, intoxicated by Tita’s tears that have transferred her frustration, creates a collective vomiting among the fellow diners that includes, in a spectacular way, the bride herself, Rosaura: no hubo un sólo pedazo de su vestido que quedara libre de vómito. Un voluminoso río macilento la envolvió y la arrastró unos metros, provocando que sin poder resistir más lanzara como un volcán en erupción estruendosas bocanadas de vómito” [Her dress was completely covered with vomit. A huge river covered her and dragged her a few meters, causing her to spew noisy jets of vomit like a volcano] (CAPC 38-39).

Nevertheless, when Rosaura manages to escape Tita’s influence for a while and thus recover her body and identity, she quickly succumbs to Tita’s culinary spell as soon as she returns, to the point of dying from it: Tita se sorprendió al verla. Estaba igual de delgada que cuando era soltera... Lo mismo le había pasado cuando se habían ido a vivir a San Antonio: adelgazó rápidamente, pero no hacía más que regresar al rancho y ¡a engordar! [Tita was surprised when she saw her. She was as skinny as she’d been before she’d gotten married… The same thing had happened when she had gone to live in San Antonio: she grew thin quickly, but as soon as she returned to the ranch, she fattened up again!] (CAPC 213).

Mama Elena also suffers the consequences of the wishes and feelings transferred through Tita’s dishes. Mama Elena, disabled after the bandits’ attack, insists on recognizing a sour taste in the food cooked by Tita (CAPC 132). Furthermore, she is convinced that Tita is trying to poison her and decides to counteract this by ingesting a strong purgative (CAPC 136). This remedy will end up confirming her

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predictions, since abusing the purgative finally poisons her (CAPC 136). The principle of transubstantiation will be dominant throughout the story, transmuting identities while conditioning characters and events.10 In accordance, Tita’s body will consubstantiate in various occasions with the body of Nacha, which coexists as well with generations of the indigenous culture: “Tal parecía que era la misma Nacha la que en el cuerpo de Tita realizaba todas estas actividades” [It felt like Nacha herself inhabited Tita’s body as she did these activities] (48). The voluptuous stare of Pedro transforms the virginal breast of Tita “de castos a voluptuousos” [from chaste to voluptuous] (CAPC 67). This visual intercourse, sublimed in the story into a sexual one, anticipates Tita’s miraculous ability to breastfeed Roberto, the son of Pedro and Rosaura (CAPC 77). Tita’s persisting wish to nourish—while keeping control over the people she feeds—produces milk from her own breasts, already transformed by the visual communion with Pedro at the kitchen. For this reason, Tita acts as Roberto’s mother by “having” him (she delivered Roberto), by breast-feeding him (the biological mother cannot do it), and by replacing Rosaura at the banquet for Roberto’s Christening. In a sense Roberto is, after all, a consequence of the powerful love between Pedro and Tita. A similar transference happens between Tita and Esperanza, the daughter of Rosaura and Pedro. Both share similar conditions that bond them. Both share the destiny in the Garza tradition to remain single (CAPC 147); both are born prematurely and in relation to a death in the family (CAPC 146); and both need to be raised in the kitchen, feeding from teas and atoles that associate them to preColumbian tradition, instead of breast-feeding from their biological mothers and getting from them the implied patriarchal and colonial tradition represented by Mama Elena and Rosaura (CAPC 147). At the same time, Tita acts as Nacha did when taking charge of feeding Esperanza (“formarle el estómago”), and therefore forming the identity of the child in relation to the universe of the kitchen. In this uterine space of the kitchen, “paradisíaco y cálido” [paradisiacal and warm] (CAPC 147), locus of creativity and reconstruction of the external order, Tita “forms” Esperanza while reshaping herself at the same time. She liberates her godchild while doing the same for herself when she names her Esperanza, Hope. Ultimately, Tita transfers

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herself to Esperanza’s daughter who will tell the story of her grandaunt, Tita, from these associations: “yo soy igual de sensible que Tita, mi tía abuela” [I am as sensitive as Tita, my great-aunt] (CAPC 3, 247). The kitchen functions, therefore, as the territory for reconstructing the order imposed by Mama Elena and the patriarchal conventions she represents, an order inherited by Rosaura, alter ego of Mama Elena. At the same time, food becomes the signifier of Tita’s feelings of frustration, euphoria, castration or desire.11 Not only can Tita’s feelings be recognized and transferred through her dishes, but also her body transubstantiates in her dishes. The most obvious example of the principle of transubstantiation is the key episode related to the chapter-recipe of quail in rose petal sauce (Chapter Three, March). At the beginning of this chapter, a warning that implicitly encourages transgression is given: Se desprenden con mucho cuidado los pétalos de las rosas, procurando no pincharse los dedos, pues aparte de que es muy doloroso (el piquete), los pétalos pueden quedar impregnados de sangre y esto, aparte de alterar el sabor del platillo, puede provocar reacciones químicas, por demás peligrosas (CAPC 45) (my emphasis). [Remove the rose petals with care, taking care not to prick your fingers; besides being very painful, the petals can become impregnated with blood, and that, besides altering the taste of the dish, can provoke chemical reactions, which can be dangerous.]

Tita, an expert cook, ostensibly disregards her own statement: “Tita apretaba las rosas con tal fuerza contra su pecho que, cuando llegó a la cocina, las rosas, que en un principio eran de color rosado, ya se habían vuelto rojas por la sangre de las manos y el pecho de Tita” [Tita squeezed the roses so hard against her chest that when she arrived at the kitchen, the roses, pink to begin with, had turned red from the blood from Tita’s hands and chest (CAPC 47). The different reactions of her fellow diners to this powerful alchemy are related through Tita’s perceptions: Rosaura feigns or really feels nausea (CAPC 50); Mama Elena, due to hypocrisy or true antagonism towards Tita, states that the dish has “demasiada sal” [too much salt]

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(CAPC 50); Tita “leaves” her own body to be transferred to the dish and actively penetrate Pedro’s body, who receives it in amorous ecstasy (CAPC 51); Gertrudis synthesizes this sexual relation: “Parecía que habían descubierto un código nuevo de comunicación en el que Tita era la emisora, Pedro el receptor y Gertrudis la afortunada en quien se sintetizaba esta singular relación sexual, a través de la comida” [It appeared they had discovered a new mode of communication in which Tita was the transmitter and Pedro the recipient, and lucky Gertrudis was the one through whom this unique sexual bond was synthesized through food] (CAPC 51). Gertrudis’ function as intermediary between Pedro and Tita’s love will prevail throughout the novel. Gertrudis’ bed is where Pedro and Tita consummate their love (CAPC 159) and will also be the site for their clandestine sexual encounters. Likewise, Gertrudis will facilitate Tita’s revelation to Pedro about her presumptive pregnancy (CAPC 191) and will recommend contraceptive methods to Tita (CAPC 203). Gertrudis, in short, reflects Tita’s sexual subconscious. The sexual liberation and exhibition of Gertrudis’ naked body provides a stark contrast to Rosaura’s inhibition and restraint, in a Manichean presentation that evokes fairytales, a model that Tita conveniently (and comically) emphasizes through the power of her dishes.12 Tita locates herself deliberately between both sides, ultimately relocating herself in a new order where she works as Deus ex maquina of this gastronomic mesh, ultimately achieving her objective: to consummate her love for Pedro and “obtener el derecho de determinar su propia vida” [gain the right to live her own life] (CAPC 168). Paradoxically, this last statement won’t be verified, and all her desire will maintain the secretive nature typical of the marginal universe where it is presented. Laura Esquivel will be the one revealing this possibility which has been traditionally impossible, while on the other hand reaffirming the patriarchal principle of the kitchen as a space for reclusion. Nevertheless, due to the systematic toppling of expectations throughout the novel, as well as the commercial success of the story, the kitchen will also be exposed as a locus for power, creativity and liberation of Mexican women.

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3. Altering Feminine Archetypes: Malinche, Guadalupe and Penelope “revised” In her essay “La mujer mexicana del siglo XIX,” Rosario Castellanos denounces the scarcity, superficiality and secondary position of women in Mexican literature, who have often been reduced to a mere sketch (159-160). Among the Mexican female stereotypes, Castellanos highlights the figures of la madre, con su capacidad inagotable de sacrificio; la esposa, sólida, inamovible, leal; la novia casta; la prostituta avergonzada de su condición y dispuesta a las mayores humillaciones con tal de redimirse” [the mother, with her unending capacity for sacrifice; the wife, stolid, loyal; the sweetheart, chaste; the prostitute ashamed of her condition and willing to accept the worst humiliatins as long as she redeems herself] (160).

Similarly, the critic Luis Leal divides Mexican female archetypes into two groups: “that of the woman who has kept her virginity and that of the one who has lost it” (227). The Virgin of Guadalupe encapsulates the first group, a figure associated with the untouchable, virginal novia, and particularly with the mother “humble, obedient, unpretentious, quiet, faithful, and submissive” (Leal 153). Malinche is a representative of the second group. Lover and interpreter of Hernán Cortés, she will reappear in the Mexican psyche as “la Chingada” [the fucked one], the woman who was at once traitor and victim of rape. She can be recognized in the myth of Eva and associated with the “Madre violada” [the violated mother] (Paz 103), the “deflowered,” the prostitute. Como agua para chocolate questions and subverts many of these archetypes, while inserting Mexican women into the official cultural and literary discourse where these voices have traditionally been ignored or simplified.13 At the same time, the novel bravely problematizes traditional figures such as the submissive and passive mother, the untouchable girlfriend, the admirable wife, the resentful spinster, and the repentant prostitute. The gallery of women that Esquivel presents disqualifies all these notions while showing the possibility of a double reading of the traditional portrayals.

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First, the novel relegates to the background an official reading that coincides with traditional settings and archetypes associated with the “buenas costumbres,” good manners, canonized by the Carreño’s manual of etiquette. Agents of this official discourse are Mama Elena and Rosaura. At the same time, the focus itself of the novel questions these very same parameters/myths: Mama Elena is a mother who abuses and degrades in name of the State; Tita is the wonderful girlfriend of two men who has sexual relations with one without detriment of her love for/from the other; Rosaura literally appears as a “repulsive” wife whose obedience to the Garza’s law implies usurping her sister’s place while her sense of faithfulness and “decency” are disqualified as she is systematically presented as an absurd and grotesque figure; Gertrudis liberates herself as a prostitute and redeems herself as a soldier and a general of the rebel troops. The figure of la Malinche gets profoundly altered and questioned in Esquivel’s story, defying the male-centric definition that has linked la Malinche to the misogynistic national allegory, a myth to which Octavio Paz’s essay contributed. According to Paz, la Malinche represents for Mexico the origins of national uprooting (105), the rejection of the indigenous tradition in favor of the white foreigner that woos, seduces and rapes the Indian woman (104). While Tita de la Garza rejects tradition when disobeying her mother and the official ‘law’ she represents, it is Mama Elena who behaves as a “reverse” Malinche, white criolla seduced by the foreign mestizo. Mama Elena’s treason reveals the falsification of the official discourse she represents, a power that ultimately makes evident the dependent and presumptive “chingada” condition of colonialism before the patriotic (indigenous) values of the Revolution with which the rebellious Tita is associated. In fact, Tita becomes a symbol of the Mexican Revolution and la Reforma by contradicting her Mother and thereby breaking with the colonial tradition she incarnates. This “negación de la Madre” paradoxically coincides with the excluding affirmations of Octavio Paz (105-106). In fact, Mama Elena’s authority over Tita is disqualified from the very beginning of the story. As a result of shock resulting from her husband’s sudden death, Mama Elena could not breast-feed Tita, “se le fue la leche” (CAPC 4). The fact that Mama Elena cannot provide milk (“amamantar” in Spanish—or rather, properly act as “mama”) delegates to Nancha the aforementioned function of “formarle el

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estómago,” that is, to educate Tita’s stomach/identity, while Mama Elena takes on the masculine role of running the ranch (CAPC 5). However, when Mama Elena dies we learn that she indirectly provoked the redistribution that constitutes the base of the novel’s conflict and the relocation of Tita to the realm of the kitchen. Juan de la Garza, Mama Elena’s husband and Tita’s biological father, died from a heart attack after learning about Mama Elena’s adulterous relationship with Gertrudis’ real father (CAPC 139). Therefore, Mama Elena determines Tita’s destiny when imposing her condition as youngest daughter and having her raised in the kitchen. Tita’s persistence in fulfilling her love for Pedro consists also in an effort to question the official order usurped by Mama Elena while legitimizing reason and the right to the “natural law” of love and reproduction. At the same time, Tita vindicates a new and truthful order integrated by pre-Columbian discourse inherited from her adoptive mother, the Indian Nacha. The secretive, feminine condition of Mama Elena’s malinchismo coexists then with her external, masculine attitude that corresponds to the violence distinctive of the term “chingar,” to fuck. According to Octavio Paz, “chingar es hacer violencia sobre otro. Es un verbo masculino, activo, cruel; pica, hiere, desgarra, mancha. Y provoca una amarga, resentida satisfacción en el que lo ejecuta” [chingar is to enact violence on another. It is a masculine verb, active, cruel; to prick, to wound, to tear, to stain] (93). According to Tita, Mama Elena is an expert in “partir, desmantelar, desmembrar, desolar, destetar, desjarretar, desbaratar o desmadrar algo” [dividing, dismantling, dismembering, separating, dispossessing, impairing or dominating things] (CAPC 97). This duplicity in Mama Elena’s character gets neutralized in the face of revolutionary turmoil. The ranch will be attacked by opportunistic bandits and Mama Elena “al tratar de defender su honor, recibió un fuerte golpe en la espalda” [in the act of defending her honor, received a hard blow to the back] (CAPC 130) which significantly immobilizes her from waist down. As a consequence, Mama Elena’s authority would be reduced to less than the extension of her own body, over which she exercises violence to the point of dying from ingestion of purgatives. Nevertheless, Mama Elena manages, with her death, to maintain her discursive integrity by opposing Tita’s authority until the very end and restoring with her

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death the patriarchal order that would have been broken if Tita had married while Mama Elena was alive.14 Interestingly enough, it is only after Mama Elena’s death that Tita realizes her mother’s duplicity. While preparing Mama Elena’s body for her vigil, Tita “le quitó de la cintura el enorme llavero que como una cadena la había acompañado desde que ella recordaba. . . . Pero además del enorme llavero, tenía colgado al cuello un pequeño dije en forma de corazón y dentro de él había una pequeña llave” [removed from her belt the huge keyring, which, like a chain, she had worn as long as she could remember.... Besides the enormous keyring, she wore on her neck a small heart-shaped locket, inside of which was a tiny key] (CAPC 137). This small key belongs to a secret box where Mama Elena hid her diary and letters revealing her love for José Treviño, Mama Elena’s lover and true father of Gertrudis. The “enormous” keyring hanging like a chain from Mama Elena’s neck symbolizes the masculine attributes usurped and exercised by her, and points to the official story. The charm and secret box symbolize the vaginal, feminine condition of Mama Elena’s story. To an extent Tita sympathizes with Mama Elena’s condition as she identifies it with her own—a marginalized and victimized condition that has also experienced “un amor frustrado” [a frustrated love] (CAPC 139). Chencha is another character that revises the figure of la Malinche. Chencha’s ability to lie, that is, to create stories, transcends the typical character of the gossipy and talkative servant. Also, this creative ability enables a continuous transgression of norms that ultimately places Chencha as mediator between moral and physical borders presented throughout the novel. Chencha frequently disobeys Mama Elena, sympathizes with Tita, reads other people’s letters, acts as conduit between the disavowed Gertrudis and Tita in delivering a letter from the former to the latter (CAPC 126), and mediates between Tita and Mama Elena by informing Mama Elena of Tita’s decision not to return to the ranch (CAPC 126). Her frequent crossing of the border between México and the U.S. (CAPC 126-127) functions as metaphor of the constant fluidity of normative borders crossed, a fluidity that Chencha transfers to the needy of the story, in particular Tita. In this sense, the ability of the Indian Chencha to rescue and be a “savior” is constant throughout the story: Chencha “resuscitates” Tita with her ox-tail soup (CAPC 123); she announces that dinner is ready at the moment of highest tension, like a “bendición,” a blessing (CAPC

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157); she returns to the ranch as if she had fallen from the sky, “caída del cielo[…]como siempre” [fallen from the sky…as always] when Tita needed her most (CAPC 152). Chencha’s creative ability, her role as mediator and rescuer, vindicates the Malinche figure, the Indian also raped and considered disobedient and a traitor. Malinche’s visionary quality and her ability to mediate have also been vindicated by contemporary Chicana authors, who see in Malinche “a feminine Messiah” (Ordóñez 326), “a synthesis of North American as well as Mexican culture” (Ordóñez 318-19). However, the main character in Esquivel’s story that encapsulates the Malinche archetype is Gertrudis. Gertrudis, in her broad (and literal) condition of “hijo de la Chingada,” properly represents the discourse of the Revolution as defined by Paz (90). Nevertheless, Gertrudis’ condition as woman increases the marginality of this character. Gertrudis is not only “hijo de la Chingada,” but incarnates “malinchismo” as well. Gertrudis is illegitimate, biracial and a prostitute. She lives as a soldier, on the margin of the Revolution and within the Revolution at the same time. But this extreme marginal condition of Gertrudis, far from being condemned or ignored as societal values would dictate, is celebrated by Esquivel in her association with the protagonist of the novel, Tita. In fact, the subversive condition of Gertrudis, representative of the Revolution, ends being (traditionally) legitimized triply: by her marriage to her first love; by legitimizing her own identity as a mulatta through having a biracial child within wed-lock; and by social recognition and financial power: La llegada de Gertrudis a la fiesta llamó la atención de todos. Llegó en un coupé Ford ‘T’, de los primeros que sacaron con velocidades. . . . [Juan] lucía un elegante traje ajustado, sombrero de carrete y polainas. El hijo mayor de ambos, se había convertido en un mulato escultural. . . . El color de la piel era la herencia de su abuelo y los ojos azules la de Mamá Elena (CAPC 234-35). [Gertrudis’ arrival at the party got everybody’s attention. She drove up in a model T Ford, one of the first with multiple gears….[Juan] looked splendid in his elegant tight-fitting suit, top hat and leggings. Their oldest child had grown into a fine-looking mulatto….He had his grandfather’s dark skin and Mama Elena’s blue eyes.]

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Therefore, Gertrudis’ final triumph supposedly represents the ideal order of the new México, but not necessarily the personal liberation of Gertrudis as representative of Mexican women. With messianic post-revolutionary Mexico, old patriarchal values neglected during the Revolution—values that exclude women from the official story and from canonic literature as well (Franco 188)—are restored. The implied clash of Gertrudis (a woman formerly liberated from clothes and ornaments, accomplished general and horsewoman), is represented in her apparent clumsiness, excess and grotesqueness with which she exercises her new role, in contrast to the impeccable elegance of Juan: “[Gertrudis] al bajarse del auto por poco se le cae el gran sombrero de ala ancha con plumas de avestruz que portaba” [Getting out of the automobile, Gertrudis nearly dropped the widebrim ostrich-feather hat she was carrying] (CAPC 235).15 Between both extremes discussed—the conservative/colonial extreme represented by Mama Elena/Rosaura on one hand, and Gertrudis and the Revolution (with which Tita and the story sympathize) on the other—Tita is situated in a middle ground, or at least in a space different from both extremes. On being relocated to the central locale of the kitchen, Tita adopts a discourse that is neither Mama Elena’s nor Gertrudis’ but rather a discourse inherited by her new and truthful mother, the Indian Nacha. In this way Tita rescues and incorporates within herself the pre-Columbian discourse where oral wisdom and magic realism coexist. As stated before, elements of excess and wonder are associated almost exclusively with Tita. Her creative authority within the universe of the kitchen allows her to breastfeed her sister’s son even without ever having had sexual intercourse. In this sense, Tita acts as Mother Virgen, thus representing another archetype of Mexican women, la Virgen de Guadalupe. In the novel, Tita is presented as a nurturer and provider that feeds the hungry and protects the helpless (CAPC 77). This virginal representation is visually emphasized in the homonymous movie, whose script was also written by Laura Esquivel: before a window at John’s house, the convalescent Tita radiates peace and light like the mestiza Virgin in the popular iconography of Guadalupe. Therefore, Tita is presented as a protective Virgin and devoted mother, but also as Malinche, assaulted and violated by the masculine aggression of her mother and also by the literal strength of

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the macho, as exemplified by the first sexual “encounter” between Tita and Pedro (CAPC 159). As a recipient of tradition, Laura Esquivel, through the protagonist Tita, reinterprets and reconstructs this tradition from the universe of the kitchen and the female body. Her act of “revision,” in the sense proposed by Adrienne Rich,16 is extended by Esquivel to other myths of western iconography such as the myth of Penelope. The discourse of excess and of Tita’s fragmented subjectivity encapsulates in the redefinition of Penelope’s myth: the weaver. Similar to the Odyssey’s character, the weaving that Tita begins on the day of her engagement to Pedro represents fidelity and waiting. For both characters, weaving functions as a substitute for their absent love. But the function appears mirror-like: while Penelope undoes her weaving every night to delay choosing one of her many suitors, Tita continues weaving compulsively from the first sign of absence from her only love. The nocturnal, insomniac, solitary quality relates to both characters while it guarantees them a certain level of independence. In the traditional representation of Penelope, this independence consists of maintaining her will to not become engaged to anyone, to negate Odysseus’ death. For Tita it represents the sexual warmth that she misses, her desire to cling to Pedro and prolong her denied bride’s trousseau. The result offers another example of excess and dialogism: given the variety of stems used by Tita in her compulsive weaving, her bedspread converts into a huge and kaleidoscopic bride’s train when Dr. Brown rescues Tita from the severity of her mother. Tita’s bride train transfers into a burial shroud—as happens with Penelope´s weaving—once the bedspread reaches the exact length of her mother’s ranch. At this point, both propositions differ. Penelope weaves and undoes her weaving in her condition as “other” within the hegemonic discourse of power—the power represented by Laertes (for whom Penelope makes the shroud), by Odysseus (whose life is symbolically maintained through the weaving), and by her suitors (for whom Penelope creates the weave, the plot). On the other hand, Tita’s projection is personal and univocal, differentiated from the “One” and without implications of mourning but celebration. In their last sexual encounter, while Tita consummates her love with Pedro (also in an univocal, masturbatory way), she consumes with her passion the three hectares of the ranch, that is, the space of the official discourse to

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which the shroud is devoted. Only one object is saved from this redemptive and purifying action: a book of recipes that perpetuate while rescuing from patriarchal authority the identity of Mexican women. This identity, recovered through the writing of the marginal and the oral space of the kitchen, finally celebrates a new equally kaleidoscopic text of recipes, romances and home remedies, i.e., the novel in monthly installments written by Laura Esquivel. With this novel, Tita de la Garza, the narrators’ grand-aunt, will continue living (persisting, subsisting, without allowing being eliminated) while someone cooks, that is, reads, interprets and consumes her recipes.17

Notes 1

This study is an English, revised version of my article “Reinscribiendo a Penélope: Mujer e identidad mejicana en Como agua para chocolate.” 2 English translations are provided by the author and the editor. 3 The “dialogic” discourse differs from the “monologic” discourse in that it recognizes the language of the “Other” while celebrating its difference. The concept comes from Mikhail Bakhtin who dismantles the authoritarian monologue of power in favor of what he calls, in translation by David H. Richter, “carnivalización of literature” (725). The elements associated to this sociolinguistic carnival , such as parody, blasphemy, obscenity, disobedience, code-inversion, can be recognized in Como agua para chocolate’s structure and themes, allegorized as well by Tita’s bedspread. The “bakhtinian” aspect of Esquivel’s novel has been noted by Kathleen M. Glenn (42). 4 Glenn states that “Como agua is a parodic text” (41) and notes many of the discourses parodied in the novel, such as newspaper serials or melodrama. According to Glenn, the “lack of verisimilitude, hyperbolic language and set phrases, melodramatic tone are . . . deliberate strategies employed to emphasize the ironic distance that exists between Esquivel's text and the formulaic ones she recasts” (43). Other critics have also pointed to the parodic approach of the novel, including María Elena de Valdés, Janice Jaffe, and Kristine Ibsen, who studies the parodic use of “magic realism” in the novel. 5 Linda Hutcheon identifies what she calles “ex-centric” with “those who are marginalized by a dominant ideology” for whom “parody appears to have become . . . the mode” (35). This is the case with Tita’s relation to Mama Elena’s power, although

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her “ex-centricity” relocates to the new center of the kitchen that explores Esquivel. The “ex-centric” condition of Tita and of the novel could extend, as expressed by Glenn, to the geography of Mexico and to Laura Esquivel herself (44 n5). 6 Another example of questioning values considered inevitable and absolute is the axiom later introduced by Gertrudis: “La mera verdad es que la verdad no existe” [the real truth is that there is no truth] (190). 7 The relation between humor and fantasy, more obvious in the Italian use of the term “umore,” has been highlighted by Luigi Pirandello in his work on the subject. 8 “The way of life along the Mexican-U.S. border from the 1850s to the narrative time of 1895-1934 was a period of constant border-crossing... It is only in the post-World War II era that the border has become a barrier” (de Valdés 82 n6). 9 Like Tita, Pedro also maintains absolute coherence with the words he pronounces. He will be faithful to his words all through the story: “yo soy hombre de pocas, pero muy firmes palabras. Le juro que tendrá mi amor por siempre” [I am a man of few but my word is my honor. I swear that you will have my love for always] (17). 10 Merriam Webster on-line defines “transubstantiation” as “the miraculous change by which according to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox dogma the eucharistic elements at their consecration become the body and blood of Christ while keeping only the appearances of bread and wine.” /www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary “Consubstantiation,” by the same source, appears as “the actual substantial presence and combination of the body and blood of Christ with the eucharistic bread and wine according to a teaching associated with Martin Luther.” 11 The examples of association of Tita’s feelings to food are numerous, starting with the title itself of the novel, which, among other associations, relates boiling water to Tita’s annoyance: “Tita literalmente estaba como agua para chocolate. Se sentía de lo más irritable” [Tita was literally like water for chocolate. She was quite irritable] (151). Another clear example happens when Tita’s sexual frustration relates to the last chile in walnut sauce left in a banquet, a delicacy that cannot be eaten according to the manual of etiquette: “¡Se sentía tan sola y abandonada!. . . . ¡un maravilloso chile en nogada¡ Que contiene en su interior todos los secretos del amor, pero que nadie podrá desentrañar a causa de la decencia” [She felt so alone and abandoned….a marvelous chile in walnut sauce! Inside it contains all the secrets of love, but, out of decency, it could never be penetrated] (56-57). 12 As previously noted, one of the models parodied in Como agua para chocolate is the fairy tale. Frequently, Esquivel’s rhetoric evokes children’s stories: “Tita pronunció las palabras mágicas para hacer desaparecer a Mamá Elena para siempre” [Tita pronounced the magic words that would vanquish Mama Elena forever] (200); “Pedro golpeó su copa con la de los demás con tal fuerza que la rompió en mil pedazos” [Pedro clashed his glass against everyone else’s with such vigor that it broke in a thousand pieces] (157). María Elena de Valdés (81) and Kathleen Glenn (44-45) study the specific relation between this novel and the story of Cinderella. 13 The gallery of female characters in Como agua para chocolate is very rich. In contrast to the variety and complexity of many of the women in the novel, there are few men of relevance, and even these are mostly sketched by the protagonist, Tita, and her alter ego, Esperanza’s daughter and narrator of the story. This is the case of

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Pedro, presented with a personality with little or no prominence. John Brown appears as a more complex character due perhaps to his ambiguous and in many ways “feminized” presentation. 14 In fact, most transgressions and questionings of the hegemonic, repressive order maintain an unresolved quality in the novel, and the oppressive structures would prevail to the end. See on this regard my essay “Alteración del espacio sociosexual: Como agua para chocolate y al voluntad de saber.” 15 Gertrudis’ clash is also apparent in the movie, a subtle concession to the affirmation of patriarchal values that ultimately remain “unaltered” in the story. In this sense, the movie also maintains the novel’s hybrid character: while Esquivel has the command of the novel-script (like a sort of “guionovela”), the film is, after all, directed by a man (Alfonso Arau, at the time Esquivel’s husband), supported by a team led by men (the list of actors is headed by Marco Leonardi, in his role as Pedro), and ratified by official discourse through institutions such as “Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,” and “Secretaría de Turismo.” 16 “Revision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival” (35). 17 See Antonio Machado’s epigraph to Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad quoted at the beginning of this study: “lo otro no se deja eliminar; subsiste, persiste, es el hueso duro de roer en el que la razón se deja los dientes” [the other cannot be eliminated; it subsists and persists, the gnawed bone to which reason loses its teeth] (7).

Works Cited Castellanos, Rosario. “La mujer mexicana del siglo XIX.” Mujer que sabe latín....México DF: FCE, 1992. (159-165) Como agua para chocolate. Dir. Alfonso Arau. Guión de Laura Esquivel. Con Lumi Cavazos, Marco Leonardi y Regina Torne. de Valdés, María Elena. “Verbal and Visual Representation of Women: Como agua para chocolate / Like Water for Chocolate.” World Literature Today. 69.1 (1995): 78-82. Escaja, Tina. “Alteración del espacio sociosexual: Como agua para chocolate y la voluntad de saber.” Ciberletras 3.8 (December 2002). http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/index_files/v08.html ———. “Reinscribiendo a Penélope: Mujer e identidad mejicana en Como agua para chocolate.” Revista Iberoamericana. 66.192 (Julio-Septiembre 2000): 571-86.

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Esquivel, Laura. Como agua para chocolate. New York: Anchor Books, 1989. Franco, Jean. Las conspiradoras. La representación de la mujer en México. México DF: FCE, 1993. Glenn, Kathleen M. “Postmodern Parody and Culinary-Narrative Art in Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate.” Chasqui. XXXI.2 (1994): 39-47. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge, 1992. Ibsen, Kristine. “On Recipes, Reading and Revolution: Postboom Parody in Como agua para chocolate.” Hispanic Review. 63.2 (1995): 133-45. Jaffe, Janice. “Hispanic American Women Writers' Novel Recipes and Laura Esquivel's Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate).” Women's Studies. 22 (1993): 217-230. Lawless, Cecilia. “Experimental Cooking in Como agua para chocolate.” MonographicReview. 8 (1992): 261-272. Leal, Luis. “Female Archetypes in Mexican Literature.” Women in Hispanic Literature Icons and Fallen Idols. ed. Beth Miller. Los Angeles: U California Press, 1983. (227-242) Ordóñez, Elizabeth. “Sexual Politics and the Theme of Sexuality in Chicana Poetry.” Women in Hispanic Literature. Icons and Fallen Idols. ed. Beth Miller. Los Angeles: U California P, 1983. (316-339) Paz, Octavio. El laberinto de la soledad. México DF: FCE, 1991. Pirandello, Luigi. On humor. Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 1960. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision.” On Lies, Secrets and Silence. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. Richter, David H. “Bakhtin.” The Critical Tradition. Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. New York: Bedford Books, 1989. 72426.

Like Water for Chocolate: Cinematic Patriarchy and Tradition Jorge J. Barrueto Walsh University

The film Like Water for Chocolate was, without a doubt, a great achievement in Alfonso Arau’s professional life; he not only produced and directed the film but also adapted the screenplay written by Laura Esquivel, his wife at the time. Based on the best-selling novel of the same title, the film was nominated for awards in several festivals. It won the Mexican Ariel for Best Picture in 1992, and Lumi Cavazos (as Tita) received recognition as the best actress at the International Film Festival in Tokyo. A year later, the film saw the highest box office for a foreign language film in the United States. In terms of narrative devices, the director uses a conventional formula: a love story with a suffering heroine. In addition to the classic theme of women as victims, there is unfulfilled love, death and domestic abuse.1 All these elements are literally seasoned with special culinary dishes which have magical properties. The film also uses a discourse which reveals but does not criticize the problems of class, the American-Mexican relationship, and racial relations in Mexico. Lastly, the backdrop for these themes is the Mexican Revolution. Contrary to most critical assessments, this paper contends that the film relies on a formulaic discourse, strengthens traditional beliefs, and defends the idea that women’s fate is to serve, to cook, and to suffer; it also suggests that women can only flourish under patriarchy. The narrative focuses on patriarchal life in rural Mexico. The life of a Mexican woman in the late nineteenth century was difficult enough, and even worse if the youngest child was a female. To this mix, the story adds an interesting twist: Elena, the mother (played by Regina Torné) has taken the father’s place at the De La Garza’s ranch,2 thus assuming the role of patriarch. Elena is acting as the archetypal Latin American father, using her society’s traditions to control her family. Her power is absolute. She has taken on this

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authority after her husband’s death and uses his power to control her family and strengthen her grip on Tita (the youngest) who must, by tradition, remain single and serve her aging mother. In the film, the old colonial state of mind has survived in Mexico and, even after independence, still underpins family relationships. In the story, this way of life is tested and exacerbated in the years of anarchy produced by the Mexican Revolution. To spice the plot, the director uses the inevitable contribution of magical realism.3 In order to put emphasis on the characters’ emotions, the director uses an array of point-of-view shots, close-ups and medium shots. This type of cinematography is common in Latin American productions, especially the telenovelas that are produced for popular consumption. Due to the lack of big budgets and special effects, camera work and acting have generally become the main vehicles of story development. In the opening scene, the voice of Tita’s grand-niece relates the story of Tita’s abuse by her own mother. The voice-over explains the key points of the narrative, especially the idea that Tita’s cooking is at the center of family relations. Cooking, however, provides two additional benefits for her: it gives Tita an escape from the oppressive atmosphere in her household, while simultaneously allowing her to achieve revenge. Her dishes are an outlet for her repressed sexuality, providing a venue for her communications with Pedro, her forbidden love. In the novel, unlike the film, cooking takes its toll on the cooks, especially Tita, and desensitizes her to life. Although she recoils from killing animals at first, through cooking Tita becomes adept at this practice (CAPC 47), thus making her seem violent and indifferent to their suffering. It seems that Esquivel and Arau try to rescue the heroine momentarily (she reacts angrily to Elena’s agenda), but the overwhelming satisfaction with which Tita relishes her life as a cook preempts this consideration. At the beginning of the film, Arau uses a series of close-ups in order to show how onions should be sliced. The shots are accompanied by an explanation of how the tears that onions produce are portents of tragic events. Arau emphasizes that cooking, especially recipe cooking, is a metaphor for human behavior. Life, the voiceover indicates, is like “cortar cebollas”—slicing onions—but the secret of having success in life is the ability to avoid being overpowered by the intensity of onions (life problems). The message: one should confront life by trusting one’s abilities. In short, cooking

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can be as important (or as unimportant) as today’s women want to make it, but in revolutionary Mexico, cooking was an important part of women’s existence. Interestingly, in the opening scene, Tita’s grand-niece begins narrating a story about the past, but years later she too shares her great-aunt’s obsession with cooking and tradition. Film critics have been consistent in pointing out the main theme of the story, that is, the suffering of the main character, and also in noting the film’s feminist touch. Many writers set their sights on women’s pathos and the power of patriarchal institutions in the film, in this case examining how both dominate family relationships. For some experts, the social spaces in the film, like the kitchen, are places where patriarchal rule can be challenged. According to Barbara Tenenbaum, for example, the story acknowledges the power of patriarchy but also recreates a “celebration of the feminine sphere”— the space that allows Tita to fulfill her desires (168). Similarly, Stephen Hart sees the film as a faithful representation of the novel and indicates that the plot’s value is in the solution that it brings to family problems. Hart adds that the film can be seen as a “feminine version of the Mexican Revolution” (172-173). Deborah Shaw, however, has other another opinion. For her, the film actually avoids dealing with family and societal problems, trusts too much in the cliché of the classical revolutionary, and shows a world in which the Mexican indigenous people are happy with their oppression. For Shaw, the story proposes that women can be happy if they obey and accept the patriarchal codes of behavior (51). Others do not see feminist elements in the story; on the contrary, they see Tita’s story as an antifeminist discourse. For Isabel Arredondo, in effect, Tita hopes for a type of romantic relationship which will not benefit her (413). While the film and the novel might elicit differing opinions, it is clear that the narrative is embedded in traditional assumptions about women’s position in Mexican society.

The mother and the patriarchal role The common perception of Marianismo4 in Latin America is that it wrests power from patriarchal rule. In Arau’s story, however, Marianismo is an extension of, if not an accomplice in, the patriarchal structure. Elena simultaneously performs the roles of father and

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mother. Early in the story, an unexpected event foreshadows the intrinsic power which she would exert for the rest of her life. Arau uses a medium shot to show Elena’s growing masculinity and her discomfort with the maternal role. Elena is not a mother-like figure and cannot nurse Tita since she cannot lactate. Her un-motherly body gives way to her masculine side, a disposition that later will dominate her life. Frustrated, Elena gives the infant to Nacha (her servant who is of indigenous origin) and orders the maid to raise her. In short, her unwomanly body elicits a fatherly behavior. Elena’s power over Tita and the rest of the family is, nonetheless, very ambiguous. Elena, in her attempts to control her daughter, behaves more like a patriarch and less like a mother or wife. In the traditional Mediterranean world which Latin America inherits (via Spain), women had specific roles as mothers and wives (Vecchio 121124). Mothers were expected to raise their children and arrange their marriages. The ultimate objective of marriage was procreation. Women’s obligations, according to religious teachings, were not secondary inside the home but nevertheless their function was to be subservient to men’s desires. The teaching of good morals and proper behavior was the work of women; political power and public roles were the job of men. Good morals were believed to be found within marriage. Patriarchal rule and matriarchal constraints are, in general, complementary, but as seen in the issue of Tita’s potential marriage, the overlap between these fields of authority produces a dangerous imbalance of power. Nancy Chodorow points out that the mother’s power within the family is not an isolated phenomenon. She indicates that the mother’s influence has actually its own dynamics, although it never defies the power of the father (185). Understandably, Elena does not assume the habitual male role but, due to her character and her circumstances, she takes over and exercises the authority of her deceased husband. She forbids Tita to marry and have children, which, according to tradition, should have been her goals as a mother. By doing this, she gains materially from Tita’s unmarried status, a result which comes from power relationships usually reserved to men. Similarly, the assumption is that mothers keep their daughters within the moral boundaries they set for them, but Elena in effect pushes her daughter into an affair with Pedro, Tita’s brother- in-law. It is understood that Elena should arrange Tita’s marriage, yet material

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considerations preclude her from acting as a mother. Tita has no choice but to defy her mother’s power with the only resource she has: her unavoidable destiny as a cook. The novel, and to a lesser extent the film, stresses the inevitability of women’s fate and celebrates the personal stoicism that dominates the narrative.5 Tita, for example, reacted to her own suffering even before her birth. According to the voice-over, the tears that Tita shed in the womb produced a particularly salty amniotic fluid. After Tita is born, this liquid produces salt for twenty years of bad luck. Within those same twenty years, the salt is the source of special flavor in the ranch’s cuisine. Nacha hopes that Tita would someday marry, desiring that her patrona follow the path of nature and not the ideological recipes of the mother. However, Elena’s stern answer to her servant makes this impossible: her daughter’s future has been already decided. When Tita protests, Elena’s answer asserts the primacy of social custom. She insists out that for “generaciones” no one has expressed disagreement with the law that prevails on the ranch. The mise-en-scène also reflects the film’s ideological and cinematographic necessities. The latter suggest that kitchens represent the vital scenario in the life of women; this area is not only a cinematic but is also a social place whose elements weave the story together. These are, for example, the pots, the cooking, the kitchen utensils, the table, and the baking which alone do not elicit a major reaction, although as subjects of a sequence of film shots they convey the idea that the kitchen is a feminine space. The camera stresses these ideas with a montage of close-ups that show different parts of the woman’s body as having a special relationship with the objects in the kitchen. The camera moves from hands to faces, from face to face, from face to dish and then to other kitchen utensils. The emphasis on cooking is such that Claudine Potvin has likened the film to “watching a cooking lesson in television” (58). This observation might be valid since it assumes that the natural place of women is the kitchen. It should be stressed, however, that those cooking scenes are developed in a very oppressive space which the film tries to gloss over. The kitchen is not a pleasant place if the sole activities that occur there are cooking and serving, both of which validate the patriarchal ideology running throughout the film. In one scene, for example, the misogynist camera shows the subservient

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woman, on her knees, preparing the ingredients for her cooking and thereby eliciting the approval of Pedro and by extension the viewer. This power relationship in the novel goes even further. Esquivel narrates that Pedro feels a sensual pleasure at the sight of Tita on her knees grinding the almonds and the sesame seeds that she needs for a special dish (CAPC 62). In the film, the shots are developed from Pedro’s point of view. First he sees her as the ideal domestic body, grinding in all fours and, in the next shot, the film validates Tita as the happy servant. A similar medium shot also shows Tita as the stoic yet willing personification of all-embracing domesticity. See fig. 1. Throughout, there is the cinematographic strengthening of the traditional views about women. The close-ups of hands, faces, and the high-angle shots used in the film only reaffirm the intent to idealize women’s body. It is not difficult to see that this cinematic focus with submissive characters, cooking hands, happy and sometimes tormented faces express that desire to see women in a particular way. In fact, Maricruz Castro Ricalde, for example, suggests that film shots that focus on specific parts of a woman’s body are fetishistic. She argues that camera work that draws attention to parts of their anatomy reduces women to mere symbols that, however natural for the viewer, have specific functions in film ideology (262-263). Women are essentially represented as a fetish (part of the body) that represents the feminine whole. According to this concept, a face, a hand, a leg or a breast represents an extension or even the ideal woman. Nevertheless the fetish, to recall Freud, simultaneously connotes fear and desire. In the film, a cook’s voluptuous breast, the shots of the cook’s busy hands, and the happy faces in the kitchen only reinforce the domesticity of women, although, I might also speculate that these shots unwittingly suggest the liberation from such a condition. . Women’s affinity for cooking is understood in the film but sometimes the implication alludes to their supernatural and violent powers. For example, she might be a good cook but also a potential sorcerer preparing a potion as seen in fig. 2. In short, the camera underlines the danger of untamed women even in their own milieu. As noted before, the plot takes an interesting turn. Tita’s beloved Pedro, played by Australian actor Marco Leonardi, marries her older sister Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi). In their relationship with the protagonist, Elena and Pedro have diverse but complementary plans. Elena defends her utilitarian position which renders Tita her servant

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for life, while Pedro hopes that his marriage to Rosaura will allow him to stay close to his true love. Pedro, who rationalizes his decision to marry Rosaura after Elena denies him Tita’s hand, has no respect for his wife nor the protagonist, and although Pedro claims to be unable to live far from the woman he loves, he does not challenge Elena’s rule. Elena, in contrast, is secure in her power, arranges Rosaura’s marriage to Pedro, and ends up in control of a larger family unit. Elena’s spitefulness toward her youngest daughter is so intense that she even orders her to prepare the wedding banquet. In a way, economic needs and custom make Tita a servant within her own family. Thus readers and viewers see that patriarchy, mediated by economics, is actually a circular phenomenon: the survival of women depends on historical institutional arrangements which ensure their economic dependency. In short, in patriarchal societies, men use their economic power to control women. In the plot, Tita’s life has been ruined, and there is no hope of breaking Elena’s power. This paradigm is involved in a biased social discourse of exclusion of the weak. Judy Rivera-Van Schagen indicates that in the story there is a complete distrust between the Self (Elena) and the Other (Tita). For her, the novel shows the absence of communication between parents and children and, in fact, illustrates the complete lack of dialogue, an element that reaffirms the typical monologue prevalent in Latin American societies (408). Although Tita could confront Elena, this would require her to leave the ranch; since her survival depends on her mother, she has no alternative but to stay and obey her mother’s orders. It is necessary to point out that neither the film nor the novel imply that women’s economic dependency might be a problem; instead the message is that family problems are really ethical and moral disagreements. Meanwhile, the story is about to be repeated in the next generation. Tita finds out that Pedro and Rosaura are having a second child. Her name is Esperanza (Hope) which ironically contradicts the plans Rosaura has for the child. In the film, Tita never confronts her mother about economic arrangements, but she does present a moral argument to Elena’s ghost when it comes back to reproach Tita for her “inmoral” behavior which incidentally Elena had been responsible for when she forced Pedro to marry Rosaura. Arau blends the real with the magical world in the confrontation between the living and the dead which ultimately breaks Elena’s power in the ranch. Elena’s ghost appears to scold her daughter about

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her disregard for the “buenas costumbres,” ‘proper manners,’ alluding to Tita’s sexual relationship with Pedro. It is strange however that Elena should berate her daughter for behaving as she once did herself. Tita challenges the ghost in order to prevent her mother’s further intrusion. Tita’s clinging to Pedro outside of marriage is ironically Elena’s triumph since Tita gains nothing from the relationship. In addition, the film misses the point that Pedro forces Tita to have intercourse with him long before Rosaura’s death. It is necessary to mention that the novel celebrates Tita’s loss of her virginity because this event is seen as the next step in her relationship to Pedro. Esquivel writes that Tita is surprised by Pedro’s presence and asks him about his intentions, but he simply forces her to have intercourse (CAPC 139). After this episode, Tita believes that Pedro’s action is an indication of love, but for Elena is the result of Tita’s immoral behavior. It is interesting to note that in the film there is no illusion to this incident as it appeared in the novel. In the scene of Elena’s return from the grave, Arau uses a series of close-ups and point of view shots in order to put emphasis on the differences between the characters. In this confrontation, Tita manipulates the traditions that had figured prominently in her mother’s life, especially Elena’s condemnation of Tita’s “immoral” relationship with Pedro. This time, however, Tita lets Elena know that she is aware of her mother’s secret: her affair with the mulatto José Treviño, Gertrudis’ father. Eventually, Tita uses shame and morality as weapons against Elena and finally asserts herself as an individual. It is difficult to perceive a confrontation with a ghost, especially if the dialogue has moralistic overtones, but when Tita reaffirms her own personality (“me creo lo que soy” ‘I am what I am’), her mother’s ghost disappears forever. Before doing so, Elena, however, takes revenge on her daughter. She “provokes” Pedro’s accident and as a consequence Tita has to take care of him and postpone her return to Texas. Her possible union with Dr. Brown becomes less likely. Tita becomes the anchor not only in the kitchen but also the mainstay of the whole ranch. She is the nurse, the cook and the caretaker. Of course, this is not her choice, but Elena’s.

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Cooking as the basis of women’s power In the plot, women’s submission at home is the tacit acceptance of their husband or their father’s authority. In Latin America, as Eros DeSouza indicates, man’s power, on the one hand, is seen as “natural and necessary” and, on the other, is reproduced historically by social mechanisms (54). In the plot, this authority is manifested in Elena’s persona which performs both of the roles of the mother and father. After her husband’s death, she becomes the moral authority and is seen as the male entity looking to underscore her power. She begins to deal with her daughters more like a father, extricating herself from both her motherly duties and from the kitchen because of her inability to perform her expected role. Although the power of the Paterfamilias is an uncontested rule in the plot, Elena must delegate some of her powers to family members. Although Elena’s power is absolute on the ranch, she has limitations in the kitchen; this is Tita’s space because of her cooking abilities and because her mother has banished her to this space. Elena and the rest of the household cannot survive without Tita’s skills; thus her activities are seen as indispensable. The kitchen, despite Elena’s power, is too important for the ranch. Without it, there is no family, however unjust this social unit might be. Even with the restrictions in the kitchen, Tita’s dishes are her means of resistance and communication, and ultimately both the film and the novel are divided alongside culinary segments that reflect the diverse facets of the plot. Tita is shown to be a good cook but her real power, through her dishes, enables her to convey her desires and frustrations to others. Her dishes become part of a language, a discourse which expresses her mental state. In fact, as Maite Zubiaurre indicates, this “culinary wisdom” entails more than palatal enchantment (45). There are three episodes in which the spectator sees that her cooking can heighten human senses: Tita’s tears in the wedding cake, the aphrodisiac produced by Tita’s blood, and the chiles en salsa de nuez (walnut sauce peppers) at Esperanza’s wedding. When Tita’s blood is mixed with the rose petals, the closeups of the characters’ faces confirm the repression that rules the ranch. The dish seems to awaken dormant feelings and strange erotic behavior in the guests. To be sure, the recipes require the use of special ingredients but need a careful preparation; their success is

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conditioned by the cook’s emotional state. This syncretism of matter and spirit makes the dishes even more irresistible. Pain, hope, and sadness become the condiments. While food is nourishment, it is also a source of happiness, sex and revenge. Sometimes, the interest in cooking is banal; Tita is simply interested in being the best cook for Pedro, whom, she thinks, had not complemented her culinary skills (CAPC 64). In this passage, both the novel and the film achieve their goals: to show that a woman’s cooking should be done in order to satisfy a man. In her observations on the role of women in Latin America, Elsa Chaney indicates that even though the unequal relationships predominate, women usually find a niche of power within the family framework (47). This space goes beyond culinary expertise. This area within the house is crucial for the survival of women and serves as a basis on which to claim personal respect among the different agendas within the family. The patriarchal system creates specific spheres of authority within the household but this influence functions in a system of subordinate arrangements. With limitations, the kitchen is the only place where a subtle resistance to Elena’s power is possible. To be sure, the cooking quarters are represented as a dark foreboding place, almost a reflection of the ideology which produces it. Ironically, the erstwhile happiness of the cooks and the lionizing of women as cooking entities lessen the fact that the kitchen is a space of oppression. Likewise, many of the important points in the narrative are developed around the kitchen table, the neuralgic point of this social space. This is a place of reunion, a culinary centre, and the arena of family conflicts. The table even serves as place for childbirth. Meanwhile, with the De La Garzas engaged in intra-family warfare, the anarchy of the Mexican Revolution finds its way into the ranch.

The Mexican Revolution and the Mexican-American border The Mexican Revolution of 1910 is the historical backdrop to the film.6 The revolution, at times, seems to be far removed from life on the ranch, but when a group of Villistas arrives, the family’s status quo changes, especially in relation to Gertrudis, the second daughter. Gertrudis is not a cook and she might even be considered dangerous

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because she embraces free sexuality, which is shunned in traditional Mexico. She immediately becomes infatuated with the Villista leader and runs off with him. In the film, Gertrudis smells the revolutionary even before she sees him. Incidentally, in the novel this animal attraction is mutual. Gertrudis is the love child of Elena and the mulatto Treviño and supposedly her racial make up makes her different. The director uses stereotypes of people of African descent in order to distinguish Gertrudis’ character, especially the perceptions of African inclination to music, dance and their excessive sexuality.7 Again, the magical and the physical elements work reciprocally, although in the case of Gertrudis her carnality is almost primeval. Gertrudis, for example, perceives at a distance the presence of the soldier who is riding to the ranch; she cannot see him, yet she uses her sense of smell to appraise his sexual potency. Gertrudis takes off her clothes, goes to meet him, and, as seen in fig. 3, she wantonly gratifies her abnormal sexuality. Elena, who is in charge of morality on the ranch, orders the destruction of any object which might remind her of her daughter, including her birth certificate. Esquivel assigns to Gertrudis the role of the ethnic Other within the family. As such, Gertrudis needs to be banished. Gertrudis’ behavior is simply unacceptable in a proper woman. Indications of her biological differences manifested themselves, but remained unknown to the family. Rosaura, for example, is surprised at Gertrudis’ skill at dancing and describes it as strange, because “a mamá no le gustaba bailar y dice que papá lo hacía muy mal” ‘mother did not dance and father was bad at it’ (CAPC 156). In short, the allusion to Gertrudis’ ethnic extraction suggests the need to know, meaning to tame and control non-European women. In the novel, Gertrudis “necesitaba imperiosamente que un hombre le apagara el fuego abrasador que nacía en su extrañas” ‘needed a man to put out that fire which came from within’ (CAPC 52). The novel corroborates this idea, not through third form narrative but through the epistolary form so as to avoid responsibility for these claims. Gertrudis writes from a brothel on the border where she is working. She admits to having an abnormal sexual condition which she is unable to explain, telling Tita that she can only feel “un gran alivio” ‘a great relief’ when she has sex with countless men (CAPC 111). In Like Water for Chocolate, love and sex (in the film there is no difference) is an ambivalent force; it can be liberating or oppressive.

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Gertrudis, excited by sex, leaves with the revolutionary, but soon ends up in a brothel in a border town, where she can supposedly satiate her enormous sexual appetite. Ironically, she later marries the same revolutionary who had abandoned her in the brothel. Gertrudis, likewise, has masculine traits and behaves differently from her relatives. She has an vigorous sexuality, later she becomes politically active and has a strange predisposition to worldly affairs. Gertrudis does not hide in the kitchen and pays no attention to Elena. She simply leaves the ranch to explore her sexual desires. In the revolution that is consuming the country, it is natural for her to become a soldadera (woman soldier).8 At any rate, the revolution and its epiphenomena of anarchy and plunder appear again. While Tita is in Texas, recovering from the loss of her nephew Roberto, a gang of bandits arrives at the ranch. They rape Chencha (the other Indian servant) and kill Elena (in the novel Elena is paralyzed by the attack and dies later by her own hand). It is revealing that it takes a death to reveal the truth about Elena’s life. Her death clarifies Elena’s strange disposition towards her family. Tita finds out about that her mother’s problems originated from an illicit affair. Elena behaved inappropriately while she was married because of her frustrated love for Treviño. Of course, Elena’s character is also stereotypical. There is an over-emphasis on the idea that women with power are evil, that are unable to hold customary male responsibilities, and that women who do not fulfill their motherly duties transgress against nature. This ideology also plays part in how the film sees the differences between Mexico and the United States. The border between Mexico and the United States plays an important role in the film. It influences family relations, puts emphasis on the old relationship between Mexico and the United States, and accentuates the historical dichotomy between the two nations. The North (Texas) and the South (Mexico) are indeed different worlds. As is usual, even in Latin American films, the North is represented in a positive way, and the South is invariably the opposite. Dr. Brown, for example, represents the North, the land of reason and science. The North is home to understanding, legality and a progressive way of life. The South accordingly is the site of political upheaval, and also represents the center of irrational customs (and magic) not only in the macrocosm of society but also at a personal level. Dr. Brown is an understanding man, rational and hopeful, and does not understand

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Elena’s plans for her daughters. Elena’s power, in fact, disconcerts him and he has no sense of how the belief in predestination and stoicism rules human relations in the South. His rationalism is contrasted with Tita’s conformity for whom life is decided by tradition. Finally, when Doctor Brown offers Tita a relationship between equals, she does not accept it. In the story, Tita’s escape from her suffering is geographical and psychological. As noted before, she finds refuge at Dr. Brown’s house in Texas, on the other side of the border. In this segment, the film plays with the old stereotype of women’s hysteria and mental weakness9 to develop this subplot. One of the symptoms of her suffering is her mutism. It is revealed that Tita was trying to flee from her agony and finds a strange security in the depths of her being. Not even with Dr. Brown’s care can she come to terms with her affliction. Again, food comes to the rescue. Chencha comes to visit and prepares a special concoction that works as an antidote. Tita then must choose between the negative social anthropology of her family and the possible union with Dr. Brown who offers her a more egalitarian life. She knows that in Texas she can put her life on the ranch behind, but Tita patterns her life according to tradition and to Pedro’s needs and decides to return to Mexico. In this way, she opts for the past and closes off any possibility of change. In Mexico, it seems, custom and convention always win.

Rhapsodizing tradition Although one might be tempted to read a feminist message into the film, upon closer examination it is difficult to do so; the film celebrates tradition and submission to patriarchal designs. The film might hint at the failure of habitual family relationships but does not follow through, and in the end it reinforces long-established institutions. The premise of the story is that in a man’s absence (death of the father) women misbehave and resort to violence to settle their own agendas; the longing for male authority in both the film and the novel is unwavering. In fact, as Isabel Arredondo indicates, the film might even have an anti-feminine bias (414). First, the narrative confuses sexual desire with love which, however exciting, works to Tita’s disadvantage. Second, this type of love requires Tita to make

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life-long sacrifices. Tita fights to be under Pedro’s domain, thus sacrificing her autonomy. Moreover, Pedro never actually does anything to cultivate his love, and his decision to marry Rosaura seems to be a polygamous arrangement, which under no circumstances can be considered a feminist expectation. Pedro can only be with Tita in a physical (sexual) way since he cannot marry her. Tita is merely an object of his sexual desires; as Rosaura’s husband, Pedro also has power over Tita’s economic condition. Tita, however, reaches her goals of becoming Pedro’s caretaker, his cook, and his son Roberto’s wet nurse. Yet life on the ranch follows Pedro and Rosaura’s bloodline. Esquivel writes that Tita’s abnegation (she does not even enjoy her own food) has become second nature; she is “la misma Ceres personificada, la diosa de la alimentación” ‘Ceres herself, the Goddess of nourishment’ (CAPC 71). In the end, Tita’s hope of having a family never materializes due to her acquiescence to Elena’s decision first and Pedro’s agenda later. At the end of the film, it is Tita’s grand-niece, and not her grand-daughter, who narrates the story. The subjects of praise in the film are the institutions in which the beneficiaries are men, not women. Social customs, along with the portrayal of marriage as women’s life aspiration, form part of this system that places women in a subservient light. In addition, the idea of love and marriage as the result of predestination and fate renders women powerless in such social arrangements. This type of fatalism and its expectations limit women’s capacity to reason and preempt the search for alternatives which might serve their real interests. Esquivel, however, is adept at framing Tita as a one-dimensional person obsessed with marriage and children. This obsession pushes Tita to see symbols of marriage everywhere, from white sheets to white dresses and always in the company of Pedro, the ideal man (CAPC 3435). The idea that women are predestined to life aspirations that involve cooking, suffering for their children, obeying their husbands, and marriage, is not, incidentally, unique to the plot. The Marianismo that proposes this vision of abnegation and suffering and the vertical arrangement in Elena’s household similarly reflects Latin American societies whose political, social and religious structures support a worldview that is detrimental to women’s well-being. If Arau’s purpose was to accentuate Tita’s problems, the plot would have been different. Tita would have fought to remain single, not to be a

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concubine. In any case, when the woman is of indigenous extraction, thing are much worse. The representation of the indigenous women in the story also echoes the undemocratic structure of Mexican society, in this case its racial status quo, and by extension the historical development of the native’s image.10 To be sure, neither the film nor the novel is troubled by this situation. The representation of Indian characters is archetypal. The Indian character in Mexican cinema, of any gender, is portrayed either as a fool, as a simpleton or as peevish, as demonstrated in Chencha’s character. In both the film and the novel, Chencha’s speech reflects her child-like mentality, peppered with irrational and non sequitur conclusions. See fig. 4. This is not a new view of the indigenous people. Europeans always saw the indigenous as childlike and irrational. The director simply uses classical stereotypes which the audience will see as normal.11 For example, when Chencha eavesdrops on Elena’s decision to give Rosaura to Pedro, her overblown reaction reveals her simple mind; this portrayal is repeated several times, especially at the time of Tita’s supposed pregnancy (CAPC 19, 150). For Esquivel, the indigenous character might provide the comic relief, but this representation reflects the macro world of Mexican society. The indigenous character in addition has a strange knowledge which does not allude to intelligence but to a predilection to magic and the supernatural, (i.e. the irrational), as with Nacha. The characters of Caucasian origin are usually portrayed as the opposite of Indian characters, and invariably in cultural productions in the region, there is an over emphasis on this difference which unfortunately is not just part of the fictional but also of the real world. The fact that Arau neither insists upon nor dwells on the racial roles and racial discourse running through the narrative reveals his ideological assumptions in the movie. The “happy” cook Nacha and Chencha, the servant-for-life, are sentenced to a life of semi-slavery which the film does not even bother to question.12 This representation is emblematic not only of Mexican cinema but of the films of other Latin American countries in which the indigenous is oppressed. The indigenous people are also portrayed as wielding a supernatural power which rational minds seem not to comprehend. As a consequence, the natives have a negative influence on criollo characters. Nacha, for example, lives to serve as a cook and a maid, but she is a folk healer in the feudal system in the ranch. Nacha’s

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power is inherited by Tita, especially her knowledge of herbs and potions, which are marshaled against her mother. In the film, there is no mention of the sorcerer power acquired by Tita, but in the novel Elena begins to take precautions with the dishes that her daughter has prepared. The implication is that Tita might be poisoning Elena with the knowledge that she has acquired from Nacha (CAPC 119-120). Esquivel accentuates not only the behavioral but the ethnic culinary differences between the criollo family and the Indian servants, especially when she describes the unsavory foods consumed by Indians, which Tita incidentally learns to eat (CAPC 31). In the novel, Tita is close to the natives, and has learned their customs; therefore she behaves unlike the other criollo characters. The storyline accentuates the domination of the indigenous people by the criollo regimen in Mexico as real and natural. The film does not explore the causes of racial subjugation that are central to Mexico’s political life and have the same ideology that underpins the oppression of women. In the plot, the Indian is a slave whose social position is beyond criticism. Nacha and Chencha have accepted their status on the ranch and show a strange happiness with that condition. The film does not criticize the misogyny and the subtle racism of Mexican society; in reality, it actually reinforces them. In short, the film deserves recognition if the audience hopes that women’s fate is domesticity and submission to men and that the indigenous people should be oppressed. While the film has been successful at the box office and more importantly in academic circles, is difficult to believe that the public goes to the cinema to learn cooking lessons, to see magical recreations, or to consume clichéd representations. Magical realism, likewise, is a tool of literary and popular culture commercialization, not an intrinsic characteristic of Latin American societies. After the Boom, magical realism has become an unavoidable literary practice that resourceful commercial writers use to embellish their works, which unfortunately were readily consumed as indicative of exotic and underdeveloped societies.13 The use of this narrative device, however, only puts emphasis on ethnocentric ideas which depict Latin America as an absurd land with primitive tendencies. The image unfortunately sells, and it seems clear that the writings of Latin American writers like Esquivel and Isabel Allende, to cite some examples, cater to these expectations.14 Finally, with respect to the border relations between Mexico and Texas, neither the

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film nor the novel address the political backdrop of the second half of the nineteenth century. As a consequence of the Mexican-American War, the ensuing expropriation of Mexican land and the political oppression of Mexican nationals in Texas might weaken the glorification of cross border romance.15 Also, indigenous peoples are not happy in semi-slavery and many do not passively accept their oppression; indigenous uprisings in Central and South America and Mexico itself reflect this resistance. In general, neither the film nor the novel sympathize with women or suggest solutions to their problems. The time-honored anchors of family, marriage and submission to men are never in doubt. Tita, after all, dies trying to follow a lover who has treated her like a concubine. The narrative has no place for female rebels who defy male power and both the novel and the film defend conventional paradigms of behavior. Sexually assertive women like Gertrudis are banished from the ranch. Indigenous women like Nacha who cross the line and challenge their criollo masters have short screen life in the plot. A woman like Tita who comes to doubt the benefits of patriarchy also has to die. The deaths of Pedro and Tita are senseless because Rosaura and Elena are no longer around to prevent them from marrying. Arau and Esquivel seem to want to punish anyone engaging in sex outside marriage, flouting tradition, or thinking unconventionally. In a way, neither Arau nor Esquivel allow Tita to get away with her challenge of societal conventions. The institutions that were responsible for her problems remain intact and in fact are lionized with Esperanza’s wedding at the end. If cooking was the tool of liberation, the culinary plot is at a dead-end. Cooking cannot be seen as a feminist tool since it is a device to control women and to reinforce the idea that women can only make their magic in the kitchen. Unfortunately, and as corroborated by the grand-niece’s direct address at the end, she is also obsessed with cooking and Marianista suffering.

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Notes 1

Mexican melodrama, common in literature, television and film, usually deals with family conflicts and personal problems. See Hershfield. 2 Patria Potestad refers to the father’s legal power over his unmarried children and servants. This power is also extended to wives and widows as dictated by the Mexican Civil Code of 1870. Married daughters of any age were able to escape this potestad but unmarried women were legally under the tutelage of the father until their thirtieth birthday. Later legal changes lowered the age of “adulthood” for daughters to twentyone. See Arrom. 3 Magical Realism is a narrative style wherein fantasy and the surreal are perceived to be part of the real world. This technique is not unique to cinema and has been a characteristic of Latin American literature, especially of the “boom.” See Schroeder. 4 Marianismo refers to the codes of feminine conduct which is expected from women. According to this principle, women should be modest, willing to suffer for their children, and be submissive to men. See Stevens. 5 The idea of suffering as something unavoidable in people’s lives is one of the main characteristics of Mexican melodrama. See López. 6 During the Revolution, Pancho Villa operated in the North. First, he led an uprising against Porfirio Díaz and later against Victoriano Huerta. Unlike Zapata’s movement in the South, which was mainly an indigenous movement, Villa had the support of different social classes. See Knight. 7 Additional information about the racial terminology and stereotypes about blacks in Mexico is found in Beltrán 167-170, Ben Vinson III and Mathew Restall 22, and Castillo and Kellog 118-131. 8 Many women participated actively in the revolution as cooks, nurses and bootleggers; others were soldiers and some even became officers. Today, the soldaderas are the subject of cultural praise in music, film and literature. See Linhard. 9 Hysteria as “woman’s illness” has historical roots in Western civilization. See Iglesias 159-165, 167-168. 10 The image of the native as the irrational, superstitious and deceptive entity yet a being amenable to conversion and civilization echoes classical theories of the savage and Spain’s colonial agenda. See Martínez 12, 18-21). 11 This vision of Mexican indigenous people is commonplace and mediated by skin color. Television and film in Mexico reinforce this vision on a regular basis. See Winders, Jones III and Higgins 77. 12 For more information about indigenous servants in Mexico see Blum 69-71. 13 See Monet-Viera 96, 100, 104, 112-114. 14 See Milian 139-142 and Swanson 265-267, 275. 15 See Rodríguez 41-44 and Hernández 103-107.

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Works Cited Aguirre, Gonzalo Beltrán La Población Negra de México. México DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972. Arredondo, Isabel. “¿Amarte para qué?: El Mito del Amor en Como Agua para Chocolate” Romance Language Annual 6 (1994): 413-416. Arrom, Silvia M. “Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century” in Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition: Women in Latin American History. ed. Gertrude M. Yeager. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1994. (87-102) Berkhofer, Robert. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: No publisher 1979. Blum, Ann S. “Cleaning the Revolutionary Household: Domestic Servants and Public Welfare in Mexico City, 1900-1935” Journal of Women's History 15.4 (2004): 67-90. Castillo, Norma and Susan Kellog. “Conflict and Cohabitation between Afro Mexicans and Nahuas in Central Mexico” in Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America. ed. Matthew Restall. Albuquerque: U New Mexico P. (115-136) Castro Ricalde, Maricruz. “El cuerpo femenino y los modelos de representación: el cine de María Novaro” Debate Feminista 27.14 (2003): 261-276 Chaney, Elsa M. Supermadre: Women in Politics in Latin America. Austin: U Texas P, 1979. Chodorow, Nancy. “Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory” in Feminisms. ed. Sandra Kemp y Judith Squires. Oxford; New York: Oxford U P, 1997. (182-188) DeSouza, Eros, R. John Baldwin, Sílvia H. Soller y Martha Narvaz. “A Latin American Perspective on the Study of Gender” in Praeger Guide to the Psychology of Gender. ed.Michele A. Paludi. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 2004. (41-67) Esquivel, Laura. Como agua para chocolate. Barcelona: Random House, 2003. Hart, Stephen M. A Companion to Latin American Film. Rochester, NY and Tamesis, Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2004.

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Hernández, Sonia. “The Legacy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Tejano’s Land” Journal of Popular Culture 35.2 (Fall 2001): 101-109. Hershfield, Joanne. Mexican Cinema/Mexican Woman, 1940-1950. Tucson: U Arizona P, 1996. Iglesias Benavides, José Luis. “La histeria, furor uterino o mal de amor” Medicina Universitaria 7.28 (jul-sep2005):159-168. Knight, Alan. “Peasant and Caudillo in Revolutionary Mexico 191017” in Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution. ed. D. A. Brading. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1980. (17-58) Linhard, Tabea Alexa. Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War.Columbia: U Missouri P, 2005. López, Ana M. “Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the “Old” Mexican Cinema” in The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. ed. Ana del Sarto, Alicia Ríos y Abril Trigo. Durham: Duke U P, 2004. (441-458) Martínez Castilla, Santiago “Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda y la Guerra Justa en la conquista de América” Pensamiento y Cultura 9.1 (Nov2006): 111-136. Milian Arias, Claudia M. “McOndo and Latinidad: An Interview with Edmundo Paz Soldán” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 24 (2005): 139-149. Monet-Viera, Molly. “Post-Boom Magical Realism: Appropriations and Transformations of a Genre” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 38 (2004): 95-117. Potvin, Claudine. “Como agua para chocolate: ¿parodia o cliché?” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 20.1 (August 1995): 55-67. Rivera-van Schagen, Judy. “Dialogics in Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para chocolate”Hispanic Journal 17.2 (Fall 1996): 397-411. Rodríguez Díaz, María del Rosario. “Mexico’s Vision of Manifest Destiny during the 1847 War” Journal of Popular Culture 35.2 (Fall 2001): 41-50. Schroeder, Shannin. Rediscovering magical realism in the Americas. Westport: Praeger, 2004. Shaw, Deborah. Contemporary Cinema of Latin America: 10 Key Films. London: Continuum, 2003.

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Stevens, Evelyn P. “Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo” in Female and Male in Latin America. ed. Ann Pescatello. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1973. (89-101). Swanson, Philip. “Z/Z: Isabel Allende and the Mark of Zorro” Romance Studies 24.3 (November 2006): 265-277. Tenenbaum, Barbara A. “Why Tita Didn’t Marry the Doctor” in Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies. ed. Donald F. Stevens. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997. (157-172) Vecchio, Silvana. “The Good Wife” in A History of Women in the West: Silences of the Middle Ages ed. Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot. trans. Clarissa Botsford. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1994. (105-135) Vinson, Ben III and Mathew Restall. “Black Soldiers, Native Soldiers: Meanings of Military Service in the Spanish American Colonies” in Beyond Black and Red:African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America. ed. Matthew Restall. Albuquerque: U New Mexico P, 2005. (15-52) Winders, Jamie, John Paul Jones III and Michael James Higgins. “Making Güeras:Selling white identities on late-night Mexican television” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal ofFeminist Geography 12.1 (March 2005): 71-93. Zubiaurre, Maite. “Culinary Eros in Contemporary Hispanic Female Fiction: From Kitchen Tales to Table Narratives” College Literature 33.3 (2006): 29-51. Filmography Cited Like Water for Chocolate [Como agua para chocolate]. Lumi Cavasos, Regina Torné. Dir. Alfonso Arau. Script: Laura Esquivel. Miramax, 1993.

Fig. 1. Celebration of Marianismo

Fig. 2. The sorcerer hands

Fig. 3. The oversexed Other

Fig. 4. The gullible native

Like Water for Chocolate and Human Nature Jerry Hoeg Penn State University In 1996 I read director Alfonso Arau’s summation of the central idea behind his movie version of Like Water for Chocolate (1992 Mexico, 1993 USA). According to Arau: In this movie, the male mentality is identified with the Mexican revolution and the mother, even though she's female. The heroine, Tita, and the maid Nacha represent intuition, passion, sentiment associated with the female mentality. And this film was about the superiority of intuition over reason. I am saying the brain is a very limited device. It's a very sophisticated computer, but intuition gets you in touch with the universe. (qtd. in Elias19)

At that time I felt what Arau articulated was an antiscience position that seemed out of touch with modern Latin America (Hoeg). Today, as I reread the same statement, I again find it out of touch with modern scientific reality but for a different reason. In the intervening years since Like Water for Chocolate was published (1989), scientific advances in fields such as behavioral genetics, cognitive science, neuropsychology, and biology, to name but a few, have shed new light on the true nature of human relations, or better said, on the true nature of human nature. We now know that “intuition, passion, and sentiment” are not the ultimate causes of conflicts such as malefemale rivalry, sibling rivalry, parent-offspring conflict, and malemale rivalry portrayed in the novel. This essay will attempt to demonstrate this by means of new data provided by the aforementioned sciences. I also hope to show that the underlying cause of the various conflicts portrayed in the novel is the drive to control genetic and material inheritance in such a way as to pass both

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on through time. Human nature has evolved through natural selection, and those selected are those best at passing their inheritance on to the next generation. This requires control to insure the material resources necessary to prosper go to their genetic descendents. As I hope to show, this drive for control is the engine that propels the plot in Like Water for Chocolate. On the first page of the novel, the narrator begins the “preparation” section by noting she inherited her own sensitivity to onions from the protagonist of the book, her great-aunt Tita (LWFC 5). Throughout the novel, these innate predispositions play a crucial role, and they always have a genetic, inherited component. Bloodlines are key, as when Mama Elena disowns Tita, her daughter, “…and thereby severed the strong tie of blood and obedience that had always bound them together” (LWFC 129). Mama Elena herself, as a young woman, had not been allowed to marry the “love of her life,” one José Treviño, “because he had Negro blood in his veins” (LWFC 137). She nevertheless had a child by him, Gertrudis, whose “sense of rhythm” (LWFC 180) is attributed to this genetic inheritance, and who later gives birth to a mulatto child, which again causes much consternation regarding his paternity: “Juan [the father this mulatto child] was furious and threatened to leave her” (LWFC 180). Even when Mama Elena’s “black past” is revealed, for Juan “It was a hard blow to take, but at least they didn’t separate” (LWFC 180). Race is, of course, a public indicator of paternity, a highly observable marker of genetic inheritance difficult to ignore. Rape, which steals control of genetic inheritance and so alters the bloodline, is also a recurrent concern. When Gertrudis asks one of her soldiers why he so uncharacteristically and brutally murdered a man-beating the man to death and then cutting off his testicles--he replies that the man had raped his mother and his sister, and “…by doing this Treviño [the soldier in question] had restored the honor of his family” (LWFC 194). In another instance of rape Chencha the maid, raped by bandits, believes now no one will marry her, explaining to Tita “You know how men are, They all say they won’t eat off a plate that isn’t clean” (LWFC 134). And this same issue of genetic control plays out again in Tita’s false pregnancy. Thinking herself pregnant with Pedro’s baby, Tita assumes she can no longer marry John, “I lost my virginity, that’s the reason I can’t marry you anymore” (LWFC 222),

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or as Mama Elena’s ghost/guilt put it, “What you have done has no name!” (LWFC 173). Clearly the fundamental issue at stake for the characters within the novel is paternity. The problem for males is the more they invest in raising one child, the less they can invest in other children. And everything invested in someone else’s child is that much less invested in one’s own flesh and blood. So, historically, most human societies have placed restrictions on females to prevent extra-marital copulation. These range from chastity belts and eunuch guards to foot binding and clitoridectomies. And this concern is not unique to the human species. In many animal species--including lions, languors and other species of monkeys, gorillas, and ground squirrels (Trivers 7178)--when a new male takes over a group of females, he immediately kills as many infants as possible, thus causing the females to come into estrus, and allowing him to produce his own offspring. We see the same intention reflected in the Biblical account of Moses’ instructions following the conquest of the Midianites: “Now kill every male dependent, and kill every woman who has had intercourse with a man, but spare for yourselves every woman among them who has not had intercourse” (Numbers 31: 17-18). And to underline the human preference for one’s own flesh and blood, the research of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson (86) has documented the fact that, in humans, stepparents are far more likely to abuse a child than are natural parents. In fact, a child is seventy times more likely to be killed by a stepparent than by a genetic parent. In view of all this, it is no surprise, then, that the characters within the novel are so obsessed with genetic control. In this sense, Like Water for Chocolate mirrors real world concerns. Until very recently, men could not be certain that the child they were raising was their own, a fact that engendered the phrase “Mama’s babies and Daddy’s maybes”; hence the evolution of instinctive male sexual jealousy began to flourish. Such concern was not unfounded, since extra-pair matings are common in the animal world, even among supposedly monogamous species. For example, studies on extra-pair copulation in presumably monogamous passerine birds reveal from 10% to upwards of 20% of their offspring are sired by extra-pair males (Petrie and Kempanears 53; Birkhead and Moller 102-03; Barash and Lipton 10-12). According to The Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 47, 62-94), and Atlas of World Cultures (Murdock 133), about 83% of human societies are polygynous, and DNA studies

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in various cities in Great Britain have shown the father listed on the birth certificate of a child was not the genetic father 10-20% of the time (Ridley 226). In addition, over a dozen recent studies have shown fertile women at mid-cycle prefer short-term “sexiness” in men other than their primary partner, disdaining long-term traits such as kindness and intelligence. Women who rated their primary partner as relatively unattractive were more likely to express greater interest in extra-pair men when the former were at the peak of their fertility cycle, while males demonstrate greater jealousy during mid-cycle, with men rated as unattractive showing the greatest amount (Gangestad 329-30). This trait is most evident in Like Water in the character of Pedro, who is extremely jealous of John’s relation with Tita because of his comparative disadvantage in material resources. Aside from being married to Tita’s sister Rosaura, Pedro appears to have no visible means of acquiring material resources—indeed he moved in with her family, uncommon in patrilocal Mexico. On the other hand, John is an American physician who controls relatively vast material wealth and social capital. Thus Pedro is at a great disadvantage in the competition with John, although his marriage does afford him the proximity necessary for successful adulterous relations with Tita. Since she is drawn to Pedro’s physical charms, he is genetically superior to John in this respect, and studies have shown that the females of all species, from zebra finches to seagulls to humans (Trivers 260-67), marry for material resources and cuckold for genetic resources. Thus the issue of paternity raises the need for control, which in turn produces issues of parent-offspring rivalry, and also of sibling rivalry. This rivalry revolves primarily around access to reproductive partners and also to the material resources crucial to acquiring desirable mates and insuring the survival of the children thus produced. For example, a key issue in the novel is that the youngest daughter is forbidden to marry until the mother dies. It is the job of the youngest to care for the aging mother, a family tradition that condemns both Tita and Esperanza, the daughter of Tita’s sister Rosaura, to a life of servitude in which both are “obligated to stay with her [the mother] forever” (LWFC 171). This is a common solution in human communities with ecological limitations and high dispersal costs, where observers typically see non-reproductive helpers who care for their older sister’s children (for similar scenarios on the Greek Island of Karpathos see Vernier 32-38; in Ireland see

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Strassman and Clark 33, 42; in Morocco see Crognier and Baali 365; and in Bolivia see Crognier and Villena 376). Moreover, under these same conditions of ecological limitations and high dispersal costs, post-reproductive helpers such as grandparents also help raise their older daughters’ children during the approximately twenty years of life (in traditional societies) between menopause and the end of life (Voland 67-68). In the animal world, the presence of non-reproductive helpers is, of course, commonplace. Florida Scrub Jays, for example, average 1.5 fledglings per year without helper offspring and 2.5 with; only the alpha females raise pups in wild dogs, and so on (Trivers 189). In Like Water the need for genetic control is seen in the family tradition of the younger daughter assuming the role of care taker. This tradition enables the family to effectively transmit their genetic material from generation to generation under difficult ecological conditions. In Like Water, the cause of the parent-offspring conflict appears to be the dominating natures of mother figures, but it is actually the reproductive instinct in the daughters that is the precipitating event. The mothers are merely reacting to their daughters’ efforts to seize control of genetic and material inheritance. These are conflicting instinctual demands, and both parent and offspring are emotionally predisposed to seek individual advantage. These innate predispositions take on specific sociocultural expression in a given Mexican environment, as they do in all socioecological environments, but the ultimate cause of these passions and sentiments is human nature, the psychological structure humans inherit from the humans who came before. Clearly the cause is not the masculine, dominating presence of Mama Elena or the Mexican revolution, but instead is centered on the innate tug-of-war between the conflicting strategies of parents and offspring, a struggle which exists in all species that provide post-natal care to offspring (Trivers 165-68). For clarification, in nature parent-offspring conflict is generated by the need of parents to maximize the number of surviving offspring, and the need of the individual offspring to maximize the number of their own offspring, which means they themselves must first survive to reach parenthood, at which point the roles will reverse. Put simply, each offspring wants to monopolize all the resources, while the parents must divide the resources among multiple offspring to insure the survival of more than one (Trivers 162). This is shown in Like

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Water by the fact that Mama Elena has given control of the material resources, the house and lands, to Rosaura (and disinherited Gertrudis for disobedience in sexual matters). This preferential material inheritance enhances Rosaura’s reproductive possibilities, and as a result also impacts those of her children and Mama Elena’s grandchildren. At the same time it decreases those of her siblings, and so generates sibling rivalry, as we see when she threatens to “run you [Tita] out of this house, which Mama left to me” (LWFC 215). It may seem as though it is only the mothers who are selfish, but in trying to control scarce resources, both the parent and the offspring are selfish, each wanting it their way. Given that offspring cannot directly control parental investment, they tend to employ psychological manipulation, a strategy symbolized by Tita’s cooking in the novel. Other examples of psychological manipulation by offspring include temper tantrums in chimpanzees (Goodall van Lawick 238), convulsions in pelican chicks (Burke and Brown 509), and a human baby withholding its smile until it gets its way (Trivers 155). Parents also employ manipulation, categorizing their own selfish actions as being in the child’s best interest. In Like Water Mama Elena is no exception to this rationalization. Studies show that most parents believe they treated their children fairly, while the majority of grown children claim the opposite was the case (Dunn and Plomin 65, 184). It is also in the parent’s interest that the offspring share, but in the offspring’s interest that they not, so parents encourage altruism and sharing, and discourage selfishness, while offspring universally resist this type of behavioral inhibition (Trivers 165). In Like Water, the parent-child conflict reflects an innate conflict in all sexually reproducing species over the allocation of resources, with both sides trying to maximize their own control over said resources. Through manipulation of the other characters in the novel, Tita competes for and eventually gains control over the family resources and, by so doing, brings about an ending worthy of Greek Tragedy, destroying the ranch, herself and Pedro in a purifying fire which burns out the stain of transgression and restores fertility to the ranch. In Like Water, losing control over orderly transference of genetic and material inheritance brings disorder, meaning the property and the people are destroyed and the inheritance chain is broken. When order is restored, inheritance is restored, and the land and

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people become productive and reproductive once again, as evidenced by the narrator’s situation. Clearly some type of order is necessary to permit inheritance forward through time. Research indicates prior to 1800 half of all children died in childhood, and parental discrimination among offspring, by sex and birth order, often determined who lived and who died (Boone 869; Voland 69). Older children are usually more likely to survive, having made it past childhood diseases, so they are universally favored. According to Daly and Wilson (75), even though infanticide is widely practiced in traditional societies, none condones the killing of the elder of two children. Cross-culturally, in situations like Northern Mexico where both land and economic opportunities are limited, inheritance by primogeniture is generally practiced in order to avoid the subdivision of family lands (Hrdy and Judge 11). Given Esquivel’s post-industrial urban perspective, 1990s Mexico City, primogeniture seems unfair, but in rural pre-industrial Mexico it was necessary for family survival. In Like Water, this is illustrated when John’s son marries Rosaura’s daughter, and they regain control of the ranch and give birth to the narrator, who maintains the traditional recipes, indicating to readers that family tradition has been restored and control perpetuated. As mentioned above, competing demands for control of genetic and material inheritance produces sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry has been documented in mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, insects, and even plants, and the victim is almost always the youngest member of the brood (Mock and Parker 74; Mock 212-17). In animals it is instinctive. African black eagles lay two eggs to increase the odds one hatches. Siblicide is obligatory, so the first to hatch always pecks the second to death (Mock 50-51). In humans siblicide is rare, but the instinct for violent competition is not. It comes not from bad parenting, but rather from the tendencies of human nature. It is also, as Aristotle noted, the stuff of tragedy; think Cain and Abel, Angustias and Adela, Niles and Frazer, and all the other examples seen in tragedy of family relations gone bad. Children are most violent in toddlerhood; it comes to them naturally, and only later are they partially behaviorally inhibited (Holden 580-81). In Like Water, the classic case of sibling rivalry occurs between Rosaura and Tita over Pedro. Their rivalry first surfaces in early childhood with Rosaura being a “picky” eater and Tita a “good eater”

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who “…not only ate ordinary food, she also ate jumil bugs, maguey worms…and other things that horrified Rosaura” (LWFC 30). This diet ingratiates her with Nacha, who represents nature and indigenous knowledge, but it also positions her against Rosaura who represents reason, and later marries for “logical” rather than passionate reasons at the behest of the great logical Satan, Mama Elena. As children, a family Christmas tradition “…had been converted into a sort of competition between her [Tita] and her sisters” for the right to wish for things (LWFC 174). The central competition is for genetic control, to reproduce, and the symbol of victory in this field, the white sheet for Rosaura’s wedding night, blinds Tita, who is fated to never marry. Pedro, nevertheless, exhibiting typical male promiscuity, keeps hope and the rivalry alive when he tells Tita: “…through this marriage I have gained… the chance to be near you, the woman I really love” (LWFC 38). When Tita confesses her love for Pedro to her other sister, Gertrudis, she, Gertrudis, jumps right into the rivalry, telling Tita “...Rosaura married Pedro, showing no loyalty, not caring a damn that you really loved him…” (LWFC 190), and then tells Pedro that Tita thinks she’s pregnant with his child. Shortly thereafter Pedro is burned for his transgression (by the guilt/ghost of Mama Elena) and Tita takes charge of his care, dismissing Rosaura with a “challenging” look (LWFC 201). But Rosaura does reclaim control of her children and thus her bloodline from Tita, wounding her severely in the process: “She couldn’t have done anything worse to Tita” (LWFC 215). In all these instances, sibling rivalry is not precisely about reason versus intuition, although these are both arms in the conflict, but rather about innate predispositions for control of genetic and material inheritance--children, Pedro, the ranch, and so on. Over the course of human history, and indeed that of all living things, those not predisposed to compete for resources have tended not to fare well as a result. Like Water for Chocolate is an excellent example of cultural adaptation to changing system-environment relations by modifying the specific behavior used to achieve the general functions of human nature. Tita’s recipes worked in a pre-revolutionary environment, but were dysfunctional in a post-revolutionary environment. And, although she was literally burned by them, the purifying conflagration allowed for new knowledge. But the traditional basis of the family recipes, the human universals codified in our very genomes, live on.

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The recipes are still used by the family, but they leave out Tita’s blood, sweat, and tears. The revolution is over; things can settle down. By the end of the novel, the family has successfully adapted to a new post-revolutionary environment while at the same time maintaining control over the family resources, both genetic and material. The family has evolved at the cultural level in such a way as to both reflect and perpetuate their biological evolution. They solve the same problems of sibling rivalry, parent-offspring conflict, and so on in a new environment, one which calls for slightly different recipes to satisfy the same basic human hungers. Order has been restored, and the old conflicts of human nature can now be played out in a more modern arena.

Works Cited Barash, David, and Judith Eve Lipton. The Myth of Monogamy. New York: Henry Holt, 2002. Birkhead, T.R., and A.P. Moller. “Female Control of Paternity.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8.3 (1993): 100-103. Boone, James L. “Parental Investment and Elite Family Structure in Pre-industrial States: a Case Study of Late MedievalEarly Modern Portuguese Genealogies.” American Anthropologist 88.4 (1986): 859-878. Burke, V.E.M., and L.H. Brown. “Observation on the Breeding of the Pink-Backed Pelican Pelecanus Rufescens.” Ibis 112 (1970): 499512. Crognier, Emil, A. Baali, and M.K. Hilali. “Do ‘Helpers at the Nest’ Increase Their Parents’ Reproductive Success?” American Journal of Human Biology 13 (2001): 365-373. Crognier, Emil, M. Villena, and E. Vargas. “Helping Patterns and

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Reproductive Success in Aymara Communities.” American Journal of Human Biology 14 (2002): 372-379. Daly, Martin, and Margo Wilson. Homicide. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988. Dunn, Judith and Robert Plomin. Separate Lives: Why Siblings are so Different. New York: Basic Books, 1990. Elias, Thomas D. “The Miracle Worker. How Alfonso Arau's ‘Water For Chocolate’ Dream Came True.” Chicago Tribune 6 March 1994: sec. 13: 19. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate trans. Carol and Thomas Christensen. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Gangestad, Steven W. “Reproductive Strategies and Tactics.” The Oxford Handbook of EvolutionaryPsychology. eds. Robin Dunbar and Louise Barrett. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2007. (321-332) Gaulin, Steven, and J.S. Boster. “Dowry as Female Competition.” American Anthropologist 92 (1990): 994-1005. Goodall van Lawick, Jane. “The Behaviour of Free-Living Chimps in the Gombe Stream Reserve.” Animal Behaviour Monographs 1 (1968): 161-311. Hoeg, Jerry. “Como agua para chocolate and The Question of Viable Alternatives to Technologies of Domination.” Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura 12.2 (1997): 112127. Holden, Constance. “The Violence of the Lambs.” Science 289 (2000): 580-581. Hrdy, Sarah B., and Debra S. Judge. “Darwin and the Puzzle of Primogeniture.” Human Nature 4 (1992): 1-45. Mock, Douglas W. More than Kin and less than Kind: The Evolution of Family Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 2004. ņņņ. and Geoffrey A. Parker. The Evolution of Sibling Rivalry. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1997. Murdock, George Peter. Ethnographic Atlas. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1967. ņņņ. Atlas of World Cultures. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1981. Petrie, M., and B. Kempenaers. “Extra-pair Paternity in Birds: Explaining Variation Between Species and Populations.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 13.2 (1998): 52-58. Ridley, Matt. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 1993.

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Strassmann, Beverly.I., and Alice.I. Clark. “Ecological Constraints on Marriage in Rural Ireland.” Evolution and Human Behaviour 19 (1998): 33-55. Trevathan, Wenda. Human Birth: An Evolutionary Perspective. New York: Aldine, 1987. Trivers, Robert. Social Evolution. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings, 1985. Vernier, Bernard. “Putting Kin and Kinship to Good Use: The Circulation of Goods, Labour, and Names on Karpathos (Greece).” In Interest and Emotion. Essays in the Study of Family and Kinship. ed. Hans Medic and David. Warren Sabean. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1984. 28-76. Voland, Eckart. “Differential Reproductive Success Within the Krummhorn Population (Germany 18th and 19th Centuries).” Behavior Ecology and Sociobiology 26 (1990): 54-72.

Section II: LWFC, Magical Realism and the Critical Response to Its Use

Like Water for Chocolate and the Art of Criticism

Jay Corwin

Under the Sign of Hyperbole: Magical Realism and Melodrama in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate

Mónica Zapata

Like Water for Chocolate and the Art of Criticism Jay Corwin University of Waikato, New Zealand After reading some of the criticism generated by Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1989), one is left with the sensation that fin de siècle Latin American literature is afflicted by critical machinations that are swayed by political, rather than aesthetic, considerations. The critical love affair with magical realism (the term, not its elusive meaning), popular appeal, and gender criticism are largely responsible for the favorable critical attention given to Laura Esquivel’s first published attempt at writing a novel. Such biased treatment raises concerns about critical objectivity and the point of critical analysis. Contrary to what standard approaches to the novel would suggest, Like Water for Chocolate appears to draw heavily upon several sources often neglected in critical appraisals. In terms of structure, the novel is presented in the form of a recipe book, with each month illustrated by a recipe, although the time frame of the novel spans decades. Thus, one might rightfully speculate whether Like Water for Chocolate is a novel or a cookbook? We may debate this point or consider the originality of it. In terms of Latin American literature, the technique had already been used. Jorge Amado’s popular 1966 novel Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands begins with a recipe, much in the same vein as Esquivel’s novel, replete with details of what dish to prepare for a wake and how to prepare it. It is unlikely that Laura Esquivel was ignorant of the existence of Amado’s novel, as the 1976 film version of the novel was the most successful in Brazilian cinematic history at the time. Amado’s inclusions of recipes are not as structurally overt as those in Like Water for Chocolate, since they do not appear at the start of each chapter; however, they do relate specifically to Dona Flor and her school of culinary arts. Yet apart

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from the inclusion of recipes, there is little commonality between the two novels. Amado’s novel—funny, poignant, erotic and wellwritten—is one of the most memorable works of 20th century Brazilian fiction. Conversely, while Like Water for Chocolate enjoyed overwhelming popularity, the artistic merit of the work is still open to debate. The novel’s narration, after the culinary introduction, begins in a simple prose style that feigns innocence: “They say that Tita was so sensitive that even from the time she was in my great-grandmother’s womb she cried and cried while her mother chopped onions; her cries were so loud that Nacha, the cook, who was half deaf, could hear them without trying”1 (CAPC 15). From the start, the careful reader discovers literary appropriation from Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, whose main character also cries in the womb and is born with his eyes open. Thus far, in a chronological reading, LWFC’s recipe appears to be two scoops of Garcia Marquez, and one scoop of Jorge Amado. The opening episode treats the reader to a foreshadowing of the entire novel: Tita’s moaning and weeping. Yet no critics have questioned the believability of the fact that Tita’s mother is chopping onions when Nacha is apparently being paid good money for the task. Should we believe that the head of a fairly wealthy family would bother with such things with a large ranch to operate? Though this objection seems trivial, it is indicative of the flow of carelessness that appears throughout the novel. Similarly, the second chapter finds Tita in the kitchen helping Nacha prepare the wedding banquet for Tita’s sister Rosaura, and Pedro, who really wants to marry Tita. Mama Elena, “reading her looks, went into a rage and gave her a magnificent blow that made her roll on the floor, along with the chicken, which perished in the act” (CAPC 37). It again seems unlikely that the same upper class family, fifteen years hence, with the same cook, would need its daughters helping in the kitchen, especially in a country with extreme poverty and the means to hire assistance for next to nothing. On the matter of sources of inspiration, Mama Elena’s character does not appear to be inspired by Amado or Garcia Marquez, but resembles something more akin to Joan Crawford’s violent portrayal in the similarly slanted 1977 biography, Mommy, Dearest. It is highly unlikely that a middle-age woman who does not engage in physical labor could yield enough strength to bowl over a healthy young woman and kill a chicken in the

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process. Nor does Mama Elena’s comportment reflect that of a late 19th century lady in Mexican society. She is rather something of a onedimensional caricature, abusive and tyrannical. The only character who is allowed more than a fraction of personal depth is Tita. The evolution of her character is stifled, however, since the narration does not progress to maturity from the initial perspective of a fifteen year old. Such an example of arrested development may be considered an indication of egocentrism on the part of the author. Indeed, the axis on which the entire plot grinds, i.e., Tita’s martyrdom, also lacks credibility and depth. Tita is martyred not once but many times as she succumbs to beatings and humiliation at the hands of Mama Elena. Tita is told that she may never marry, and, to make matters worse, she must help in preparing the banquet for the wedding in which her sister Rosaura will marry Pedro, the man she loves. When Pedro tells her, “I’m only asking you to tell me if I can aspire to your love” (CAPC 25), the narrative response is “‘Yes, yes and a thousand times yes.’ She loved him from that night on, forever. But now she had to renounce him. It was not decent to desire a sister’s future husband. She had to try to force him out of her mind somehow so that she could sleep” (CAPC 25). The apparent fictional formula at work here is this: present Tita with a solution and she creates a problem. If at this juncture Esquivel had allowed Tita to follow her passions, Like Water for Chocolate may have been a more interesting novel. For example, Leo Tolstoy allows the title character in Anna Karenina to evolve through the dissipation of the self through sexual desire, drug addiction, and rejection of social conventions in pursuit of her selfish pleasures. By contrast, his other characters who do not allow themselves such indulgences evolve in juxtaposition, in a blameless scenario in which perspectives shift from one character to another, like gilded images glittering on a Russian Orthodox iconostasis. In Tolstoy’s world, no blame is laid on any single character, but rather, choices are made: young girls grown into mature women, mature women fall from grace, impatient working men acquire understanding and depth of character, lazy aristocrats become victims of their own machinations but without accusation, and evolution and dissipation complement one another as they do in real life. Because Like Water for Chocolate’s central theme is Tita’s choice

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to cling to family convention (one that does not seem very credible), and because Tita never questions her choice but chooses to blame everyone else for the outcomes of her actions, the novel ultimately fails. The lack of reason, maturity, and personal responsibility, combined with the monothematic, egocentric vision fails to convince that this is a novel of any particular spiritual, moral, or personal value. These flaws may in the eyes of some critics place this work firmly into the category of pulp fiction rather than high art. In the following chapter the motif of martyrdom continues: when the Rosaura and Pedro’s firstborn refuses to eat, Tita miraculously begins to lactate, and thus is able to save the life of the child which should have been her own. Similarly, at the end of the novel, when her sexuality may finally be appeased after twenty years of yearning, her lover dies before she is allowed to experience orgasm. At this juncture, it may be contended that Tita’s egocentrism has evolved into full blown megalomania. If in works written by male novelists it is considered a significant flaw for one of the main characters with whom he is readily associable to be martyred, it likewise should be considered a flaw in the work of a female novelist. Several instances of self-sacrifice in a single novel might have worked, had they been credible. However, when combined with similarly maudlin apparitions of the ghosts of Nacha and Morning Light, John Brown’s Kickapoo grandmother, the novel begins to suffer from overt sentimentality. As a result, Tita’s self-combustion at the end of the novel reads as an orgasmic auto da fe of egotism and self-indulgence. Such a twist may be touted as a feminist stab at magical realism, but one of the basic elements of the technique is missing: suspension of disbelief. As the term is understood, magical realism is the juxtaposition of the supernatural to the mundane, each having characteristics of the other, creating symmetry and balance that allows for the introduction of subjectivity while maintaining an impression of objective reality. Yet Like Water for Chocolate skirts the issue of objective reality from its first sentences, noted above, and then dives headlong into self-indulgent hysteria. Every apparition is one that appears solely to Tita, every beating and instance of humiliation is perpetrated against Tita, every disaster is Tita’s personal disaster, including the death of the baby she nurses. Even death is usurped by the ever-gobbling black hole of Tita’s ego. The critical problem suffered by Like Water for Chocolate is not

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its classification as a work of popular fiction, but that the current critical apparatus seems determined to erase the borders between art and popular fiction. This critical apparatus has brought about the special attention this work has been afforded, not Laura Esquivel the writer, nor the novel itself, which was clearly written to appeal to a particular market and not to attain critical praise or for the author to vie for a place in the list of Nobel contenders. The novel is as distinctly epicurean as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but there is nothing criminal in that; the sole difficulty lies rather in critics’ inability or unwillingness to distinguish at this level between low and high culture, one of the emphases of the postmodernist approach to text. Specifically, it presents a serious difficulty to critics whose works are not saturated with the ideals of French and/or feminist theories, who are then forced to do a tarantella around the object of postmodern fascination in order not to ruffle the feathers of devotées. In his carefully worded mention of Like Water for Chocolate, Raymond Leslie Williams notes that “The recent popularity of Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel, in conjunction with the general international interest in both Latin American writing and women’s writing, has placed women writers in Latin American in the spotlight for the first time in the history of the region” (158). Therein lies the problem of the critical propulsion of Laura Esquivel’s writing to a status that exceeds its literary merit. One might contend that recent critics have extended themselves a bit too far by separating women’s writing from men’s as though there should be a different standard for female writers. Far from achieving the goal of equality, such unmerited praise belies the political objectives of critics. Indeed it undermines the very basis of feminism, which arose from the need to address social injustices. Clearly those injustices cannot be redressed through postulating that inequality is curable in the world of arts by denying the existence of technical ability or by the resultant acceptance of anything written by women into a rough hewn canon of political correctness. In fact, this tendency illustrates a major failure in postmodern efforts at criticism: the fact that it denigrates real achievements by artists of the female gender by admitting pulp fiction into the mechanism without honest critical assessment. Or as Camille Paglia once phrased it, “Scholarship swayed by politics becomes propaganda” (188). On the matter of women in the spotlight for the first time, we

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might recall a certain Lucila Godoy, popularly known as Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The fact that many readers simply ignored Latin America’s literary culture for a century does not mean anything but that a fairly large group of people lost out on some good reading by not learning Spanish or Portuguese. However, the inference that European feminists discovered Latin American arts as the result of heroic literary balladeers like Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel is preposterous. It is a paradox of postmodernist criticism, which while railing against the patriarchy visits the most paternalistic of attitudes upon the Americas by casting pearls before its least talented writers. In much the same light, Raymond Leslie Williams confuses commercial success with artistic validity and merit ,and subsequently suggests that interest in Latin America and in the writings of women have brought validity to anything written in the region or by persons specified by gender. This contention is condescending to Latin American artists and to other female novelists of great literary talent. Other than this and two other brief mentions of the name of Laura Esquivel, Williams writes nothing about the writer or her works, thereby relegating both to a gender specific zone. The point made by Jean Franco, that “pluralism also has its risks: if everything is valid, then nothing is valid” (Williams 158) represents the true outcome of the efforts of political factions to oppose the norm of exclusively aesthetic consideration. Instead of insisting on validity based on gender, the point of the search for equality should begin with honest assessment of work based uniquely on its strengths and by categorically rejecting the writer’s gender as a means of appraisal: in short, value should be measured with a single, gender-free yardstick. If this requirement is not followed, the critical mechanism fails because it is corrupt. We cannot pretend that all writing is equal without also admitting that, if such were the case, there would be no reason for writing criticism, or for the study of literature. Every opinion, however uneducated or erroneous, would also be equal in value, and consequently, completely devoid of value. One may grant that fewer women have engaged in serious writing in the 20th century than men, but to relegate all writings produced by female authors to a single category—i.e. segregate them based on gender—is grossly unjust to writers of great talent, and equally unjust to the serious study

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of good literature. Like Water for Chocolate finds its way into the Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel in a chapter titled “Gender Studies.” Like many other works, the novel is exalted to an undeserved plane primarily due to the gender of its author. The first mention of this novel contains the phrase “Como agua para chocolate is a bestseller” (194). Then follows the sentence: “Tita uses the gender role forced on her against itself, to subvert the old order from within” (195). In this assessment the issue of art is once again subordinate to the political. The perception that an assumed political objective in the work outweighs literary merit marks a serious flaw in the way we receive literature. It is akin to the objectification of art to symbolize the ideals of socialism, the tyrannical enslavement of creativity to serve utilitarian goals known as Socialist Realism. Furthermore, the claim is simply dishonest. There is no indication that Laura Esquivel sought to do anything but compose first as a novel what she had initially intended as a film script. Moreover, it seems unlikely that her motivation was the glorification of feminist ideals. It seems more likely that Esquivel sought to script a story about the difficulties of a love affair and embellish it with hyperbole. Those difficulties are common and appreciable by anyone, and because they stem from biological and emotional turbulence, they are readily engaging to readers from any segment of society. In addition, they require no academic intervention for clarification. Normal biological or emotional functions are a staple in world literature from the popular to the artistic. The key to the value of such literature however depends on how love affairs and all things biological, including death, are depicted; these criteria determine whether those works are artistic or merely saccharine consumerist objects. The formulas in Like Water for Chocolate seem to have emerged from core elements of popular appeal rather than essential themes approached truthfully. Esquivel’s allusions to or reworking of fairy tales may have been misinterpreted or deliberately ignored so that the work might be categorized more easily to fit into a canonical segment of 20th century Latin American literature. Rather than regarding LWFC as the popular novel that it is, the ever available, buoying pigeonhole of magical realism seems to be where Esquivel’s first work has been jettisoned. In his lengthy, well researched but unconvincing effort at

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producing a theory of magical realism (Realismo mágico y primitivismo), Erik Camayd-Freixas notes that while Like Water for Chocolate contains elements of magical realism, since the novel is no longer marginal it murders its creator: “Magical realist elements appear here as accepted and traditional, with the full conventionalism of a fairy tale. But this too, deliberately or not, is a form of patricidal tribute because it uses and abuses the basis of a tradition that has lost its marginal quality, highlighting that it is canonical. Popular appeal and commercial success only strengthen this perception” (294). Camayd-Freixas assumes that in penning her novel, Esquivel was paying tribute to Gabriel García Márquez. However, there is no indication that García Márquez was in any way a literary mentor to Laura Esquivel. In fact, the overarching plot line of LWFC clearly stems from the hyperbole of fairy tales. One indication of this tendency is the fact that Tita’s selfimmolation at the end of the novel bears no resemblance whatsoever to anything in Garcia Marquez’s novels. It does appear, however to have strong ties to Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Match Girl.” The major difference of course is that Andersen’s fairy tale does not revolve around the theme of sexual repression, but poverty and death from exposure. Certain instances of exaggeration in Like Water for Chocolate may be attributable to García Márquez in his earlier fiction such as One Hundred Years of Solitude. Those, however, would be of the sort that are as transparent as Esquivel’s appropriation of fairy tales, such as Tita’s knitting of a blanket a kilometer in length, and her crying into the food she prepares for her sister’s wedding banquet, which provokes the tears of the wedding guests as they eat it. These transparent appropriations of text reveal the novelist’s lack of originality rather than her creativity. Such a defect, in conjunction with the hyperbole of self-pity and megalomania apparent in the entire work, reveal that magical realism, or techniques associated with it, are merely an afterthought, for the real center of the novel is Tita, and the only point of the novel is to illustrate Tita’s different versions of martyrdom. It must be stated that magical realism is a term that originated in the world of the visual arts and was later adopted by writers, such as Miguel Ángel Asturias, to describe his own particular style. CamaydFreixas incorrectly states that the magical-realist moments in Like

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Water for Chocolate are unremarkable or accepted and traditional. It might be more correct to state that, according to Camayd-Freixas’s definition, there are moments of magical realism in Like Water for Chocolate. But in terms of its original meaning, the interchanging of properties of the mundane and the surreal and their juxtaposition to one another, one might contend that there is not a single instance of such usage in Laura Esquivel’s work. There is hyperbole, but the mundane is not imbued with supernatural light in Like Water for Chocolate. There is no technically equipped suspension of disbelief. This may be noted in the second paragraph of the novel, which treats the subject of Tita’s sensitivity by revealing that she was born weeping. However, without the juxtaposition of a surreally portrayed quotidian counterpart to Tita’s in utero tears, we may not contend that this scene employs the techniques of magical realism, but instead illustrates hyperbole alone. Furthermore, Camayd-Freixas implies that Laura Esquivel’s work is subaltern because her use of hyperbole is canonical rather than marginal, as evidenced by the commercial success of Like Water for Chocolate. If that is the case, one might argue that only the first printing of One Hundred Years of Solitude might be regarded as marginal and that its subsequent commercial success undermined and killed its originality because it became canonical in subsequent printings. It further suggests that everyone who had read and enjoyed Like Water for Chocolate had already read One Hundred Years of Solitude, another critical error. In fact, given the very different techniques employed by these writers, it is unjust to suggest that LWFC is stylistically indebted to García Márquez. It is much clearer that Esquivel owes more to Hans Christian Andersen, in terms of plot at least, than to any Latin American novelist. The prime example of this textual appropriation comes in the form of Dr. Brown’s revelation to Tita of his grandmother’s theory of an inner match box which can only combust with the breath of another person (CAPC 125). This returns at the end of the novel as Tita recalls his words: “If through a strong emotion all the matches we have within us come alight all at once, they will produce such an intense light that we can see far beyond our normal range, and we will perceive a splendid tunnel before our eyes,” which, of course relates to the place of one’s origins (CAPC 252). Most readers will recall that Andersen’s fable recounts the story of a little girl walking barefoot in

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the snow who has an apron full of matches to sell. She cannot return home because her father will beat her, so she huddles in a corner and, as she lights match after match, she has visions of the other world, warmth, and her deceased grandmother who comes to rescue her and take her to heaven. The next morning she is discovered frozen to death in the snow. The ghost of the grandmother and the match sticks are paralleled in Like Water for Chocolate in an obvious manner, first because critics too eager to praise the work have ignored the most obvious sources of the plot line, and secondly because what is simply an appropriation of Andersen’s tale has been touted as a major work of magical realism instead of just a fairy tale reworded and sexualized. On the matter of literary precedents, Kristine Ibsen contends that Like Water for Chocolate is a parody of the male canon (134). Or rather, she suggests that it is, but fails to demonstrate it in any meaningful way. Like Camayd-Freixas and Williams, she confuses commercial success with quality of writing. Unlike Camayd-Freixas, however, she determines that the critical machinery has malfunctioned because the book was a popular success. Ibsen suggests that the reader must “suspend his or her ‘academic skepticism’ and admit the pleasure of the text” (134). Here one must contradict the critic: it is academic skepticism that must guide us so that our writing may retain a minimum standard of objective balance. It is flawed logic to contend that one’s academic skepticism is responsible for possibly not liking the work, and that the text is distinctly pleasurable if we allow it to be. For some readers Like Water for Chocolate and its genre cannot be quite as pleasurable because the reader’s level of emotional maturity has surpassed that of the author and her intended audience, and also because it requires a willing suspension of disbelief. Responsible criticism cannot dismiss much wanted academic skepticism in a field that demands it, regardless of political motivation or aesthetic preferences. It is also dishonest to attempt to insert, as Isben does, a layer of meaning in the work that does not exist: “…underlying the appearance of conventionalism may be detected a playfully parodic appropriation that serves not only to undermine the canon but, more importantly, to redirect its focus to an aesthetic project in which such binary oppositions as ‘high art’ and ‘popular’ literature are overturned” (134). Those are great assumptions regarding the intellectual processes that guided Laura Esquivel as she wrote Like Water for Chocolate. It

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assumes that, having read the “male canon,” as Ibsen refers to critically well-received works, Laura Esquivel set out to write as poorly as possible in order to undermine high art while cleverly making fun of it, eventually emerging as a heroine on a new aesthetic plane. There is no evidence to suggest that Laura Esquivel familiarized herself with a male canon for the purposes of parody. If there is appropriation of text, it is on the level of fairy tales as in the major theme of self-immolation that is lifted entirely from Andersen’s three paragraph story, not from Garcia Marquez, Jorge Amado, or any other serious novelist from Latin America or anywhere else. There is a chasm between high art and popular literature of this type. Similarly, there is no binary opposition between what is good and what is not. There is however a binary opposition between postmodern nihilism and the non-postmodern belief in creative virtuosity, the nonpoliticized aesthetics of criticism that has re-emerged in the aftermath of postmodern pretense. There is nothing to suggest that writers of popular fiction agree with unmerited praise of their works. Isabel Allende maintains that her goal is not about the creation of “good literature but about telling a story,” a confession that should be respected. She does not consider her work to be high art, in her own words, and a similar response can be found in the words of Laura Esquivel about what compels her to write (Smith). The common ground between these two very different writers is their commercial success, an emphasis on love in certain of their works, and the use of hyperbole. In the case of Isabel Allende there is credible evidence to suggest an influence of Garcia Marquez (i.e. Rosa, la bella, in La casa de los espíritus), but that is where her writing differs greatly from Laura Esquivel’s. On Isabel Allende’s writing, Philip Swanson notes the following attack: “In an article published in Ideologies and Literature…Gabriela Mora roundly attacks her [Allende] on the grounds that the Chilean author repurposes in her fiction traditional negative female stereotypes and fails to equip her female characters with a serious political consciousness” (148). The distinction between high and low culture and its apparent blurring are apparently responsible for this type of critique, because, as one would gather, if we were not engaged in picking through pulp fiction for messages of higher ideals there would be no need for any such remarks. The charge is that Isabel Allende is guilty of not

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instilling her female characters with the proper political stance. It is regrettable that popular forms of storytelling should be policed for adherence to political didacticism, which is probably the true essence of postmodern criticism, rather than the appreciation of art. Laura Esquivel, like Isabel Allende, has noted that her goal is to tell entertaining stories, and regardless of the temptations to find hidden layers of meaning in pulp fiction, it is still dishonest to extol nonexistent virtues on one hand and then lament the lack thereof on the other, in complete disregard for the stated purposes of the authors under examination. The problem is not with the authors but with critics using imported European theories to examine American literatures and popular cultures. Converse to the idea of establishing egalitarianism, the outcome seems more like a new attempt to colonize from abroad, to Stalinize the freest forms of expression by popular writers. The popularity of such writers as Laura Esquivel and Isabel Allende comes of their ability to tell stories that require of the reader little extra thought, to produce works that are popular precisely because they do not demand academic scrutiny for clarification. We should question why then those works are being examined and for whose political ends, as well as why there is a stated need to erase the boundaries between popular culture and high culture. Like Water for Chocolate is representative only of popular fiction. Its subsequent commercial success as a film adaptation indicates that Laura Esquivel’s talents may be better on the big screen than in print. In the long term it is the criticism, and not the art of fiction, that will have been undermined by the political efforts of postmodern criticism. Despite its numerous aesthetic flaws, Like Water for Chocolate should not be criticized for its commercial success. It is not of the same literary quality as the major works of 20th century Latin American fiction, but that is a point that should not have to be made. Popular fiction and serious literature serve different purposes, and those differences should be respected. Popular fiction is written to provide entertainment, diversion, and escapism. It should not be policed for adherence to political objectives. David Hirsh noted in 1991 that “literary criticism has not only become politicized, but

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politicized against the values of human liberalism” (179), which is a trend that has not quite ended in the evaluation of Latin American fiction.

Notes 1

Text from the novel is translated from the Spanish by the author.

Works Cited Camayd-Freixas, Erik. Realism mágico y primitivismo: relecturas de Carpentier, Asturias, Rulfo y García Márquez. Lanham: U P of America, 1998. Esquivel, Laura. Como agua para chocolate. Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1989. García Márquez, Gabriel. Cien años de soledad. Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2007. Hirsch, David H. The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism after Auschwitz. Hanover, New Hampshire: U P of New England, 1991. Ibsen, Kristine. “On Recipes, Reading and Revolution: Postboom Parody in Como agua para chocolate.” Hispanic Review 63.2 (Spring 1995): 133-146. Leonardi, Susan J. “Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster a la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.” PMLA 104.3 (1989): 340347 Smith, Joan. “Laura Esquivel on Like Water for Chocolate, destiny and the thoughts of inanimate objects.” Salon, October 1996

Swanson, Philip. The New Novel in Latin America. Manchester: Manchester U P, 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Latin American Literature. ed. Efrain Kristal. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2005. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1975.

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William, Raymond Leslie. The Modern Latin-American Novel. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.

Under the Sign of Hyperbole: Magical Realism and Melodrama in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate1 Mónica Zapata Université François-Rabelais – Tours, France Nearly twenty years after the publication of Like Water for Chocolate, it seems appropriate to take another look at this novel, which has now become a 20th century classic of Latin American literature but which, at its first appearance, did not seem destined for a brilliant future, at least judging from early critical reaction. Condemned from the start by enthusiasts of the historical novel as “engagé” writing—as the “true” novel of the Mexican Revolution—, considered an opportunistic work by a mediocre writer, Laura Esquivel’s novel now occupies a place of choice in the historiography of Spanish language literature. In Europe, however, it must be admitted that even though the most recent manuals of the history of literature devote several pages to “women writers of the post-boom” (I. Allende, A. Mastretta and L. Esquivel), these authors are no less perceived—especially in academic milieu— as sub-products of Literature, poor or deformed avatars of the magical realism of the great days of the Boom. Like Water for Chocolate arrived on both the Latin American and North American markets at a time when magical realism had received its letters of nobility. No longer seen as simply another feature of “Latin American folklore” or as an object of polemics among more or less left-leaning intellectuals, magical realism came to be seen as a characteristic of the Latin American nueva narrativa. In fact, even today some critics no longer make a distinction between fantastic prose in the stories of Julio Cortázar and the return to mythical material in Asturias and Carpentier: in all cases it is a question of a certain capacity for discovering mystery in everyday life, even if for some—including Cortázar—this ability is not the exclusive property of Latin Americans (Sáinz de Medrano 336-339).

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Because the term had become synonymous with “Latin American narrative prose” in the 20th century, magical realism also became a two-sided weapon for followers of the Boom. The detractors of Laura Esquivel thus complained of the exploitation for commercial purposes of a cliché – and a fashionable and successful cliché at that – a good “recipe” in the words of Antonio Marquet in Excelsior. But why should critics be so offended when at the same time they applauded each new publication by someone like Gabriel García Márquez?2 It could not just be a question of gender because even though other women authors were targeted along with Esquivel – Isabel Allende first and foremost – we also find the male Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda as a target of criticism. It seems to me rather a question of a change in the esthetic paradigm. It seems to me rather a question of a change in the esthetic paradigm, or, in Frederic Jameson’s view, a move toward the language of daily life—from a wide historical point of view toward old wives’ tales, from great sentiments toward the “twilight of affect” and toward sentimentality (30-35). In this new context of “triviality”, making use of the major mark of Latin American literary identity was, for specialized critics, the same as using any ordinary material for one’s ends, perverting noble material by using it alongside material used everywhere else except in “Great Literature” (Lillo & Sarfati 481-482). In the same way, summarizing the esthetics of what he calls, doubtless a little too easily, “feminine writing of the 1980s”, Ángel Esteban writes: The work of these women is at first sight without pretension, the authors do not aspire to rule or interpret the world but simply attempt to represent it from a deliberately partial perspective, unordered, sentimental, emphasizing detail above all […] and willingly making use of the resources characteristic of orality. (Esteban 88)

While Donald Shaw contends that the recourse to the procedures of magical realism, in Esquivel as in Isabel Allende, seems purely playful and unrelated in any obvious way to some critique of realism or to a feminist purpose which in principle underlies the discourse of both authors (322). For this critic too, what dominates in these two women is a return to a sentimentalism “without complications,” a feature according to him common to all “post-boom” novels (237).

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That being said, it matters little here whether it is a question of analyzing the codes of realism or a question of simple playfulness. I am not attempting to discover the author’s intentions or to make a value judgement about the quality of the novels. What I am interested in is the intersection, in Esquivel’s work, of two esthetics whose origin and purpose seem a priori antagonistic: on the one hand, the disproportion between cause and effect characteristic of the formal innovation brought by magical realism to narrative prose in the 20th century and, on the other hand, the treatment of the theme of love characteristic of works with a strong diegetic component, like works of “popular culture” and the Latin American post-boom. If it is true, as D. Shaw maintains, that in Esquivel we may legitimately speak of “sentimentalism without complications,” it is not because the love affairs of the characters are not complicated or encumbered; on the contrary, they are. But they are love affairs that meet all the obstacles they are confronted with and survive intact, even reinforced. The love that binds Tita and Pedro, as exclusive as it is excessive, gives rise to behavior and discourse that partake of what Peter Brooks calls the “rhetoric of excess,” that we also find at the heart of the so-called minor genre, melodrama (349). Magical realism and melodrama have in common a basic figure, hyperbole, whose influence is surely not unrelated to the euphoric effects that the novel produces in the reader, despite the fact that it ends with the death of both protagonists. Recall that in classical rhetoric hyperbole is an “amplification condensed into a trope,” which replaces “the expected signifiant with a signifiant which expresses too much in its context, either by metaphor […] or by synecdoche” (Reboul 48). Considered sometimes a “rather vulgar” figure – found in cheap journalism or publicity for example – it can unmask the insufficiency language sometimes has in expressing subjectivity. “The ‘too much’ of hyperbole is not an expression of reality, but rather our inability to express reality as we feel it: it is too scandalous, too sad, too beautiful” (Reboul 49). Moreover, when exaggeration in language is equivalent to the affirmation of facts that are impossible in reality, we also speak of “adynaton”, a variant of hyperbole used not only in advertising slogans but also in fantastic literature (Grassin).3 As for magical realism, critics generally agree that what differentiates its esthetics from that of the canonical fantastic (European or Latin American) is

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the homology or absolute equivalence between reality and the marvelous. Irlemar Chiampi speaks of a rhetoric of persuasion that tends to confer a status of truth onto inexistent facts (Llarena “Un balance crítico”). As far the use of hyperbole is concerned, it is thus a question, for authors of magical realism, of exploiting “impossible hyperbole,” or adynaton, but in a context such that it becomes plausible—a point we shall return to below. Let us now turn to melodrama and its “rhetoric of excess” (349). In his work on this reputedly minor genre, Brooks considers hyperbole “of situation” as well as hyperbole of discourse—which we defined earlier—as one of the structural components of melodrama, along with antithesis among other things, both being exploited in the canonical model of the French 19th century for the purposes of exalting virtue (341). Brooks writes, “the world according to melodrama is fundamentally dualistic, constructed on the violent encounter of good and evil conceived as opposite poles” (347). And since “melodrama abhors the middle ground,” its characters live their emotions to the utmost, “without mitigation or mediation” (348). Moreover, because it assimilates “I want” and “I can,” the world of melodrama is similar to the universe of dreams and, according to Eric Bentley, “represents a return to the narcissism of childhood, which takes its pleasure from feeling sorry for itself and from grandiose emotional states” (Brooks 348). According to Brooks, it is not possible to understand the representation of sentiment in melodrama without analyzing its means of expression, that is, its rhetoric and its theatricality (349). Indeed, there seems to be no point in trying to understand the psychology of the characters in melodrama simply because there is no psychology—neither psychological depth nor psychological conflict. Characters are pure signs—stereotypes— and must be studied as such and in their recombinations of alliances and oppositions: for example in the case of Esquivel’s novel the depictions of “bad mother” / “victimized daughter,” “good doctor,” function in this way. Generally speaking, concludes Brooks, the rhetoric of melodrama “tends toward overemphasis and sententiousness. Typical literary figures are hyperbole, antithesis and oxymoron: just those figures that manifest a refusal of nuance and a voluntary choice of pure and whole concepts” (352). This is a rhetoric that can transform daily and banal events and give them the look and feel of grandiose conflicts. And

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this, in turn, satisfies a certain desire on the part of readers who can feel reassured by the idea that the world can indeed respond to our most anxious expectations and that reality, if perceived correctly, will never disappoint our most fanciful requirements (352). This idea that opening one’s eyes is enough to see the extraordinary side of everyday banality overlaps with one of the main principles put forth by the first theoreticians of “magical realism” and “marvelous realism” (Sáinz de Medrano 337). In addition, the rhetoric of melodramatic excess, which Brooks characterizes as “a victory over repression” (352), is also related to the “intent to persuade” characteristic of “marvelous realism” according to I. Chiampi, because in both cases it is a question of projecting a fantasized desire onto concrete, verifiable facts (Llarena “Un balance crítico” 109). The effects of magical realism and the euphoric intent of melodrama which converge in Like Water for Chocolate both tend toward an increase in pleasure for the reader and as such surely constitute one of the keys to its success.4 Incomparable Situations and Images I have analyzed elsewhere the “free circulation of clichés” in Like Water for Chocolate and pointed out in particular the convergence of the resources of magical realism and melodrama in certain descriptive passages of the book where relations of cause and effect go beyond the limits of reason and/or experience (Zapata “Like Water”). I would like to return here in more detail to the operation of hyperbole, and more precisely adynaton, characteristic of magical realism. “Impossible hyperbole” often appears in Like Water for Chocolate – as it does in many texts by García Márquez, incidentally – in scenes where visual effects predominate. These are particularly striking, often comic scenes in the film version of the novel directed by Arau. They are descriptions of movement or of a single image repeated with variations at various points in the novel. Among these single images, consider first the bedspread knitted by Tita during her moments of insomnia, for which she uses lengths of wool of the most varied colors and whose dimensions seem to grow as the story progresses. The text mentions the bedspread for the first time in the first chapter, after the interview in which Mamá Elena agrees to the marriage proposal of Pedro and his father, but in favor of her daughter Rosaura rather than

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Tita. Tita, who cannot sleep because of the cold that penetrates her whole body, begins – and finishes – a crocheted bedspread which under normal circumstances would have taken a year to make (CAPC 24). A few chapters later however, when Tita is ill and taken to see Dr. Brown, the bedspread reappears in what is surely one of the most famous scenes of both the novel and the film (Arau): Era tan grande y pesada que no cupo dentro del carruaje. Tita se aferró a ella con tanta fuerza que no hubo más remedio que llevarla arrastrando como una enorme y caleidoscópica cola de novia que alcanzaba a cubrir un kilómetro completo. […] la colcha mostraba una amalgama de colores, texturas y formas que aparecían y desaparecían como por arte de magia entre la monumental polvareda que levantaba a su paso. (CAPC 91-92) It was so large and heavy it didn’t fit inside the carriage. Tita grabbed it so tightly that there was no choice but to let it drag behind the carriage like the huge train of a wedding gown that stretched for a full kilometre. […] it revealed a kaleidoscopic combination of colours, textures and forms that appeared and disappeared as if by magic in the gigantic cloud of dust that rose up behind it. (LWFC 91)

The bedspread reappears on the scene, and for the last time, at the end of the novel, when Tita is looking for a way to join Pedro, now dead; recalling the words of Dr. Brown about the properties of phosphorus, she finds the matches he had given her, uses them to rekindle the flame of her passion and, literally, sets fire to the house. It is the bedspread that she “había tejido noche tras noche de soledad y de insomnio” (CAPC 211) (“she had woven through night after night of solitude and insomnia” LWFC 220) that allows her to cover the “tres hectáreas que comprendía el rancho en su totalidad” (CAPC 211) (“the whole ranch, all three hectares” LWFC 220). In short, we will never know finally just how long it took Tita to make the bedspread, nor just how large it is. But it does not matter. Whether it was knitted in one or innumerable nights of insomnia, whether it was long by one kilometer or three hectares in surface area (in Arau’s film it covers the entire width of the field), the bedspread is literally beyond ordinary measure and its effects, as the text itself emphasizes, are “magical.”

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Other images, as well-known as they are overstated, are those of the floods of tears shed by Tita, a character who never does anything by halves. Thus, even before her birth, The hypersensitive Tita wept in her mother’s womb whenever her mother cut up onions, to the point where she finally brought about her own premature birth: En la tarde, ya cuando el susto había pasado y el agua, gracias al efecto de los rayos del sol, se había evaporado, Nacha barrió el residuo de las lágrimas que había quedado sobre la loseta roja que cubría el piso. Con esta sal rellenó un costal de cinco kilos que utilizaron para cocinar bastante tiempo. (CAPC 11-12) That afternoon, when the uproar had subsided and the water had been dried up by the sun, Nacha swept up the residue the tears had left on the red stone floor. There was enough salt to fill a ten-pound sack – it was used for cooking and lasted a long time. (LWFC 10)

The tears, a melodramatic motif in and of itself, flow in Esquivel’s novel for a very ordinary reason—common enough anyway in the daily life of those who customarily cook onions; at the same time, their salinity and the effect they produce are in the realm of the miraculous.5 Miraculous too is the stream flowing down the stairs in Dr. Brown’s house, which turns out again to be nothing more than Tita’s tears: Cuando se dio cuenta de que se trataba de las lágrimas de Tita, John bendijo a Chencha y a su caldo de colita por haber logrado lo que ninguna de sus medicinas había podido : que Tita llorara de esa manera. (CAPC 110) When he realized it was just Tita’s tears, John blessed Chencha and her oxtail soup for having accomplished what none of his medicines had been able to do – making Tita weep. (LWFC 114-15)

Here too the trigger for the tears—a bouillon prepared according to a traditional recipe known by the servant Chencha—has nothing magical about it, but the consequences are again quite beyond ordinary measure.6 But the most exaggerated and “magical” visions are those corresponding to scenes of sexual or sensual effusion; the flight of

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Gertrudis is the first and foremost illustration of this. Tita’s sister, born of the illegitimate love affair between Mamá Elena and a mulatto, soon becomes the catalyst for the forbidden love between Tita and Pedro and literally the receptacle of their flame. So it seems “normal” that her body should give off a heat sufficient to set fire to the shower cabinet where she is attempting to appease the ardor brought on by the dish of quail in rose petals that Tita has prepared for Pedro: “El calor que desprendía su cuerpo era tan intenso que las maderas empezaron a tronar y a arder” (CAPC 52) (“Her body was giving off so much heat that the wooden walls began to split and burst into flame” LWFC 51). Another extraordinary consequence of the same dish, again in the body of Gertrudis, is that the scent of the roses, brought by Pedro and used by Tita to prepare the quail, has penetrated the body of the young woman and appears now as a rose-colored mist: Para entonces el olor a rosas que su cuerpo desprendía había llegado muy, muy lejos. Hasta las afuera del pueblo, en donde revolucionarios y federales libraban una cruel batalla. Entre ellos sobresalía por su valor el villista ese […]. (CAPC 52) By then the scent of roses given off by her body had travelled a long, long way. All the way to town, where the rebel forces and the federal troops were engaged in a fierce battle. One man stood head and shoulders above the others for his valour […]. (LWFC 51) Una nube rosada llegó hasta él, lo envolvió y provocó que saliera a todo galope hacia el rancho de Mamá Elena. (CAPC 52) A pink cloud floated towards him, wrapped itself around him, and made him set out at a gallop towards Mama Elena’s ranch. (LWFC 51)

Finally, Gertrudis, completely nude, her hair falling to her waist and “irradiando una luminosa energía” (CAPC 53) (“luminous, glowing with energy” LWFC 52), flees with the revolutionary who has come to fetch her and, before the admiring gaze of Tita and Pedro, these two achieve sexual ecstacy: “primera copulación a todo galope y con alto grado de dificultad” (CAPC 53) (“they made love for the first time, at a gallop and with a great deal of difficulty” LWFC 52).

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In each passage cited above, it is the ingestion of a particular food—onion, bouillon, quail—that produces a most unexpected result and whose explanation—irrational—can perhaps be found in the emotional component always present in food, the clearest example being that of the quail prepared with the roses brought by Pedro to Tita as a sign of love. But there are other situations where a hyperbolic image arises, either from the effect of pure passion or for reasons that appear justified by the scientific discourse that precedes them. This is the case, for example, in the first sexual encounter between Tita and Pedro, which produces a strange glow that Chencha and Rosaura see as the ghost of Mamá Elena, and the last encounter, which seems to corroborate Dr. Brown’s explanations concerning the properties of the phosphorus contained in the matches: Tenía que encontrar una manera, aunque fuera artificial, de provocar un fuego tal que pudiera alumbrar ese camino de regreso a su origen y a Pedro. […] Y logró lo que se proponía. Cuando el fósforo que masticaba hacía contacto con la luminosa imagen que evocaba, el cerillo se encendía. […] En ese momento los cuerpos ardientes de Pedro y Tita empezaron a lanzar brillantes chispas. Éstas encendieron la colcha que a su vez incendió todo el rancho. […] El cuarto oscuro se convirtió en un volcán voluptuoso. Lanzaba piedras y cenizas por doquier. Las piedras en cuanto alcanzaban altura estallaban, convirtiéndose en luces de todos los colores. […] Una capa de ceniza de varios metros de altura cubría todo el rancho. (CAPC 212) She would have to find some way, even if it was an artificial one, of striking a fire that would light the way back to her origin and to Pedro. […] In this she was successful; when the match she chewed made contact with the luminous image she evoked, the match began to burn. […] At that moment the fiery bodies of Pedro and Tita began to throw off glowing sparks. They set on fire the bedspread, which ignited the entire ranch. […] The dark room was transformed into an erupting volcano. It cast stone and ash in every direction. When the stones reached high enough, they exploded into multicoloured lights. […] A layer of ash several yards high covered the entire ranch. (LWFC 220-21)

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Nevertheless, the most extraordinary situations in the novel are related to food, its preparation, its ingredients and the emotional charge placed in it. The same is true of the two wedding scenes which provide the narrative with the structure of a chiasma in the way they combine “antithesis and inversion” (Reboul 54). Recall that the first of these scenes corresponds to the wedding of Rosaura and Pedro and ends with a collective food poisoning and vomiting caused by the wedding cake into which Tita had been unable to keep from shedding her tears of sadness. The motif of tears appears here explicitly connected to frustrated love, and the impossible hyperbole consists in the transfer of unhappiness from the heroine to all the wedding guests through the cake: […] el llanto fue el primer síntoma de una intoxicación rara que tenía algo que ver con una gran melancolía y frustración que hizo presa de todos los invitados y los hizo terminar en el patio, los corrales y los baños añorando cada uno el amor de su vida. Ni uno solo escapó del hechizo y sólo algunos afortunados llegaron a tiempo a los baños ; los que no, participaron de la vomitona colectiva que se organizó en pleno patio. (CAPC 40) But the weeping was just the first symptom of a strange intoxication – an acute attack of pain and frustration – that seized the guests and scattered them across the patio and the grounds and into the bathrooms, all of them wailing over lost love. Everyone there, every last person, fell under this spell, and not very many of them made it to the bathrooms on time – those who didn’t joined the collective vomiting that was going on all over the patio. (LWFC 39)

This scene is also the first of a series devoted to the digestive troubles from which Rosaura and her mother suffer and which will ultimately be the cause of their death;7 it is also a good example of the kind of grotesque image we find in other magical realism authors, including Miguel Ángel Asturias among others.8 Diametrically opposed to this scene, and the very end of the novel, another wedding dinner produces an inverse but no less extraordinary effect of Rosaura’s wedding cake: Ahora por el contrario al probar los chiles en nogada, en lugar de sentir una gran nostalgia y frustración, todos experimentaban una sensación parecida a la de Gertrudis

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cuando comió las codornices en pétalos de rosas. Y para variar Gertrudis fue la primera en sentir nuevamente los síntomas. […] Gertrudis fue la que inició la desbandada. Todos los demás invitados, con uno u otro pretexto y con miradas libidinosas, también pidieron disculpas y se retiraron. Los novios interiormente lo agradecieron […]. Les urgía llegar al hotel. (CAPC 208) Today, instead of feeling a terrible longing and frustration, they felt quite different; tasting these chillies in nut sauce, they all experienced a sensation like the one Gertrudis had when she ate the quails in rose petal sauce. Again Gertrudis was the first to feel the symptoms. […] When she left, the party started to break up. All the other guests quickly made their excuses, coming up with one pretext or another, throwing heated looks at each other; they too left. The newlyweds were secretly delighted […]. They needed to get to the hotel. (LWFC 217-18)

The comparison of these three scenes where the hyperbole of magical realism establishes a causal relationship between the ingestion of certain foods and the pleasure or disgust of the characters leads us to take into consideration the interplay of dichotomies characteristic of melodrama and to see how the characters, according to whether they are “good” or “bad”, are surrounded by “magical” images but with opposite values. Excessive Characters and Grandiloquent Discourse In Like Water for Chocolate, as in canonical melodrama, characters are distributed as good or evil. But as distinct from what happens in other texts by Latin American women of the post-boom—I am thinking in particular of La casa de los espíritus (1982) by Isabel Allende—the dichotomy is not strictly related to gender.9 Here the feminine universe itself is divided into two camps: on one side the biological mothers who bring children into the world but who are incapable of nurturing them (Mamá Elena and Rosaura), and on the other side nurturing mothers, capable of establishing a relationship with the child that is both corporal and emotional. In this vein, Nacha feeds Tita, and Tita, though unmarried, is nevertheless able to breastfeed the son of Rosaura and Pedro. The first group has no access to the pleasures of cooking and die of food poisoning or digestive

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problems. These are the “bad mothers” whereas the others are characters with whom the reader can immediately identify. To this world also belong three other characters, as “positive” as they are stereotypical: Gertrudis, the woman in revolt, Chencha, the servant who is good-hearted although she sometimes lies,10 and Luz del Amanecer, the wise old Indian grandmother. In general we can see that Tita moves in a world of positive images, that almost transform her story into a fairy tale.11 This is why the grandiose ending of the novel and the death of the lovers are not tragic since in the final analysis Tita and Pedro will find each other somewhere outside this world and will be able to leave “hacia el edén perdido. Ya nunca más se [separarán]” (CAPC 212) (“they left together for the lost Eden. Never again would they be apart” LWFC 221). Like the novels of Manuel Puig, another master of the Latin American post-boom—and of melodrama—, Like Water for Chocolate has a euphoric ending and readers, although they may regret the disappearance of its heroes, can at least initially put themselves in the position of those characters who are witnesses to the story and see the fire as though it were a party: “Los habitantes de las comunidades vecinas observaban el espectáculo a varios kilómetros de distancia, creyendo que se trataba de los fuegos artificiales de la boda de Alex y Esperanza” (CAPC 212) (“From miles away, people in neighboring towns watched the spectacle, thinking it was fireworks celebrating the wedding of Alex and Esperanza” LWFC 221). The reader can then close the book on a vision of continuity, established also by the voice of the narrator who assures them of the permanence of Tita’s inheritance: Cuando Esperanza, mi madre, regresó de su viaje de bodas, sólo encontró bajo los restos de lo que fue el rancho este libro de cocina que me heredó al morir […]. Dicen que bajo las cenizas floreció todo tipo de vida ; convirtiendo ese terreno en el más fértil de la región. (CAPC 212) When Esperanza, my mother, returned from her wedding trip, all that she found under the remains of what had been the ranch was this cookbook, which she bequeathed to me when she died […]. They say that under those ashes every kind of life flourished, making this land the most fertile in the region. (LWFC 221)

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On the contrary, extraordinary but negative images accumulate around the bad characters, as in the scene of the party given above, or in the successive portrayals that accentuate the grotesque contours of the character of Rosaura, as in the following examples: […] no hubo un solo pedazo de su vestido que quedara libre de vómito. Un voluminoso río macilento la envolvió y la arrastró unos metros, provocando que sin poderse resistir más lanzara como un volcán en erupción estruendosas bocanadas de vómito ante la horrorizada mirada de Pedro. (CAPC 40) […] every inch of her dress ended up coated with vomit. She was swept away in a raging, rotting river for several yards; then she couldn’t hold back any more, and she spewed out great noisy mouthfuls of vomit, like an erupting volcano, right before Pedro’s horrified eyes. (LWFC 39-40) […] sufría de flato y mal aliento […] le costaba un trabajo enorme poner en movimiento su voluminoso y gelatinoso cuerpo. Todos estos males le estaban acarreando infinidad de problemas, pero el más grave era que Pedro se estaba distanciando de ella cada día más. No lo culpaba : ni ella misma soportaba su pestífero vaho. (CAPC 147) […] she suffered from flatulence and bad breath. […] It took an enormous effort for her to set her voluminous, gelatinous body in motion. All these ills carried with them an infinity of problems, the worst being that every day Pedro moved farther and farther away from her. She couldn't blame him; even she couldn't stand the foul smell. (LWFC 154-55)

Peter Brooks writes, “Good or evil, the characters and situations are notable for their integrity: they exploit to the limit a certain way of being, a critical conjunction” (348). Just as there is no rational explanation for the extraordinary phenomena of magical realism, nor is there any good sense in the pathos of melodrama: in both cases too much is too much. And the same overemphasis that makes them distorted figures is what differentiates lovers in melodrama from tragic heroes. Like Romeo and Juliet, Tita and Pedro are caught up in a passionate love affair, made tragic and impossible by social law and achievable only after their death. At the same time something in them

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makes them ridiculous and this, to my way of thinking, follows from the conjunction I am trying to demonstrate here, the conjunction of several aesthetic modalities. When hyperbolic images interrupt the melodramatic tension, they provide a release to the reader who recognizes the cliché and associates it either with fantastic elements of popular culture or with the current of magical realism as theorized by critics and familiar to an elite public. Whether magical realism dignifies melodrama (Lillo & Sarfati 485-486) or whether melodrama perverts magical realism seems to me an empty question. What matters, I believe, is that the hybrid nature of the text is based on the confluence of several esthetics in which exaggeration plays a major role. Although it may often be difficult to distinguish the subtle nuances of these various aesthetic modalities, one can sometimes recognize, in melodramatic overemphasis, the equally grandiloquent accents of another genre of popular culture, musical this time, namely tango. To be sure, if the heroes of melodrama often lend themselves to ridicule, it is because of the spectacular status they give to the object of their love, but also because of the grandiloquence of their language. This overemphasis of the signifiant, which also defies the reality principle, brings to mind the pompous discourse and the words filled with nostalgia and regrets characteristic of tango. Recall, moreover, that this well-known genre of Latin American culture was used with great success by Manuel Puig, who turned it into one of the main keys to his second novel, Boquitas pintadas.12 In Like Water for Chocolate, the character of Pedro is an excellent example of the tango stereotype: a man of great speeches but who remains passive, suffering in silence and submitting to his fate even when it is dictated by a woman (who in fact is stronger than he is), but who remains in spite of everything faithful to his forbidden love. Tita is then a perfect complement to him: more clear-sighted than her older sister Rosaura, she is nevertheless obedient and not a rebel like Gertrudis. She also prefers to wait in silence for her hour of revenge, finally keeping to the space allotted to her, the kitchen. Under these conditions, the only solution available for her passion is food and its codified language, as the text explicitly tells us: “Parecía que habían descubierto un código nuevo de comunicación en el que Tita era la emisora, Pedro el receptor y Gertrudis la afortunada en quien se sintetizaba esta singular relación sexual, a través de la comida”

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(CAPC 50) (“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” LWFC 49).13 Although this means of communication through food is the only one permitted to them in public—and even then Mamá Elena is not fooled and soon dispatches Rosaura to the kitchen so she can try in turn to seduce Pedro with her own dishes—it is not the only language that the lovers use. When alone they express themselves in a sententious manner and with hyperbolic phrases: “el amor no se piensa, se siente o no se siente” (CAPC 23) (“you don’t have to think about love; you either feel it or you don’t” LWFC 20), Pedro declares the first time they are alone together, to which Tita replies to herself, “Sí, sí y mil veces sí” (CAPC 23) (“Yes!’ Yes, a thousand times” LWFC 20-21). Some twenty years later, their last dialogue corroborates what Pedro had already admitted to his father (“me caso sintiendo un inmenso e imperecedero amor por Tita” CAPC 20) (“I am going to marry with a great love for Tita that will never die” LWFC 18), and what the narrative voice, just as grandiloquent as the characters, had predicted (“Lo amó desde esa noche para siempre” CAPC 23) (“From that night on she would love him for ever” LWFC 20-21). Generally speaking, we can say that the discourse of all the principal characters partakes of the same tendency toward excess which can certainly seem kitsch to readers of the literary avant-garde. The same is true of the exalted tone of the end of the story, which reveals a quest for the sublime, another characteristic of melodrama. Here, the pompous grandeur is expressed in the voice of the character of Esperanza and Alex’s daughter, direct inheritor of the story and the wisdom of Tita, her great aunt: “¡Mi mamá… ! ¡Cómo extraño su sazón, el olor de su cocina, sus pláticas mientras preparaba la comida, sus tortas de Navidad !” (CAPC 212-13) (“My mama…! How wonderful the flavour, the aroma of her kitchen, her stories as she prepared the meal, her Christmas Rolls!” LWFC 222). The exalted tone recalls another line of descent which, starting with the canonical melodrama of the 19th century, leads to the television series and soap operas of the 20th century, especially in Latin America. From one continent and century to another, we can still recognize characters’ preference for making categorical affirmations, for judging their peers,

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for loving or hating them: “¡Maldita decencia ! ¡Maldito manual de Carreño ! […] ¡Y maldito Pedro tan decente, tan correcto, tan varonil, tan… tan amado !” (CAPC 55) (“Damn good manners! Damn Carreño’s etiquette manual! […] Damn Pedro, so decent, so proper, so manly, so… wonderful” LWFC 54) According to the theses of Peter Brooks, “the rhetoric of melodrama represents a victory over repression” (Brooks 352). In melodrama one can express what in real life one would hide; indeed desire “shouts” its language, ignoring convention and nuance. In Like Water for Chocolate, as we see, the return of what is repressed governs the discourse of the protagonists whenever they can express themselves freely, determines the tone of the narrative voice and also guides the behavior of the main representatives of the feminine universe, as I have tried to show in a previous article (Zapata “Like Water”). Does this mean that Like Water for Chocolate is a transgressive text, as Brooks claims for 19th century melodrama? This is a delicate question and to answer it we would have to go back over several postulates of post-modern thought, which would take us beyond the framework of this study. I will therefore limit myself to two or three remarks that will serve as a conclusion, while leaving the debate open to future analyses. Given that Esquivel’s novel appeared just at the time when theoreticians of post-modernity were postulating the “twilight of affect” and the dominance of “impressions” (Jameson 30), it would seem at first sight that Like Water for Chocolate does not follow this model because of the importance it gives to the theme of passionate love. In defiance of a puritanical and hypocritical morality, and in violation of the prohibitions of family law, the characters’ passion— their desire—liberates bodies and loosens tongues. Women free themselves from the law of the father and men are at liberty to no longer respond to the requirements of strength and bravery. So the feminist philosophy that lies at the heart of this love story can be said to belong to the “strong” ideologies of modernity. And yet, by its use of magical and melodramatic hyperbole, the treatment of the theme of love alters the reader’s point of view—in form and meaning—and invites a more subtle reading, as a parody. In addition, the novel satisfies several other criteria that critics associate with post-modern writing, including intertextuality, the

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breakdown of distinctions between literary genres, the blending of popular and elite culture and the treatment of history as a simple backdrop for the love story. Patriarchal discourse no longer occupies a central role because of the weight given to a narrative voice that merges with the female characters; a view of history is replaced by a multitude of women’s tales. Like Water for Chocolate also follows the general direction, as we have seen in the introduction to this article, of what Shaw calls the “post-boom” and which he differentiates— arbitrarily in my opinion—from “post-modernism” (326). I have tried to show here how hyperbole functions in relation to two aesthetic forms—magical realism on the one hand, melodrama and its variants or related forms, tango and soap opera on the other— coming from two quite different horizons but which converge in their use of this figure of the extreme and the over-emphatic. I have also suggested that Like Water for Chocolate is characterized by its fundamentally non-tragic ending, despite the death of its protagonists. I would now add that although what happens in Esquivel’s novel, as in the melodramas studied by Brooks, is on the order of the fulfillment of desire, it cannot be said that the text itself is transgressive. This is because by adopting the codes of both melodrama and magical realism at one and the same time, it respects both of them, despite its exaggeration of both. At the same time, the novel engages in a kind of overbidding, precisely because it adds to the hyperbole of magical visions the hyperbole of overblown sentiments and grandiloquent discourse. It is as if the language of the nueva narrativa were no longer sufficient for the expression of reality and, in a period of decline of affect like the present, it were necessary to correct the insufficiency of the code by saying too much. By means of exaggeration the novel reaches and seduces its public; it is also quite probable that the same use of hyperbole made it seem so objectionable to critics.

Notes 1

This text is translated from the French by John Reighard. All English translations from Laura Esquivel’s book are taken from the 1993 edition. Other translations from Spanish are also taken from English editions and identified as such, unless the source was unavailable, in which case they are by J. Reighard.

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The Colombian author published The General in his Labyrinth in 1989, the same year as Like Water for Chocolate. Although the novel is not considered the author’s best work, it never to my knowledge received as much negative criticism as Esquivel’s book. 3 Just one example from García Márquez: “Un pájaro extraviado apareció en el patio y estuvo como media hora dando saltitos de inválido por entre los nardos. Cantó una nota progresiva, subiendo cada vez una octava, hasta cuando se hizo tan aguda que fue necesario imaginarla” (La mala hora). (A stray bird appeared in the patio and for about half an hour jumped about like an invalid among the tuberoses. It sang a progressive note, rising an octave each time, until it became so high you had to imagine it.) 4 I have attempted elsewhere to explain the pleasure of reading by its effects of repetition and the recognition of déjà vu (Zapata “Le désordre”). 5 We are reminded of one of the best known episodes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, in which father Nicanor Reyna rises in levitation after having drunk a cup of chocolate (García Márquez 159). 6 We are reminded here of another scene from One Hundred Years of Solitude: this stream of tears recalls the trail of blood which, avoiding all sorts of obstacles, crosses the entire village and reaches the kitchen where Úrsula is baking bread, in order to inform her of the death of her son José Arcadio (García Márquez 209). 7 Although Mamá Elena’s death is caused primarily by her suspicion of the food Tita serves her, a suspicion that moves her to take a powerful emetic which finally kills her (Esquivel 1989 120 1993 124). 8 Indeed, we are reminded here of the scene of the terrible death of Antolinares, the Spanish conquistador intoxicated by the American palmito, in Maladrón (Asturias 1984 218s). We also find the effects of the aesthetics of the grotesque in the descriptions of the characters of the president (Asturias 2002), of Eréndira’s diabolic grandmother (García Márquez 1972) and of señora Forbes (García Márquez 1992), among many others. 9 A great deal could be said on the subject of the image of women as represented in the novel, both from a psychoanalytical point of view (the Law of the Father) and from a feminist point of view (stereotypes of the masculinized “strong woman”, woman in the kitchen, libertine, etc.), but that would be the subject for another study. 10 By her language as well as by her tendency toward exaggeration and lying, Chencha embodies a type frequently encountered in melodrama, according to the analysis of P. Brooks: “The heroine is herself aided by a follower, a fiancé, a faithful (and often comical) peasant” (Brooks 347). 11 Antonio Marquet compares her character to a “modern Cinderella”. (Marquet 62) 12 The French translation of the title as Le plus beau tango du monde (The Most Beautiful Tango in the World) is an excellent indication of the importance of this musical genre in the novel (Puig). 13 Notice incidentally the mistranslation in English which transforms “fortunate” Gertrudis into “poor.”

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Works Cited Allende, Isabel. La casa de los espíritus, Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1982. ņņņņ. The House of Spirits, New York: Bantam, 1983. Arau, Alfonso, director. Like Water for Chocolate [Como agua para chocolate]. Script: Laura Esquivel. Lumi Cavasos, Regina Torné. Miramax, 1993. Asturias, Miguel Ángel. El señor presidente, Madrid: Cátedra, 2002. ņņņņ. Maladrón. Madrid: Alianza editorial, 1984. Brooks, Peter. “Une esthétique de l'étonnement : le mélodrame”. Poétique : Les genres de la littérature populaire 19 (1974) : 340-356. Esquivel, Laura. Como agua para chocolate. Barcelona: Mondadori, 1989. ņņņņ. Like Water for Chocolate trans. Carol and Thomas Christensen. London: Black Swan Books, 1993. Esteban del Campo, Ángel. Introduction à la littérature hispanoaméricaine. Paris: Ellipses, 2000. Fuguet, Alberto & Gómez, Sergio. McOndo. Barcelona: Mondadori, 1996. García Márquez, Gabriel. Cien años de soledad. Madrid: Cátedra (2da. Edición), 1986. ņņņņ. Doce cuentos peregrinos. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1992. ņņņņ. El general en su laberinto. Barcelona: Mondadori, 1989. ņņņņ. La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1972. Grassin, Jean-Maire (dir.). Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires. http://www.ditl.info/arttest/art6147.php (consulted January 2008) Henao Restrepo, Darío. “La modernidad en la nueva novela latinoamericana”, Calí, (1996). http://www.Darionheanorestrepo.com/la_modernidad.htm (consulted January 2008) Jameson, Fredric. El posmodernismo o la lógica cultural del capitalismo avanzado. 1984 Madrid: Paidós, 1991.

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Llarena, Alicia. Realismo mágico y lo real maravilloso: una cuestión de verosimilitud. Gaithersburg, MD: Ediciones Hispamérica, 1997. ņņņņ. “Un balance crítico: la polémica del realismo mágico y lo real maravilloso americano (1955-1993)”. Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 26.1 (1997). Lillo, Gastón & Sarfati, Monique. “Como agua para chocolate: determinaciones de la lectura en el contexto posmoderno”. Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos. XVIII,3 (primavera 1994): 479-490. Marquet, Antonio. “¿Cómo escribir un best-seller? La receta de Laura Esquivel”. Plural. Revista cultural de Excélsior (junio de 1991): 237. Puig, Manuel. Le plus beau tango du monde trans. Laure GuilleBataillon. Paris: Gallimard, 1987. Original title: Boquitas pintadas. Reboul, Olivier. La rhétorique, Paris: P.U.F., 1986. Sáinz de Medrano, Luis. Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (desde el modernismo). Madrid: Taurus/Santillana, 1992. Shaw, Donald. Nueva narrativa hispanoamericana: Boom, Posboom, Posmodernismo. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra S.A., 1999. Zapata, Mónica. “Le désordre des passions et la loi du genre : d’un mélodrame latino-américain et postmoderne”. in Biffures nº 1, Québec, (Automne 1997): 113-128. ņņņņ. “Like Water for Chocolate and the Free Circulation of Clichés”. In Latin American Postmodernism, Postmodern Studies 22, ed. Richard Young. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997 (205-220).

Section III: LWFC and the Cinderella Myth

Como agua para chocolate: Cinderella and the Revolution

Cherie Meacham

Myth and Marginalization in Como agua para chocolate

Victoria Martinez

Como agua para chocolate: Cinderella and the Revolution Cherie Meacham North Park University A world inverted, an exemplary world, fairyland is a criticism of an ossified reality. (Zipes 30)

Laura Esquivel's first novel strikes a familiar chord with its tale of Tita, the virtuous young woman who suffers paternal absence and maternal abuse, but who eventually wins the status she deserves through the intercession of magical forces. Perhaps the broad popularity of the novel (and its filmed version) has something to do with the elements it shares with one of the most ancient and popular of folk tales. With its central motifs of conflict between mothers and daughters, relationships between sisters, empowerment of the domestic realm, and the search for a suitable mate, the Cinderella story provides a plot that inscribes the major concerns of women as they enter the domain of traditionally engendered adulthood. By placing this age-old story within the turbulent times of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Esquivel creates an effective mirror of and challenge to patriarchal acculturation while disclosing the detail of that specific historical and cultural context. Most fairy tales share a common series of characteristics that make them appropriate vehicles for exploring themes of personal and social transformation. Bruno Bettelheim emphasizes the role that fairy tales play in resolving the subconscious anxieties and aspirations that individuals face while growing up. For him, each tale offers a clearly presented existential dilemma that often entails conflict between generations as the young replace the old (135). In Breaking the Magic Spell, Jack Zipes sees that conflict in terms of class struggle, in which

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“the initial ontological situations of the tales generally deal with exploitation, hunger, and injustice familiar to the lower classes in precapitalist societies” (6). He continues, “they can harbor and cultivate the germs of subversion and offer people hope in their resistance to all forms of oppression and in their pursuit of more meaningful modes of life and communication” (18). While recognizing subversive elements in the original content of these stories, most feminists tend to view their more contemporary versions as vehicles of traditional engendering. In “America's Cinderella,” Jane Yolen traces the evolution of an active and clever heroine who, by the end of the seventeenth century, had been transformed into a patient, submissive, and dependent maiden. Marcia Lieberman concurs that in their present form, fairy tales most often reward girls for being passive, helpless, and beautiful. She also notes that in stories like Cinderella, female martyrdom is idealized and becomes an integral part of the heroine's glamour (194). “Powerful, bad, older women,” she writes, “appear to outnumber powerful good ones,” are often ugly, and usually submitted to harsh punishment (196). Similarly, Karen Rowe concludes, “While readers dissociate from these portraitures of feminine power, defiance, and/or selfexpression, they readily identify with the prettily passive heroine whose submission to commendable roles insures her triumphant happiness” (218). One intent of this study is to examine the tension between elements that inscribe patriarchal tradition and those that transcend and transform it in Esquivel's Mexican version of the European folktale. The early pages of the novel seem to reflect the qualities of the more recent bourgeois versions of the Cinderella tale. The dominant ideology of privilege based on race, class, and age is personified at the very heart of the family in Tita's mother, Mamá Elena. Enforcing a cultural tradition in which the youngest daughter must remain at the mother's side to care for her in old age, the widowed Mamá Elena sets out to destroy any vestige of self-esteem or independence in Tita. This biological mother takes on the role of the wicked step-mother of the Cinderella tale by isolating her daughter from the family circle; instead she relegates Tita to the status of a servant at the hearth and then forbids her to play with her sisters. Mamá Elena erodes her daughter's self-esteem with a constant stream of directives to perform the most unpleasant and difficult tasks, greets their successful

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performance with scorn and derision, and beats the child for any subtle manifestation of defiance. A hierarchy of privilege based on age finds Mamá Elena at the top and Tita at the bottom. As Tita enters adolescence, her mother's tactics transcend even the evil of the stepmother of folklore. Mamá Elena succeeds where the stepmother fails by securing the marriage of Tita's suitor, Pedro Musquis, to the older and less desirable sibling, Rosaura. She chooses the night before Tita’s sixteenth birthday celebration to make the announcement and then insists that Tita be responsible for many of the wedding preparations. Esquivel’s psychologically accurate and detailed portrait of physical and psychological abuse in her characterization of Mamá Elena embodies children’s worst fears of parental authority. For Bettelheim, this demonization of maternal power conforms with the polarization of good and evil in the genre and provides children with simple and unambiguous choices (7). Adrienne Rich, like Marcia Lieberman, observes that “mythology is saturated with fear of the mature, maternal woman” (122). One of the questions that informs this study is whether Esquivel undermines the project of female development with such a destructive stereotype or simply presents a realistic obstacle that Tita must overcome on her journey to full personhood. In identifying the mother as the primary impediment to the daughter’s development and happiness, Esquivel echoes the theme of matriphobia found in North American feminism. For Adrienne Rich “Matriphobia can be seen as a womanly splitting of the self, in desire to become purged once and for all of our mothers’ bondage, to become individuated and free” (236). Similarly, in The Mother/ Daughter Plot, Marianne Hirsh describes the “female family romance” of Victorian literature, in which mothers are either absent, malevolent or inconsequential in plots about daughters who must break with maternal genealogy in order the escape “confinement and potential destruction” (44-45). Within such an analysis, the residue of Victorian ideology with its asexual “Cult of True Womanhood” has a profoundly distorting influence on the female psyche: “Desire is silenced in women both by its absence and by its replacement with regimes of control. Those mothers who are caught in cultural expectations of perfectly selfless nurturing are cut off from self-love, from the joy within them that is deeply renewing” (Debold et all 222).

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When these norms are imposed upon daughters to constrain and repress normal sexual development, maternal presence becomes linked with the motifs of death and destruction, like those that characterize Mamá Elena. Ann Stephens describes an even more rigid and exaggerated stereotype in “Mariansimo: The Other Side of Machismo in Latin America.” While men are held to an arrogant and sexually aggressive image of virility, women are held to the model of submissive selfdenial offered by the Virgin Mary with the implied message that “women are semi-divine, morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men” (91). In no Spanish colony were women more constrained by the unobtainable model of virginal mothering than in Mexico, which forged a national unity and identity out of La Virgen de Guadalupe. There, the authority of her miraculous presence as redeemer of the indigenous people is cemented with a reverse image of la Malinche, which condemns female sexuality through an epic of national shame over the woman who, according to some versions, delivered her people to the conqueror’s sword as she delivered her body to the conqueror’s bed. In Esquivel’s novel, these issues are intensified by the intergenerational violence that characterized revolutionary Mexico (1910-1920). Mamá Elena is a product of the Porfiriato, the conservative regime that used popular media such as the romance novel to preserve women’s commitment to traditional roles. Tita, on the other hand, reflects the changing attitudes of the revolution, which expanded opportunities for women to enter higher education and public projects (Franco 102-3). The violence of the family conflict is a microcosm of the political struggle that lasted ten years, but focuses uniquely on women as objects and agents of change within the private realm of home and family. As a point of convergence for many levels of cultural conflict, the wicked stepmother of folklore is converted into an archetype of satanic evil in the figure of Mamá Elena. Tita’s battle with Mamá Elena takes her through the common plot structure of the fairy tale from an initial condition of isolation and deep despair through an escape from danger to a final recovery and happy ending (Bettelheim 143). As Tita moves from a position of weakness and dependency to one of strength and authority, each stage of her development is accompanied by motifs that match those of the

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Cinderella tale. Some of these images establish connections with the traditional tale while other mark significant differences. The initial stage of Tita’s story offers the reader a spectacle of suffering, which makes her subsequent recovery and victory more meaningful. In the early part of the Cinderella tale, ashes are the central motif to communicate the protagonist’s bereavement over lost love and status (Bettelheim 236). Similarly, in Como agua para chocolate, Tita’s childhood becomes associated with ashes through her banishment to the hearth. That association between ashes and loss is reinforced later when her lover Pedro suffers severe burns in his back. The image of ashes closes the novel with the fire in which the lovers perish and the ranch is destroyed. At this point, the ashes are transformed into an image of transcendence that signifies the end of an unjust system and the release of the star-crossed lovers to another level of spiritual freedom. Bettelheim introduces another image of initial suffering with the tears that Cinderella cries at the grave of her mother, “one of the most poetically moving and psychologically significant features” of the story (257). Tita’s birth opens the novel with the torrent of tears that become her leitmotif: “The way Nacha told it, Tita was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor” (Esquivel 6). The bitter tears she cries into Rosaura’s wedding cake not only sicken the guests but also initiate the appearance of Tita’s magical powers. During the years that Pedro and Rosaura reside in her home as husband and wife, Tita cries herself to sleep as she knits the enormous blanket that is the surrealistic emblem of her victimized youth: Chencha weeping, was running alongside the carriage as they left and barely managed to toss onto Tita’s shoulders the enormous bedspread she had knit during her endless nights of insomnia. It was so large and heavy it didn’t fit inside the carriage. Tita grabbed it so tightly that there was no choice but to let it drag behind the carriage like the huge train of a wedding gown that stretched a full kilometer. (LWFC 101)

If the first stage of Tita’s battle with Mamá Elena emphasizes the hero’s pain, the second one offers a clever but unspoken resistance that associates her sensual expression with the plentitude of her

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kitchen magic. It is initiated by the drops of blood that, according to Bettelheim, symbolize the hero’s passage from innocence into sexual maturity (39). Mamá Elena insists that Tita get rid of the pink roses that Pedro has given her to celebrate her first successful year as the official cook on the ranch. Enraged by her mother’s demand, Tita clutches the flowers so tightly to her chest that the thorns prick her skin, giving rise to the drops of blood that change the petals from pink to red. These are the petals used in the intoxicating recipe that initiates a series of humorous erotic events on the ranch. Esquivel unites art, magic and domestic tradition in the series of small victories that Tita achieves over Mamá Elena. Through traditional woman’s work, Tita exercises her creative talents and achieves a position of power and prestige in the family. Moreover, food preparation becomes the secret code through which Tita communicates her passion to Pedro and even incites others to rebel. The meal she prepares of quail and the rose petals becomes a powerful aphrodisiac that inspires her sister Gertrudis’ sensational escape from the ranch, naked and on horseback in the arms of the revolutionary soldier who will eventually become her husband. The motif of magical transformation is a crucial element in the fairy tale, without which the humble status of the hero would be no match for the powers of evil that she confronts. On the personal level, Bettelheim observes, “The more deeply unhappy and despairing we are, the more we need to be able to engage in optimistic fantasies” (127). For Jack Zipes, the element of magic introduces utopian hopes for the transformation of a repressive society (6). Metaphorically, Tita’s supernatural powers fall within the Latin American context of magical realism, that unique convergence of the supernatural and the mundane, to accomplish an exuberant transgression of Mamá Elena’s repressive domain. The foods that Tita prepares cause violent eruptions of internal substances in those who consume them—tears, semen, mother’s milk, and intestinal gases—all defying the efforts of the mother, or her cultural tradition, to deny the physicality and spontaneity of human nature. True to the fairy tale, male intervention rescues Tita from her mother’s house and offers her temporary refuge. Victoria Segunda notes, “Unless daughters can summon some miraculous inner strength, or find elsewhere the supportive affection to make her, (the daughter) feel good, she will not have the will to extricate herself from the

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mother’s tyranny” (131). While the kind doctor John Brown does assist in Tita’s release, he does not fight her battles. He facilitates the spiritual intervention of two surrogate “good” mothers, who perform the cure that enables Tita to successfully complete her quest for personhood. Within the classic structure of the f airly tale, just as children project their fear of the punitive and powerful parent into the evil figure of the stepmother, so do they express their desire to be loved unconditionally through the presence of the fairy good/God mother (Bettelheim 68-69). Similarly, Adrienne Rich observes, “Many women have been caught—have split themselves—between two mothers,” one biological and conventional, the other a countervailing surrogate figure (247). In Como agua para chocolate, the contrasting of the two “good/God” mothers with Mamá Elena enriches the European tale with the shamanism of New World cultures while conflating issues of race and class in a reformed maternal ideology. Nacha is the compassionate mestiza who nurses Tita through the pain of her infancy. She is joined by “Luz del amanecer,” John Brown’s deceased Kikapoo grandmother, in transcending death to impart the “fairy” magic in the form of ancient recipes and herbal medicines. Using this wisdom, Tita saves her sister Rosaura as she gives birth, Pedro when he is seriously burned, and herself when lost in the depths of mental breakdown. The beneficent power that Tita learns from these women of historically oppressed groups offers an alternative to the hierarchical power wielded by Mamá Elena, a wealthy landowner and inheritor of an exploitive regime. The maternal traditions of love and power are reunited in Tita to provide a reformed image of non-biological nurturing, “[b]ased upon a prepatriarchal knowledge that can be passed from woman to woman in a commitment to fully human values” (Debold 163). Most romantic tales like the Cinderella story end with the ceremonial wedding in which an archetype of masculine protection offers a shield against the harsh realities outside the domestic realm and a guarantee of everlasting happiness (Rowe 217). Critics like Marianne Hirsch, however, find that stories about female development often terminate with a rejection of marriage and maternity as inimical to personal growth and creativity (68-69). On this very motif of idyllic romantic closure, the fairy tale and Esquivel’s novel diverge dramatically. John Brown’s proposal of marriage to Tita provides an

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opportunity for the more conventional resolution. In many ways, John Brown, with his gentle strength, wisdom, and affection, conforms to our expectations of the romantic hero better than the churlish and egotistical Pedro. But Tita sacrifices her sanity and security, a mature and reciprocal love, and the possibility of having her own children when she returns home to care for the ailing Mamá Elena. Tita turns away from the romantic denouement of the conventional tale to engage in a more important quest, the confrontation and victory over abusive power. It is a battle she must win to liberate herself as well as those who follow. In a reversal of the pattern of the first half of the novel, Tita’s power expands in the second half as her mother’s dramatically recedes. Like the mothers in the works studied by Judith Kegan Gardiner in “The Maternal Deathbed in Women’s Fiction,” Mamá Elena’s slow death by starvation and self-poisoning reflects her own failure to nurture her daughter with love and self esteem (148-51). An element of matricide appears in Tita’s secret desires for her mother’s death, which connect her with other female heroes in an attempt to form a new mythical structure: “In the Oedipus myth, the son murders his father in order to replace him. Contrastingly, in the new woman’s myth, the daughter ‘kills’ the mother in order not to take her place” (146). As the gatekeeper of an unjust order, the mother must be sacrificed for change to take place. Although the Medusa face of Mamá Elena prevails inside the family, information in the novel links the distortion of her nature to the prevailing system of gender arrangements outside the family over which she has no control. Two episodes in particular reveal the violence and machismo that shape the broader social context in which Mamá Elena lives. Her strength is viewed positively and comically when she wields a rifle in defense of her daughters, servants, and property against a marauding group of revolutionaries. Later, she suffers the injury that causes her paralysis and precipitates her death while defending herself against a rapist. In light of these incidents, Mamá Elena’s insistence on Tita’s total allegiance can be understood, in part, as a result of her legitimate fear of living alone as an elderly woman in a violent world. Mamá Elena is a grotesque imitation of the machismo that she has adopted in order to survive as a widowed property owner in rural Mexico.

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Another factor that mitigates the evil prevalent in Mamá Elena’s characterization is revealed after her death. Tita discovers a hidden series of letters written by José Treviño, a mulatto who had been her mother’s lover. Forced by her family into a more socially and economically conventional marriage with Tita’s father, Mamá Elena had continued in an adulterous liaison, which not only produced the birth of Tita’s sister Gertrudis, but also caused the deaths of both the lover and the husband. The pursuit of desire has taken a drastic toll on the mother, which is then visited upon the daughter. The discovery of these letters is crucial for Tita, providing the necessary distance from which to see the source of her mother’s bereavement, the point at which the patriarchal ideology made its mark on her spirit. It constitutes a complexity of motivation that is not found in the simple good/bad dichotomy of the old tale. For a fleeting moment, Tita transcends her bitterness and, like other protagonists of fiction by women, “recognizes her mother as a victim, not an antagonist, not born but become an enemy, an individual who once had a potential like her daughter” (Kegan Gardiner 157). Here both mother and daughter appear to be the victims of estrangement caused by a distorted social structure: “During the funeral Tita really wept for her mother. Not for the castrating mother who had repressed Tita her entire life, but for the person who had lived a frustrated love” (LWFC 138). The revelation of her mother’s loss of love leads Tita to understand the similarities between them. Tita is the true inheritor of Mamá Elena’s cooking skills; even the recipes that structure the text came to Tita through her mother. She possesses her mother’s strong character and passionate nature, elements that coincided tragically in Mamá Elena’s life. As Adrienne Rich comments in her classic study, Of Woman Born, “[W]here a mother is hated to the point of matriphobia there may also be a deep underlying pull toward her, a dread that if one relaxes one’s guard one will identify with her completely” (235). Cognizant of the similarities between them, Tita resolves to break the cycle of mothers who punish their daughters for their own losses, or utilize them to fulfill their own unsatisfied needs. Fearing her mother’s fate, she vows that “come what may, she would never renounce love” (LWFC 138). Although the text departs from the mother/daughter dyad to explain the elements of Mamá Elena’s behavior, it does not pardon

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her. In the same spirit, the genre generally demands the punishment of the evil doer (Bettelheim 238). When the spirit of Mamá Elena returns from beyond the grave to condemn Tita for loving Pedro, Tita unsentimentally speaks the words that complete the process of matricide and ends that vicious cycle of abuse: “I know who I am! A person who has a perfect right to live her life as she pleases. Once and for all, leave me alone; I won’t put up with you! I hate you, I’ve always hated you!” (LWFC 199) Later Tita extends her victory by mounting a larger assault on the system of exploitive familial relations, which continues through Tita’s sister, Rosaura. Tita battles Rosaura over the freedom of her daughter, Esperanza, to pursue a formal education and the marriage of her choice. When she attempts to constrain Esperanza in a role of filial servitude, Rosaura succumbs to a mysterious digestive malady that again implies Tita’s ability to use her magic to achieve her ends. Rosaura’s grotesque suffering and death as she is overcome by a gaseous stench seems to replicate the mutilation of sisters in early versions of the tale, their eyes poked out by birds at Cinderella’s wedding. The freedom that Tita achieves for Esperanza heralds a new future of self-determination for the women in her family. The generational conflict that alienates Tita from Mamá Elena, and Rosaura from Esperanza, is transcended in the text of the novel, which Esperanza’s daughter writes to witness and celebrate the life of her great aunt. Unlike this clear-cut victory of female solidarity and selfdetermination, the resolution of the romance plot seems unsatisfying and fraught with ambiguity. Pedro’s youthful presence as an appropriate match for Tita deteriorates as they grow older. The reader’s initial admiration for his passion is increasingly undermined by his cowardly submission to his mother-in-law and his willing exploitation of Tita’s selfless love and labor to support him and his family. Tita recognizes his flaws and harshly rejects his affections when she is engaged to John Brown, “I entreat you, never bother me again for the rest of my life, and don’t ever dare to repeat what you’ve just said to me, . . . Ah, and let me suggest, next time you fall in love, don’t be such a coward!” (LWFC 149) Introduced as an ardent lover, Pedro comes to be seen later in the text as a voyeuristic predator, spying on Tita in the shower and forcing the sexual encounter that closes the path to her marriage to John Brown. For many readers,

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Pedro is a shallow and unworthy partner for Tita, certainly not the “Prince Charming” of fairy tale romance. Likewise, the fiery demise that reduces to two lovers to the cinders of their passion seems to be a melodramatic parody of the fairy tale’s concluding union. While Tita assists in the full development of Esperanza’s human potential, there is a dimension of her own psyche that seems irrevocably tied to the destructive traditions of her past. Perhaps the damage caused by years of maternal abuse explains her acceptance of the flawed relationship with Pedro, in which she gives much more than she receives. Their love, defined primarily in terms of sexual passion, ironically fulfills its own hyperbolic prophecy in self-destruction at the point of its fullest expression. Their death in the embrace of love offers a seductive and fleetingly beautiful image that satisfies a deeply ingrained cultural expectation, but also ironically closes the cycle as absurdly anachronistic and irrelevant. Yet within the limitations of her cultural and personal options, Tita has exercised revolutionary powers. Although we might disagree with her choice of partner, it is clear that her will to live and feel to the fullest of her capacity, or in the words of Bettelheim, “to remain true to (herself) despite adversity” (127), is at the core of her conflict with her mother. Refusing to disengage from the possibility of giving and receiving adult love, Tita cleverly negotiates a situation outside of marriage that allows her remarkable freedom, independence, and power. She is the chaste virgin in a profoundly spiritual relationship with John Brown, but engages in the forbidden behavior of the “whore” with Pedro. She has utilized the powers of the “kitchen witch” to maintain her status in the household and the community. All the while she remains a selfless and devoted maternal figure to Esperanza, her niece. The situation is not without compromise, but it certainly offers a unique and defiant resolution of the folktale’s quest for a happy ending. Using the rich detail of Mexican culture during its revolutionary era, Laura Esquivel offers a similar but creatively different version of an ancient story in Como agua para chocolate. With its focus on the private lives of women, the Cinderella story of folklore reveals the domestic realm to be the true locus of cultural transformation. Here, Oedipal fears and romantic fantasies are replaced by a primal power struggle between mother and daughter to determine the course of

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future generations. Aided by the supernatural powers inherent in the genre and the cultural location, a young and lonely woman successfully liberates herself and her family from the strangle hold of abusive power. In the process, Esquivel documents the complex and artful science of women’s domestic labors—folk medicine, food cultivation, butchery, preservation and presentation—within the unique context of Mesoamerica. Rather than a place of servitude, the hearth comes to be seen as place of great power and prestige, the nucleus of the rural agrarian community. With a central focus on the conflict between mothers and daughters, Esquivel coincides with Anglophone feminists in exploring the impact of larger social, cultural, and economic issues. The novel critiques the potential for abuse not as a universal consequence of female power, but as the product of a specific hierarchy of colonialism in which injury and privilege are united in the overburdened figure of the Hispanic mother. While demonstrating the elements that tragically alienate her from her full human potential, the text, nevertheless, assumes the view of the daughter in a myth of matricide. As one maternal tradition is destroyed, another is initiated. In so doing Esquivel reveals that especially in traditional societies, “Mothering is the gap in the wall that women, through their resistance to cultural demand, can claim as a source of power” (Debold 264). Through the intercession of two indigenous ‘fairy godmothers,” Tita joins the ranks of the oppressed to transcend her pain and create a model of beneficent female power and non-biological nurturing.

Works Cited Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1975. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments, with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies trans. Carol and Paul Christensen. New York: Anchor Books, 1996.

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Debold, Elizabeth, Marie Wilson and Idelisse Malavé. Mother Daughter Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women. New York: Bantam, 1994. Franco, Jean. Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico. New York: Columbia U P, 1989. Hirsch, Marianne. The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1989. Kegan Gardiner, Judith. “The Maternal Deathbed in Women’s Fiction.” Feminist Studies 4 (1978): 146-165. Leiberman, Marcia. “‘Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale. in Don’t Bet on the Prince: Feminism and Fairy Tales. ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Methuen, 1986. (185-200) Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W.C. Norton, 1976. Rowe, Karen E. “Feminism and Fairy Tales.” in Don’t Bet on the Prince: Feminism and Fairy Tales. ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Methuen, 1986. (209-223) Segunda, Victoria. When You and Your Mother Can’t be Friends. New York: Delta, 1990. Stephens, Ann. “Marianismo: The Other Side of Machismo in Latin America.” in Male and Female in America. ed. Ann Pescatello. Pittsburg: U Pittsburgh P, 1973. (89-103) Yolen, Jane. “America’s Cinderella.” Children’s Literature in Education, 8 (1977). 21-29. Reprinted in Cinderella: A Casebook. ed. Alan Dundes. New York: Wildman, 1983. (294-306) Zipes, Jack. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. New York: Routledge, 1979. This essay originally appeared in Hispanic Journal, 19.1 (Spring 1998).

Myth and Marginalization in Como agua para chocolate Victoria Martinez Union College

Published in 1989, Laura Esquivel's novel Como agua para chocolate takes place during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The setting is appropriate because it mirrors certain dynamics within the tempestuous environment of the de la Garza household; in particular, as noted by Cherie Meacham, it foregrounds conflict between mother and daughter (120). In many analyses Mamá Elena, in her iron-fisted governance of the household, stands in for the porfiriato while her daughter, the rebellious Tita, represents the revolutionaries. In spite of Esquivel’s fitting use of the Revolution as a backdrop for motherdaughter conflict, the novel treats the historical event lightly. A close reading does not reveal any agenda for social change anticipated by the uprising which was, according to Carlos Fuentes, “a campesinoand-worker led revolution to establish a radical state based on popular power,” and to foster a new environment that challenged the ideology of the 30-year dictatorship of the porfiriato that was supported by the provincial elites and middle class (40). For many, the uprising represented, as Howard Cline puts it, “the beginning of hope, the dawn of a new era” (24). While the Revolution gave hope to the marginalized, poor (often indigenous) masses, such characters, as they appear in Como agua para chocolate, change very little during this supposed time of social upheaval. While indigenous characters in the novel play essential roles in the lives of this bourgeois family, they appear as peripheral and the objects of condescension in the narrative. Moreover, despite their peripheral roles and static social standing, they play central roles in the symbolic transformations that Tita undergoes. This motif of hampered development exemplifies an undercurrent of social stagnancy throughout the novel that prevents us (though some

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scholars will disagree) from labeling Como agua para chocolate a progressive or even ‘feminist’ work. Expanding upon Patricia Sánchez-Flavian’s analysis of the heroic quest in the novel, this study will focus on the way in which two indigenous characters, Nacha and Luz de Amanecer serve to lead Tita back to her native origins through food and herbs. Sánchez-Flavian regards Tita’s search as one for self-fulfillment, but one can argue that Esquivel uses the Mexican Revolution from another angle: to promote a return to Mexican culture. In many respects, the author echoes the ideas of Samuel Ramos’s essay in which he notes that the Revolution exposed the “false Mexico, imitative of Europe,” but he also warns against a post-revolutionary “false nationalism symbolized in the Mexican horseman and festive dresses a la china poblana” (176).that is “an empty gesture with no other purpose than the negation of everything European” (97). He urges his Mexican readers to accept certain aspects of foreign culture and to meld it with an appreciation of their own heritage, and that is one of the possible messages of Esquivel’s novel.1 The porfiriato enjoyed the support of the elite and bourgeoisie in Mexico. According to Leslie Bird Sympson “the dictatorship of Don Porfirio meant the return of the Silver Age” for the creole aristocracy” (290). Additionally, Samuel Ramos notes that at the beginning of the twentieth century “interests were concentrated abroad” (95). As it adopted European furniture, clothing and food, the porfiriato also embraced an interest in science and reason. French Positivism and the científicos: “worshippers of the new and glittering shrine of Science and Progress” reigned (Sympson 291). Thus, the decades before the Revolution seemed to abandon (as Ramos puts it) Mexican culture and favor only the foreign and the rational. The De la Garza household certainly reflects the cultural ideology of the age. For example, the furnishings in the De la Garza house are European, the women dress in European style, and when the oldest daughter, Rosaura, marries, she orders fine laces from France for her wedding and trousseau. Moreover, Mamá Elena as the representative of the porfiriato imposes her authoritarian code of standards. The women are raised to obey, and part of the conflict arises when Elena prohibits Tita from marrying her true love, Pedro Musquiz. Mamá Elena decrees that, as the youngest daughter, Tita must care for her until her death and can never marry. Ironically Pedro is told that he

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can marry the older sister, Rosaura, and as a result, Tita spends her life in lovelorn turmoil; in fact, her trials and tribulations really begin when Pedro marries Rosaura in order to be near her [Tita] (CAPC 21). As the protagonist, Tita’s lives like a turn-of-the-century Cinderella who wishes for her fairy tale prince and a happy ending. 2 The protagonist also experiences life events that follow classic mythical narrative: an unusual birth, supernatural powers, and a series of tests in search of her quest.3 Sánchez-Flavian suggests that the first sign of Tita’s heroic journey is her birth under “conditions [which] have traditionally been seen in literature as representative of the course of the hero’s journey” (3). Sánchez-Flavian also points out that when Tita is born crying in a flood of her own tears, her “path has been clearly charted” (3). The reader is told that Tita cries “tal vez porque ella sabía que su oráculo determinaba que en esta vida le estaba negado el matrimonio” [perhaps because she know that fate determined that in this life she would be denied the chance to marry] (13). As the heroine, Tita’s quest, or “call to adventure,” according to Sánchez-Flavian, takes her not on a physical journey, but rather on a magical-real one whereby her expertise in the kitchen and the mystical relationship she has with food and its preparation lead her to “self discovery.” Now, this journey toward self-discovery can be, as Meacham points out, “the confrontation and victory over abusive power” (121), but that magical-real journey also has the ability to take her, as a bourgeois woman living in a porfiriato household, back to her roots. With the guidance of Nacha, Tita rebels against that cultural ideology. In this vein, Tita begins her journey with her first encounter with a figure who in the heroic tradition, according to Joseph Campbell, is “a protective figure (often an old crone or old man)” (69). In this novel, that figure is Nacha, who has “profundos conocimientos [sobre la cocina]…y a muchas otras cosas” [profound knowledge of the kitchen…and of many other things] (14). From the beginning of her life, Tita spends time in the kitchen fed by Nacha because Mamá Elena cannot nurse her; and, as she grows up, the space becomes her refuge from the oppressive mother. Tita becomes closer to Nacha than to anyone else. As the person who nurtures Tita from birth, Nacha soon transforms into the mother figure for the young child, and Tita becomes the recipient of ancient recipes and develops an appreciation for native foods and dishes. Because the activities in the kitchen

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become an essential element in her life, Tita confuses “el gozo de vivir con el de comer” [the pleasure of living with that of eating] (CAPC 14). First with the old servant’s breast milk, and later with her recipes, Tita is infused with many native elements that the other members of the household do not have similar access to. From an early age, Tita is removed from daily family activities to to the kitchen, the interior space where she can concentrate on learning her culinary craft with the help and advice from Nacha—even after the old woman’s death. Ramos suggests that “for times of radical confusion there is no better remedy than to withdraw into ourselves, to return to the native soil” (104). The simultaneous intervals of turmoil, the Revolution outside the house and the love story within, are mitigated in the kitchen, which serves as the refuge for Tita. It also removes her from broader concerns outside and indeed the text notes that, “no era fácil para un persona que conoció la vida a través de la cocina entender el mundo exterior” [it was not easy for someone who only know life from the confines of the kitchen to understand the outside world] (14). This kitchen also serves as the symbolic center to which, as J.E. Cirlot points out, the hero must move to reach “the primordial state” (40). Since the kitchen is the literal center of Tita’s universe, her mystical search begins in a physical center and moves through the course of her life to one that is more spiritual. The kitchen also represents a spatial and an ideological separation between Tita and the other women in the family, manifested in Tita’s dress, her behavior, and the food she consumes. It is in fact an indigenous space, originally Nacha’s realm in the De la Garza household. When Tita works in the kitchen, she dresses more like the servants than her more elegantly dressed mother and siblings.4 Furthermore, as she associates more with the food and its preparation, she moves farther away from the interests of the bourgeois women who busy themselves with other activities in the house. Early on the novel establishes a distinction between the two sisters who later become rivals for Pedro; in fact, Rosaura and Tita represent in many respects the binary distinctions between the bourgeoisie and the working class. The kitchen as the space of ideological division between the two sisters is explained by Rosaura’s early aversion to the room. Tita was relegated to the kitchen at an early age because the former teased Rosaura to the point of burning her hand on the comal. Later, Rosaura is horrified by Tita’s consumption of “jumiles, gusano

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de maguey, acosiles, tepezcuintle, armadillo, etc.” [jumil bugs, maguey worms, crayfish, tepezcuintle pigs, armadillo, etc.] (CAPC 36).5 Rosaura’s disgust suggests to the reader that the foods Tita consumes in the kitchen with Nacha are not served to the rest of the family. Rosaura represents the bourgeois woman who turns her nose up at any food so base as bugs and wild animals, while Tita happily consumes whatever Nacha gives her. Through the food, Tita establishes a strong connection with the indigenous servants, a relationship that progresses throughout the novel. While the reader must remember that Tita is not a servant, nor does she eschew her social class, her relationship with the servants is unlike that of anyone else in her family; and that is an important point. Standard interpretations of the text suggest that Tita exerts power through the dishes that she prepares, but closer examination of the narrative indicates that Nacha has more to do with the magical transformations than is commonly thought. The first example of Nacha’s involvement becomes evident when Tita must prepare the cake for Pedro and Rosaura’s wedding. Overcome by grief at the loss of Pedro to her sister, Tita cries uncontrollably, and her tears fall into the filling for the cake. This is the first magical communication of her grief through the food, and all who eat the cake are overcome with “melancolia y frustración…añorando cada uno al amor de su vida” [melancholy and frustration…each one yearning for the love of their life] (CAPC 44); and all become exceedingly sick in a sort of “vomitona colectiva” [collective vomiting] (CAPC 44). A closer look at the passages leading up the reaction to the food reveals that Tita never intentionally puts anything in the food, and she never intends to produce any kind of reaction in those who eat the dishes she prepares. So then, how does she gain these magical powers? The narrative explains that during the preparation of the cake Nacha sees that Tita is extremely troubled, and, in Mamá Elena’s absence, Nacha tells Tita to cry: “No hay nadie en la cocina mi niña, llora ahora, porque mañana no quiero que te vean hacerlo” [There is no one in the kitchen my child, cry now, because I don’t want them to see you do it tomorrow] (CAPC 36). At this point the tears fall into the batter, Nacha holds Tita and “abrazadas, permanecieron llorando hasta que a Tita no le quedaron más lágrimas en los ojos” [embraced, they remained crying until Tita had no more tears left] (CAPC 37). This wise, old person encourages Tita to express her grief, and the hug could be the moment

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in which Tita, unknowingly, acquires magical powers. The idea is reinforced when Nacha dies on the wedding day, and Tita “inherits” the kitchen: “Tita era el último eslabón de una cadena de cocineras que desde la época prehispánica se habían transmitido los secretos de la cocina de generación en generación y estaba considerada como la mayor exponente de este maravilloso arte” [Tita was the last link in the chain of cooks who, since pre-Hispanic times had transmitted the secrets of the kitchen from generation to generation and she was considered the best practitioner of this marvelous art] (CAPC 53). Those secrets may not just be the recipes. In the next example of the magical transformation of emotion into the food, Tita prepares a dish using petals from roses that Pedro has given her congratulating her for her first year as cook for the house. Sanchez-Flavian notes that because the resulting meal, cordonices en pétalos de rosa, [quail in rose-petal sauce], has a profound sexual effect on Pedro, Tita takes “the role of the aggressor, usually granted to the male hero” (5). Nevertheless, one must remember that Tita has no intention of producing the magical reaction that occurs; and again, Nacha plays an important role, this time from beyond the grave. So is it Tita or Nacha who wields the power? A second look at the text reveals that after Pedro gives Tita roses—a gesture that hurts Rosaura—Mamá Elena demands that Tita destroy them. As Tita wavers in her decision to throw them away, the ghost of Nacha comes to her “dictándole al oído una receta prehispánica donde se utilizaban pétalos de rosa [que] Tita la tenía media olvidada” [dictating in her ear a prehispanic recipe using rose petals that Tita had half forgotten] (54). Moreover, as Tita prepares the birds for cooking, “tal parecía que era la misma Nacha la que en el cuerpo de Tita realizaba todas estas actividades” [it was almost as if Nacha herself was doing all the work in Tita’s body] (CAPC 55). The subsequent result is one of the more memorable moments in the book when Tita’s passion has the effect of an aphrodisiac in everyone but Rosaura. However, although these are Tita’s passions and emotions transmitted to the consumers of the food, Nacha’s involvement in the process cannot be denied. Nacha is always present in Tita’s thoughts and is the central figure in the culinary education that she gives Tita when she is alive and after her death as well. Although Tita invents new recipes, she learns about the food, the flavorings, and many of the recipes from Nacha. The elderly servant also guides Tita in the necessary medical

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practices. For example, when Rosaura gives birth to her first child with only Tita to help her, Tita calls on Nacha’s spirit for help: “¡si era posible que le dictara algunas recetas de cocina, también era posible que le ayudara en este difícil trance! Alguien tenía que asistir a Rosaura desde el más allá” [if it was possible for her to recite some recipes from the kitchen, it was also possible for her to help her in this difficult dilemma. Someone from the great beyond had to help Rosaura] (CAPC 78). Indeed, while Tita helps her sister, Nacha gives her detailed instructions on what to do (CAPC 79). Later, when Pedro suffers burns, Tita wonders what to put on his skin to avoid scarring, and Nacha again responds from the afterlife, suggesting a Mexican plant as a curative. In the background, but always present, one could argue that Nacha is the force behind Tita’s unusual powers. Tita’s journey leads her to the aid of another indigenous character, Luz de Amanecer, the ghost of the grandmother of Tita’s secondary love interest, John Brown. Tita meets her after the former is rescued by the American doctor. Following the paradigm of the mythical journey, Tita enters the figurative “belly of the whale”—a dark, dangerous place as outlined by Joseph Campbell (90). According to Campbell, the journey takes the hero to the depths and brings him back from “the beatitude of the state of perfect being (which resembles death) [from which] an apparent rescue is effected, and the adventurer returns” (207). After her nephew (Pedro and Rosaura’s son) dies in Texas and Mamá Elena forbids her to grieve, Tita climbs to the loft above the chicken coop, a space filthy with molted feathers and pigeon droppings. Reaching a catatonic state in the chicken coop, Tita remains there unclothed, not eating, until John Brown rescues her and takes her to his home. This leads to a state of liberation and an awakening to the possibilities of a life without repression. As she begins the process of healing from years of abuse, Tita begins to discover herself, eventually recovering to a point that she never wants to return home. In the traditions of the heroic quest, she is tested, reaches a point of the deepest despair, and recovers, rescued by a kinder, more rational Prince Charming who wants to marry her—a man far superior in moral and ethical behavior than Pedro. Treated with respect and far from the constraints of her mother’s home and the kitchen, Tita seems happy for the first time in her life. On the other hand, the reason for her short journey to John Brown’s home fits too into the symbolic quest for native

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understanding. The rescue of Tita leads to her supernatural meeting with John’s deceased, indigenous grandmother, Luz de Amanecer. Tita first sees Luz when she smells a dish unlike any cooked by John Brown’s American maid; and this is, incidentally, the first time she ventures out of her room at the doctor’s house as she follows the scent of tortillas and beans cooking. She sees a woman “muy parecida a Nacha” [who looks much like Nacha] (CAPC 115), a woman with a long braid and indigenous features who offers Tita a cup of tea that the latter drinks “disfrutando al máximo el sabor de esas hierbas desconocidas y conocidas al mismo tiempo” [enjoying to the maximum the flavor of those herbs that were unknown but known at the same time] (CAPC 115). With John’s tender care and with the soothing presence of his dead grandmother, Tita slowly recovers. She also learns to make matches and learns Luz’s theory that all humans contain an interior box of matches where every intense emotion lights one at a time and helps nourish the soul. The grandmother’s theory warns that if the emotion is too intense, all the matches will ignite at once creating an explosion of fire, and the soul will leave the body to return to its origins. This lesson turns out to be crucial at the end of the novel. The turning point of recovery for Tita occurs with the appearance of another servant from the ranch, Chencha, the young woman who visits Tita in Texas and brings caldo de res [ox-tail soup], a dish that Chencha and Tita insist can “curar cualquier enfermedad física o mental” [cure any physical or mental illness] (CAPC 131). With Chencha’s first visit, the two women cry remembering Nacha and the wonderful foods and ingredients associated with the ranch kitchen, like “chabacano, pan de natas, champurrado, comino, ajo, y cebolla”[apricot, bread with cream, chocolate atole drink, cumin, garlic, onion] (CAPC 132). Tita recovers and returns home to care for her mother who has been attacked by bandits (Chencha is raped during this attack and returns to her village). Somewhat like the conquering hero, no longer intimidated by her mother and engaged to John Brown, Tita is about to fulfill her dream of marriage. In terms of the love-story quest, it seems that the protagonist has moved from the depths of despair to grab the prize she sought. Nevertheless, Esquivel veers from reader expectations: Mama Elena dies, Rosaura inherits the ranch, and she and Pedro return to the family home, and circumstances change. Overcome with jealousy over Tita’s

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engagement, Pedro stalks her, and seduces her. As a result, Tita begins an eighteen-year affair with Pedro while she lives in the house with him and Rosaura, helping them raise their second child, Esperanza. By the final chapter and the end of the story, there is a second journey to a dark place, and this time it involves death and resurrection. Like other magical moments in the text, the final event involves indigenous characters, this time Nacha and Luz de Amanecer. When Tita and Pedro go to the “dark room” outside the house to make love, they find hundreds of lit candles. They each think the other had created the romantic atmosphere, unaware that the spirit of Nacha has prepared it for them. When Pedro and Tita finally can be alone together freely, their passion is so great that he dies in the middle of the sexual act. At this moment, Tita begins to swallow the matches that John Brown had given her; and remembering Luz de Amanecer’s theory, and the ingestion of the matches produces “un fuego tal que pudiera alumbrar ese camino de regreso a su origin y a Pedro” [a fire so strong that it could light the way to her origins and to Pedro] (CAPC 243). The circumstances of Pedro’s death and Tita’s suicide fit into the pattern of the other, more mystical quest that Tita has undertaken since birth, that of the search for the center that allows her to return to her origins, to the soil, resurrected in another form. It turns out that the dark room is the physical center outside the main house where Tita and Pedro first consummated their love. This center space represents the physical and spiritual union between two lovers joined not by reason but by passion. The result of the spectacular fire that burns for days leaves the most fertile soil in the region where “debajo de las cenizas floreció todo tipo de vida” [under whose ashes flourished all forms of life] (CAPC 244). Miraculously, the only piece of the ranch to survive is Tita’s cookbook, ready to be handed down to future generations. The heroine has, through her union of passion and love for the land reached the symbolic center, the “paradisical state,” her origins where she becomes one “with the supreme principle of the universe” (Cirlot 40). The kitchen where she learned to appreciate the fruits of her nation and the room where she expressed her passion represent the spaces that allow Tita to reach her spiritual center where, as Cirlot notes, one moves “from multiplicity to unity, from space to spacelessness, from time to timelessness” (40). Tita transforms into

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the Mexican Earth Mother who leaves her recipes for future generations of bourgeois women. For that reason, in the end, Tita’s instincts (her passion for Pedro and the land) take precedence over any logical inclination to have a life with John Brown. Ramos contends that “passion is the note which sets the tone of life in Mexico” (133). He also states that passion must be redirected in a way “that it may serve a profitable objective” (138). Tita’s attraction to passion rather than to reason represents the rejection of the porfiriato and the positivist movement. With its focus on logic and reason, Positivism has no place in Tita’s world; and in this respect, her rejection of John Brown makes sense. Her union with Pedro is the end of her mythical journey; and her connection with the pre-Columbian culinary and curative traditions passed down from the old indigenous figures in the novel requires that she follow her instincts. As the symbolic essence of Mexican Mother Nature, she cannot really leave her land to live with John Brown in Texas. Moreover, she cannot align herself with the kind, mild-mannered, rational American doctor, because he is the antithesis of what produces the passion that manifests itself in the recipes Tita prepares. She has no other option than to be with Pedro. This explains too why Rosaura is the antithesis of Tita. As a member of the bourgeoisie who spends time with Nacha, Tita learns the ways of a group marginalized for centuries. As the criolla who “inherits” the kitchen, Tita is the figure who will transmit her acquired knowledge to others in her social class; and as the completely submissive sister who denies Tita the chance to fulfill her passions during her lifetime and who ignores the servants and scorns native dishes, Rosaura is doomed to failure as a lover, as a mother, and as a woman. Although she gives birth twice, she cannot breastfeed either of her babies. Tita miraculously produces milk that provides the only nourishment for the first baby, Roberto; and she is the one who brings the second baby, Esperanza, into the kitchen, teaching her the secrets therein. The physical removal of the babies from their mother distances Rosaura from her children. Furthermore, since Pedro’s passion is reserved for Tita, he rarely has sex with Rosaura. Inclined to follow her mother’s beliefs and practices, Rosaura represents what Esquivel presents as the bourgeois female who lost her connection with the land in the post-colonial centuries. As she ages, Rosaura literally rots from the inside, putrefying slowly until she dies

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grotesquely passing huge quantities of gas. If this text is a tale of transmission of mores to the next generation, Rosaura is not the transmitter, for she has nothing to pass down to future generations. In the context of the Revolution, Tita’s rebellion against her mother’s, and later her sister’s, strict porfirian ideas results not in a new social structure, but does create a new understanding of culture. Tita makes no real social gains; and with the exception of her stay in Texas with John Brown, she never leaves the ranch. While her unconventional affair is often regarded as revolutionary, flouting convention is not the social model suggested in the novel insofar that Tita is the only character that does not follow the social paradigm of marrying and having children. The text does not suggest any fundamental change in the roles of wife and mother for Mexican women. Instead, the final chapter begins with the preparations for the marriage of Esperanza to Alex, the son of John Brown (thus, the next generation follows convention). Gertrudis and her former revolutionary are also married with a son, and we can assume that by that time Chencha and her husband have children (although she essentially disappears by the end of the novel). The reader also knows that the narrator of the book is the daughter of Esperanza, confirming the fact that future generations continue to have children. As Rosamaria Roffiel notes, “en ningún momento la narración intenta modificar la condición periférica de la mujer [at no point does the narration intend to modify the marginal condition of the woman] (64). That said, through Tita, the narration does endeavor to modify the attitudes of the bourgeoisie. One must remember that during her lifetime she never abandons her social class, and although she spends much of her life in the kitchen, she does not abandon her position in the household as one of the family. After Mamá Elena’s death, when Chencha returns Tita leaves the kitchen and spends the majority of her time in the house. Nevertheless, by learning the recipes of her indigenous nanny, Tita understands the riches of her Mexican heritage as no other bourgeois woman does, and when she dies she leaves the secrets learned from Nacha to future generations of women. Indeed, the novel never leaves its bourgeois focus. On the surface it appears that the ingredients bring about the manifestation of Tita’s magical powers, but only a close reading reveals that Nacha might be responsible for the magical transformations. Nonetheless, Tita gets the credit in most critical assessments. The indigenous characters easily

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become lost in the narrative, and their marginalization is exacerbated by the fact that Luz and Nacha are dead in most of the events of the novel. The only one who is alive by the end of the Revolution is Chencha, and the social gains for her are insignificant. If this were truly a revolutionary novel in terms of social change, these characters would have gained a greater sense of power and social position. When all is said and done, however, any gain in social status is conferred in a very superficial level. The native women experience very little character development; moreover, the narrative treatment either romanticizes or infantilizes them. Nacha and Luz de Amanecer are depicted as romanticized and quaint figures. While they are portrayed as good, kind, inventive and intelligent, they are relegated to specific space, the kitchen for Nacha or the small room in Texas where Luz de Amanecer conducted her experiments. While Chencha is the only servant who is alive throughout the story, she never has the magical power that Nacha has because Tita is the the intended recipient. Chencha is portrayed as simpler than Nacha or Luz de Amanecer. She is not inventive or particularly clever, but rather talkative, a bit flighty, and content to serve Tita and the family. With “una mente sufridora y exagerada” [a mind prone to sacrifice and exaggeration] (CAPC 135), Chencha recounts town gossip to the family, and she exaggerates stories. Upon her return after the attack, she is “la misma Chencha de siempre, sonriente y feliz” [the same Chencha as always, smiling and happy] (CAPC 156).6 Although at times she is overworked (when she has to cook for a month for Gertrudis’s group of revolutionaries), she knows her place and has no intention of attempting to move up the social ladder. In the Cinderella motif, the fact that Tita never really gets her happy ending suggests that the bourgeois protagonist is a more complex character. On the other hand, Chencha fits more into the paradigm of the uncomplicated, simplistic fairy-tale heroine who gets her prince. She returns to the ranch with a soon-to-be husband who also is happy to serve “con la idea de empezar una nueva vida…y pensaban tener muchos hijos y ser muy felices por los siglos de los siglos” [with the idea of beginning a new life…and they intended to have many children and live happily ever after] (CAPC 156). Chencha accepts marriage, family and servitude. The portrayal of the indigenous as simplistic people who are happy in their position of servitude as long as they are treated well conforms to Mexican social

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conventions and reinforces the notion that the upper-class criollo like Tita can move easily into the working class space and practice, but the reverse is impossible. Contrary to the revolutionary motif in the novel, the social order is maintained, and the stereotypical portrayal of the servants conforms to reader expectations. Debra Castillo notes that literature often presents the indigenous woman as “the Indian mother-who-is-not-a-mother (girls and women who work for their more-advantaged employers’ ‘pure-blood’ children)” (12). According to Castillo, this figure is also misconceived/ misrecognized by the institutionalized culture under the image of an ignorant (uneducated, unused to metropolitan customs, clinging to quaint and inapplicable rural practices and superstitions), or stupid (uneducable) childbearer (generally as producer of many children), associated with food preparation and consumption (the overweight woman in braids perpetually patting out tortillas) (21). Nacha, Luz de Amanecer and Chencha represent a fusion of these portrayals. Statements in the text emphasize the inferiority of the indigenous women of Tita’s generation. The numerous references to Chencha’s simple-minded nature are exacerbated by a reference to another servant who replaced her after the attack. When Chencha returns she has to clean the servant’s room because the latter “la había dejado infestada de estos animalitos” [she had left it infested with these little critters] (CAPC 160). The marginalization of these characters and condescending references about them in a text that bases its historical moment on the Mexican Revolution seem to confirm that Esquivel did not have social change in mind when she wrote this novel. By the end of the novel the family has maintained its social status, and the Revolution is long over. In the last chapter, the European influence remains, but new cultural influences appear from the United States. Esperanza’s husband is American, and Gertrudis comes to the wedding driving her new Ford. It is clear to the reader that the novel does not reject influence from the U.S. In fact, the marriage of Esperanza (the name meaning “Hope” in English) to an American who opts to live in Mexico after receiving his education at Harvard suggests that the Mexican bourgeoisie can benefit from joining forces with the United States. Nevertheless, that alone will not serve future generations unless they, like Esperanza, learn the value of the native elements of their land. This symbolic marriage supports the argument

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that Esquivel incorporates the ideas of Samuel Ramos and applies them to the end of the twentieth century in the age of neo-liberalism when Mexico is faced by a new “false Mexico” that, like the regime of the porfiriato, embraces the superficial elements of a foreign culture. Ramos recognizes the changes in cultural influence in postrevolutionary Mexico and notes “the North American ideal of life has been rapidly replacing the European norms” and he regards the North American system as “mechanistic” (99). He also warns that Mexicans who “idealistically abandon the life around them …cease being Mexicans. Their spirit is devoid of that native element” (98). He advises Mexico “will later become an independent cultural unit” only if the foreign culture is grafted onto the tree of the native element (98). In an age where Mexican culture is almost overrun by fast-food restaurants, music and fashion from the U.S., Esquivel offers her reader a novel/cookbook that shows her Mexican readers (undoubtedly female and bourgeois) how to recapture the essences of their culture through the food. Her text suggests that by “marrying” the passion of the Mexican spirit and the natural elements with those from the U.S., like education and technological knowledge, Mexico can benefit in the new millennium.

Notes 1

Samuel Ramos wrote his Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico in 1934. In the words of his translator, Peter G. Earle, Ramos “proceeds to show how Mexico’s cultural growth in the twentieth century is the achievement of those educators and exemplary personalities who have adapted the best of European heritage to the realities of native circumstance. ‘Creole culture’ has become the inspiration of modern Mexico” (vii-viii). 2 For further analysis on the use of the Cinderella motif, see Cherie Meacham. “Como agua para chocolate: Cinderella and the Revolution.” Hispanic Journal 19.1: 117-128. 3 See Joseph Campbell. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 4 Although this analysis examines the narrative of the novel, Esquivel wrote the screenplay for the film. One can assume that the visual images in the film represent the house and clothing of the provincial elites. 5 This translation comes from Like Water for Chocolate. Laura Esquivel. Trans. Carol Cristensen and Thomas Cristensen. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

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6

The text plays down the cause for Chencha’s departure from the ranch—a brutal rape—and by doing this, the novel focuses on the troubles and tragedies of the bourgeoisie with nothing more than a nod to the suffering of the lower-class servants.

Works Cited Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1973. Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols trans. Jack Sage. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971. Castillo, Debra. Talking Back: Toward a Latin-American Feminist Literary Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1992. Cline, Howard F. Mexico Revolution to Evolution: 1940-1960. New York: Oxford U P, 1963. Esquivel, Laura. Como agua para chocolate. Mexico, D.F.: Editorial Planeta, 1992. ņņņņ. Like Water for Chocolate trans. Carol and Thomas Christensen. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Fuentes, Carlos. A New Time for Mexico. Berkeley: U California P, 1996. Meacham, Cherie. “Como agua para chocolate: Cinderella and the Revolution.” Hispanic Journal 19.1: 117-128. Ramos, Samuel. Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico trans. Peter G. Earle. New York: McGraw Hill, 1962. Roffiel, Rosamaría. “Como agua para chocolate: ¿parodia o cliché?” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 20.1 (1997): 55-67. Sánchez Flavian, Patricia. “Como agua para chocolate As a Novel of Self-Discovery Formulated Through Parody.” Ciberletras 11. http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v11/sanchezflavian.html

Sympson, Lesley Bird. Many Mexicos. Berkeley: U California P, 1967.

Section IV: Rabelaisian Appetites and Gastronomy in LWFC

Female Rebellion and Carnival: Like Water for Chocolate

Amelia Chaverri

Chile Conquest: Like Water for Chocolate’s ‘Revolutionary’ Impact on Perception of Mexican Food in the United States

Ellyn Lem

Female Rebellion and Carnival: Like Water for Chocolate Amalia Chaverri University of Costa Rica

This article proposes a reading of Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies in the light of specific features that comprise the carnivalesque literature, as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in his analyses of the works of Francois Rabelais. Bakthin acknowledges that: The influence of carnival, in the widest sense of the term, has been enormous throughout all the great literary periods, but in most cases it was latent, indirect, hard to distinguish, whereas in the Renaissance it was extraordinarily strong, direct, present and clearly expressed even in its external form. The Renaissance is in a way the direct carnivalization of conscience, of the perception of the world and of literature. (245, 246)

Bakhtin’s definition clearly implies that even as eras change the carnivalesque principle keeps on fertilizing the diverse scopes of life and culture. Theorist Julia Kristeva further endorses this idea by pointing out that “popular carnivalesque tradition became evident even in the personal literature of Late Antiquity, and to this day it is still the source that revives literary thought, leading it towards new perspectives” (211). The merit that Bakhtin ascribes to Rabelais, whom he defines as “an avant-garde man of his time” (409), is the close bond he had with

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affective reality (next to his great encyclopedic culture), and the importance he gave to the immediate present, everyday life and locations, as constitutive of popular culture. He also states that popular sources underlying the shaping of Rabelais-like texts and whose dynamic is characterized by contesting hierarchical relationships, official laws and values and worship Church’s ceremonies, constitute a new discourse: the literary. In his terms, a significant heritage of that popular culture is active in the carnival’s social phenomenon, whose dynamic is characterized by enabling temporary freedom, even if that involves transgressing the law and bringing about the abolition of social privileges. Bakhtin enumerates further techniques of Rabelais, noting that his stories are filled with long enumerations and descriptions of events and places of the time, names of families, animals, gastronomy, natural sciences, medicine and navigation, as well as popular, technical and jargon languages. These techniques are often employed in depicting the beginning stages of life. Bakhtin notes: “The exceptional predominance that the beginning of material and bodily life has in Rabelais' works is usually pointed out: images of the body, of drinking, of the satisfaction of natural needs (eating) and sexual life” (23). And, as part of it, cooking is present, “… based essentially on names of dishes, fish, salads, legumes, tableware and kitchen utensils” (416). A close relationship with the lower part of the body is also implied: The stress is laid on those parts of the body that are open to the outside world, that is, the parts through which the world enters the body or emerges from it, or through which the body itself goes out to meet the world. This means that the emphasis is on the apertures or convexities, or on various ramifications and offshoots: the open mouth, the genital organs, the breasts, the phallus, the potbelly, the nose.” (30)

Bakthin also includes scatology, eroticism, irrationality and grotesqueness as elements of carnivalesque literature: “To degrade also means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth” (25). Another principle directly linked to the previous idea is the concept of perceiving the world upside down, which: “is characterized

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mainly by the upside down or contradictory original logic of things, of the constant permutations of high and low, of front and back, and by the diverse forms of parody, inversion, degradation, profanity, coronation and buffoonesque overthrow” (Bakhtin 16). Kristeva, on the other hand, assumes Bakhtin’s position and proposes certain dyads as part of the structure of the carnival: “high and low, birth and agony, food and excrement, praise and curse, laughter and tears” (209). From a formal perspective, the degradation understood by Bakhtin as “the transfer of the elevated, spiritual, ideal and abstract realm to a material and bodily level” (24), is an unavoidable feature of the image system that characterizes such literature, to which Bakhtin will give the conventional name of grotesque realism. Based in the aforementioned theoretical premises, the objectives of this essay are manifold. Foremost are explanations of how the novel Like Water for Chocolate redefines and updates the dynamics of carnivalesque cosmogony, and how the beginning of material and bodily life, the presence of the lower part of the body and the perception of an upside-down world, as characteristics of the dynamics of the carnival, bring about the rupture of the established hierarchic relationships. Also investigated is the manner in which transgressing elements of the carnival function as coordinates by which the women in the novel, under the leadership of Tita, manage to subvert the patriarchal space. Lastly I will comment on the carnival as a social phenomenon and its enduring influence on world literature. 1. Title and Opening Rhetoric The title, Like Water for Chocolate, refers to a popular saying regarding women. Applied within the text of the novel to Tita’s frame of mind, it offers a metaphorical meaning to the altered state of matter: “Tita was literally like water for chocolate” (LWFC 147). It might also be argued that the title evokes in the word chocolate a preHispanic culinary context. With the inclusion of the subtitle A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies the full title acts as introduction to the novel as well as a loose catalogue of its contents. The subtitle informs us that this is a novel for women, as it concerns love, food, and home remedies, the symbol

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of non-institutionalized healing. In large part, these characteristics refer to the kitchen, where women traditionally carry out their chores. The subtitles at the beginning of each chapter—called “intertitles” by Gerard Gennette (27)—have the function of reiteration: the listing of ingredients or objects of the culinary world, recipes, and names of foods and drinks are some of the characteristics of the carnival as pointed out by Kristeva in her studies on Antoine de Sale: “Enumeration of names of places, enumeration of exquisite delicacies, delectable foods, precious wines…” (El texto 238). The relationship between title, subtitle and intertitles, describes popular culture and traditions that are in accordance with characteristics of the carnival dynamic. The next step is the incipit that, in Claude Duchet’s terms, is a strategic place that marks “the point of departure materials: the objects, the places, the moments, the beings, the words presented by the narrative world” (45). The novel starts with Tita’s birth: Once her wailing got so violent that it brought on an early labor (…) Tita made her entrance into this world, prematurely, right there in the kitchen table amid the smells of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, and cilantro, steamed milk, garlic, and, of course, onion. Tita had no need for the usual slap on the bottom, because she was already crying as she emerged; maybe that was because she knew than that it would be her lot in life to be denied marriage. The way Nacha told it, Tita was literally washed into this world in a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor. (LWFC 4-5)

Tita’s birth took place in a less than conventional place: the kitchen, “a paradisiacal place” (143), an expression that refers to the womb and origin of life, the world of female intimacy. One of the first features of the main character (even before birth) is her extreme sensitivity to food: from her mother’s womb she perceived food smells, and her first contact with the world was the aroma of food. Later the text will point out that she chose “to enter the De la Garza family and share their delicious meals and wonderful sausage” (LWFC 8). In other words, Tita decides her own origin. The presence of the birth-food-kitchen triad is obvious. The birth is premature and Tita is “washed into the world on a great tide of

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tears” (LWFC 4) as a result of the digestive effect that chopping onions produced in Tita’s mother’s womb; similarly, in Rabelais’ stories the effects produced by poor digestion and overeating are related to giving birth. This situation recalls the feeding habits of Gargantua, father of Pantagruel (both father and son are giants), whose adventures are narrated in Rabelais’ stories. On the occasion of Pantagruel’s birth, Gargantua cries: “Drink, drink, drink!” (415). Moreover, Tita was born in a space located in the back of the house, run by women and servants. As the passage suggests, this space will later become Tita’s habitat and headquarters: It wasn´t easy for a person whose knowledge of life was based on the kitchen to comprehend the outside World. That World was an endless expanse that began at the door between the kitchen and the rest of the house, whereas everything on the kitchen side of that door, on through the door leading to the patio and the kitchen and herb gardens was completely hers—it was Tita´s realm. (LWFC 6-7)

2. The Ranch: Space of Confrontation The ranch, as a social micro-cosmos and within a space/ semiotics perspective, has two important spaces: the front and back of the house. The front of the house (main entrance, living rooms, dining rooms, recreation areas) is where the powerful people move and circulate and represents the official and patriarchal world where Mamá Elena’s harsh decrees reign. In the back part of the house is the kitchen, a feminine space. Patriarchal tradition relegates the roles of women and servants to this confining area. The confrontation of this social world is recreated in these two opposite social spaces. The juxtaposition of these two spaces also helps to explain why Tita exercises her culinary powers against the established order from the kitchen, the only place over which Mamá Elena has no control, because “...Tita was the best qualified of all women in the house to fill the vacant post in the kitchen, and in there flavors, smells, textures, and the effects they could have were beyond Mama Elena´s iron command.” (LWFC 44). Mamá Elena acts as a Latin American Bernarda Alba, the domineering widow who controls her daughters in Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca’s play La casa de Bernarda Alba. Bernarda represents honor and tradition, but has a dictatorial attitude regarding

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rules in the house and a special consciousness of the “inferior” role of women in society. Paradoxically, Mamá Elena is a strong symbol of feminine power, while she also personifies those authorities supported by patriarchal values. As a gendarme, she guarantees that order prevails, since “in the De la Garza family some things could be excused, but not disobedience, not questioning parental authority” (LWFC 121). Mamá Elena imposes rules at all costs with an iron will and destructive attitude: “Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying, or dominating, Mama Elena was a pro. (…) Applying pressure, smashing to bits, skinning, those were among her favorite activities” (LWFC 93). Similar phrases appear frequently in Rabelais’ texts. Clearly the emotional lives of Mamá Elena’s daughters and the servants are in her control to the extent that when the oldest daughter Gertrudis breaks family rules by running away with one of Pancho Villa’s men and becoming a prostitute for a while, Mama Elena attempts to destroy her memory, to erase her very existence: “Mama Elena burned Gertrudis´ birth certificate and all of her pictures and said she didn´t want to hear her name mentioned ever again” (LWFC 55). In addition, displaying a machismo attitude, she will not allow tears or the expression of feelings, not even at times of grief, such as when her grandchild Roberto dies: “Sit down and get back to work. I don´t want any tears. Poor child, I hope the Good Lord hast taken him in all his glory, but we can´t give in to sorrow; there´s work to do. First work, then do as you please, except crying, do you hear?” (LWFC 95). Insanity is also prohibited: “Fine, if she is acting crazy, then I´m going to put her in an asylum. There is no place in this house for maniacs!” (LWFC 97). The rupture of hierarchic relationships is another indication of LWFC’s alignment with carnivalesque dynamics. Tita is aware of her mother’s mechanisms of control, repression and destruction: “Tita knew that discussion was not one of the forms of communications permitted in Mamá Elena´s household…” (LWFC 9). Consequently, Tita “…couldn´t resist the temptation to violate the oh-so-rigid rules her mother imposed in the kitchen … and in life.” (LWFC 193). Tita’s only alternative becomes the “force” and effects of her recipes. The consequences of the aforementioned attitudes relate to the carnivalesque characteristics known as the beginning of material and

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bodily life, and also those instances in which Tita employs food as a resource/ weapon. Thus the opposite triads of food/ hate/ death versus food/ love/ life. By achieving her objectives and being aware of the power she wields, Tita brings about the destabilization of the ranch. When she cooks, she turns food into life’s driving force or into a reason for death. In Tita’s personality lies a complete union between her subjectivity (emotions), material things (food), and the effects caused by that union. Her mood when preparing meals (hate, passion, sadness, etc.), becomes an ingredient that will produce phenomenal results and intra-corporeal effects (metabolism) in whoever consumes it: “Just as a poet plays with words, Tita juggled ingredients and quantities at will, obtaining phenomenal results…” (LWFC 67). Tita’s skills often manifest during banquets, festive occasions that are also typical of the carnival phenomenon. In Bakhtin’s words: “festivities, in all their historical stages, have been linked to times of crisis, of trouble, in the lives of nature, of society and of the human kind. Death and resurrection, successions and renovation, were always the essential aspects of the feast” (14). The ritual of banquets provides an opportune venue for Tita, through her culinary powers, to triumph in her most important battles. If the social event tends to reinforce Mamá Elena’s law/order parameters, Tita will destabilize it by causing a digestive chaos. One significant example occurs during the banquet prepared by Tita to celebrate the wedding of Pedro and Rosaura. Tita’s tears, which become an added ingredient, cause the celebration to end in a “collective vomiting” (LWFC 37). This success represents, through the lower part of the body, the abolition of hierarchy, as the phenomenon affects the whole group, regardless of their social status: But the weeping was just the first symptom of a strong intoxication—an acute attack of pain and frustration (…) Every one there, every last person, fell under spell, and not very many of them made it to the bathrooms in time--those who didn´t joined the collective vomiting that was going on all over the patio. (LWFC 37)

The bride’s situation becomes grotesque and the presence of the eschatological element is clear: She struggled to control her nausea, but it was too much

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Amalia Chaverri for her! Her only concern was to keep her wedding dress from being fouled by the degradations of her relatives and friends but as she crossed the patio she slipped and every inch of the dress ended up coated with vomit. She was swept away in a raging rotting river of several yards; then she couldn’t hold back anymore, and she spewed out great noisy mouthfuls of vomit, like an erupting volcano, right before Pedro’s horrified eyes. (LWFC 38)

Furthermore, the development of Rosaura’s (Tita’s adversary) character chronicles a continuous degradation process in which the carnivalesque elements reach eschatological proportions so exaggerated that they border on monstrosity. Pregnancy turns her into a huge mass, 66 pounds overweight. She swells even more during childbirth. Later, she suffers from severe stomach disorders that cause belching and bad breath, and ends up a foul-smelling fat woman who sleeps alone: That reduced her suffering slightly; she could pass gas as she pleased (…) There was no explaining the way she had gotten so fat after her return to the ranch, since she was still eating the same as always. It took an enormous effort for her to set her voluminous, gelatinous body in motion. All these ills carried with them an infinity of problems, the worst being that every day Pedro moved farther and farther away from her. She couldn’t blame him; even she couldn’t stand the foul smell. (LWFC 165-166)

Rosaura shares Mamá Elena’s principles. Upon finding out that her daughter Esperanza, born after Roberto’s death, would not follow the tradition of taking care of her until she died, Rosaura falls into desperation: “She kicked, she screamed, she yelled, she spat, she threw up, she made desperate threats” (LWFC 234). Rosaura’ end is a clear and grotesque ridicule: At first Pedro didn’t find it odd that he could hear Rosaura breaking wind even with the door closed. He began to notice the unpleasant noises when one lasted so long it seemed it should never end (…) he opened the door: there he found Rosaura, her lips purple, body deflated, eyes wild, with a distant look, sighting out her last flatulent breath. John’s diagnosis was an acute congestion of the stomach. (226-227)

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The previous descriptions emphasize the lower body and the eschatological aspect as degradation rhetoric. In Bakhtin’s words: “Eschatological familiarities (essentially verbal) play an important role during carnival (…) [The] emphasis is on the apertures or convexities, or on various ramifications and offshoots: the open mouth, the genital organs, the breasts, the phallus, the potbelly, the nose (…) [thus transferring] the elevated, spiritual, ideal and abstract realm to a material and bodily level” (30). The climax of the food/death power occurs with the death of Mamá Elena, who, during her long illness, drank hipecacuana wine obsessively in order to counteract the effects of Tita’s cooking, which she believed to be poisoned. The actual cause of Mamá Elena’s death is uncertain. Perhaps Tita poisoned her; or maybe Mamá Elena’s agitated state of paranoia ended up expediting her own demise. Another possibility is that Tita’s hate functioned as an “ingredient” that, inadvertently or otherwise, infected her cooking. The reader will recall that the chickens at the ranch, when eating tortilla leftovers cut up by Tita at a time of anger, went crazy and disappeared (LWFC 211). Another time a batch of sausages, prepared by Tita at a time of distress, inexplicably became infested with worms (LWFC 96). On the opposite end of the spectrum is the relationship between food/life/love. The first time Pedro’s love-filled eyes meet Tita’s, she “understood how dough feels when it is plunged into boiling oil. The heat that invaded her body was so real she was afraid she would star to bubble—her face, her stomach, her heart, her breasts…” (LWFC 1415). Another example of the transgressing effect of food is evidenced in Gertrudis’ flight from the ranch, brought about by Quail in Rose Petal Sauce, a pre-Hispanic recipe prepared by Tita. Tita’s blood became part of the recipe as a result of her being pricked by the rose thorns. (The roses were a gift from Pedro.) The delicacy, referred to as “food of the gods” by Pedro, unleashes a state of lust and sexual desire in Gertrudis: On her the food seemed to act as an aphrodisiac; she began to feel an intense heat pulsing through her limbs (…) She turned to Tita for help, but Tita wasn’t there (…) It was as if a strange alchemical process had dissolved her entire being in the rose petal sauce, in the tender flesh of the quails, in the wine, in every one of the meal’s aromas. That was the way she entered Pedro’s body , hot,

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The effect of the food produced in Gertrudis a copious sweat of pink beads that with an uncontrollable force, attracted a Villista revolutionary: Naked as she was, with her loosened hair falling to her waist, luminous, glowing with energy, she might be an angel and devil in one woman. The delicacy of her face, the perfection of her pure virginal body contrasted with the passion, the lust that leapt from her eyes, and from her every pore. Without slowing his gallop, so as not to waste a moment, he leaned over, put his arm around her waist, and lifted her onto the horse in front of him, face to face, and carried her away (…) 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. (LWFC 51)

Similarly, Tita’s cooking ritual is described as a kind of mating call: “The sound of the pans bumping against each other, the smell of the almonds browning in the griddle, the sound of Tita’s melodious voice, singing as she cooked, had kindled his sexual feelings” (LWFC 64). Tita understands that the cooking process can function as a means to accomplish her desires: Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn’t been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour. In a few moments’ time Pedro had transformed Tita’s breast from chaste to experienced flesh, without even touching them. (LWFC 65)

Food/life is also present when Tita, like the food provider Roman goddess Ceres, tries to breastfeed her nephew Roberto because: "If there was one thing Tita couldn’t resist, it was a hungry person asking for food. But she had none to give. It was sheer torture” (74). In a joyous moment, milk oozes out of Tita’s breast, and she is able to

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nurse the infant. Later the child dies when he is removed from Tita´s feeding. Food/life also becomes apparent in its healing power and as a tranquilizer and palliative for grief: “Nacha, with her experience, knew that for Tita there was no pain that wouldn’t disappear if she ate a delicious Christmas Roll” (LWFC 17). Also, thanks to a Caldo de colita de res (Oxtail Broth) that Chencha brings her, “Tita had returned to her senses” (LWFC 119). Moreover, as she remembers the first step in the preparation of the recipe, the chopping of onions, she bursts into tears, a reaction that liberates her from the despondency into which she had fallen. It proves more effective than the medicine offered by Tita’s friend and admirer John Brown. This is an example of the cathartic power of food, as proposed by Bakhtin. The destabilizing process continues—always within the carnival logistics—in the climactic and triumphant conclusion of Esperanza’s wedding banquet. In contrast to Rosaura’s wedding banquet, Esperanza’s is a complete success. According to Bakhtin: “The banquet, the wedding and the wedding food do not portray an abstract and naked end, but rather an always blooming coronation of a new beginning” (255). The elation Tita feels when she cooks for Esperanza’s banquet affects the food and, consequently, the guests and ranch workers. Having broken down all social hierarchies, the banquet ends in a lustful and orgiastic state: pulled over to the side of the road. The rest, wherever they could. Any spot would do: in the river, on the stairs, under the washtub, in the fireplace, in the oven of the stove, under the counter in the drugstore, in the clothes closet, on a treetop. Necessity is the mother of invention, and of every position. That day led to some of the greatest creativity in the history of the human race (LWFC 236237).

It is not by chance that the process begins and ends within the contaxt of two banquets. The result of the first event, the collective vomiting, symbolizes the triumph over Mamá Elena’s and Rosaura’s values. The latter represents Tita’s triumphant apotheosis. Bakhtin states: “The victorious and triumphant nature of every banquet makes it not only the appropriate coronation, but also the appropriate framework for a series of capital events” (255).

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1.

Tita’s Success: The Life/ Death/ Life Cycle

The life/ death/ life cycle is complete: the text begins with Tita’s birth, and ends with her death and the burning of the ranch; however, life is reborn from the ashes. As a result of Rosaura’s death and free from any ties, Tita and Pedro “released the passion that had been contained for so many years” (LWFC 238). Tita remembered what her admirer John Brown had warned her about lighting all the fires in the soul: “...it creates a brightness that shines far beyond our normal vision and then a splendid tunnel appears that shows us the way that we forgot when we were born and calls us to recover our lost divine origin” (LWFC 238). The fate of the lovers is inexorably sealed. Pedro dies during intercourse; subsequently, Tita does not want to live any longer and looks for a way to cause another fire that “would light the way back to her origin and to Pedro” (LWFC 239). She eats matches, one by one, remembering with each one of them her moments of happiness with Pedro. In a luminous tunnel, Tita’s soul unites with Pedro’s; they embrace and “they left together for the lost Eden” (LWFC 240). With their deaths and the destabilizing of the patriarchal world, life will be reborn. According to Bakhtin, “...destruction and overthrow are related to rebirth and renewal, the death of the old is linked to the birth of the new…” (195). Tita and Pedro’s burning bodies produce sparks that set the room, the blanket and the ranch on fire: “The dark room was transformed into an erupting volcano. It cast stone and ash in every direction. When the stones reached high enough, they exploded into multicolored lights” (LWFC 240). The scene begs the question: why does Tita set herself on fire when she had already won her battle? Her worldly task completed, she starts a journey back to earth (the origin); she and the fire will feed and fertilize the earth, and a new order will emerge: her own. To this respect, Bakhtin says: “To lower means to bring close to earth, to be in communion with the earth conceived as a principle of absorption and birth at the same time: upon degrading, one shrouds and spreads at the same time, kills and gives birth to something superior” (25). The earth absorbs Tita’s values so that they may bloom later. Moreover, the dual meaning of fire is present. Although it destroys, it is also energy and vital heat. “They say that under those ashes every kind of life flourished, making this land the most fertile in the region” (LWFC

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241). The life/ death/ life cycle is complete. On a final note, the presence and re-evaluation of the pre-Hispanic culture begins with the title and the word “chocolate,” from the Mexican chocolatl, from choco, cocoa, and latl, water. Symbolically, some of Tita’s power is carried out via her inherited pre-Hispanic recipes, since she is “the last link in a chain of cooks who had been passing culinary secrets from generation to generation since ancient times” (LWFC 44). When the life/death/life cycle is complete and Tita has won her battle, the pre-Hispanic element prevails and emerges from its ashes like the Phoenix. Therefore, when Esperanza returns to the ranch after her honeymoon, she finds everything devoured by flames; only a cookbook with pre-Hispanic recipes is recovered “which tells in each of its recipes this story of a love interred” (LWFC 241). Another reference to the pre-Hispanic aspect includes the “home/indigenous medicine vs. institutionalized medicine” in the figure of John Brown’s indigenous grandmother, whose home remedies are more effective than the institutionalized ones he learned about in a foreign university. Another reference involves the listing of food products in an almost geographical context: “...jumil bugs, maguey worms. Crayfish, tepezcuintle pigs, armadillos…” (LWFC 28)--all items that Tita used to eat. Tita remembered Nacha and her: “noodle soup, her chilaquiles, her champurrado, her molcajete sauce, her bread with cream, all were far away in a distant past” (LWFC 163). 4. Final Words Everyday life, the power of food, the enumeration of recipes and locations, the principle of beginning of material and bodily life, the reference to lower parts of the body, the contrary results of the banquets, the transgressing of patriarchal values and degradation attitudes, and the abolitions of hierarchical relationships all represent carnivalesque literary elements within the development of the story. The Tita/feeding/challenge triad and its effects and consequences, food/ life/ love or food/ death/ degradation, also comprise a thread that strings together such objectives as suggest a vindication of feminine values. Symbolically speaking, the social spaces in the ranch (front and back, upside down and right-side up) result in the abolitions of hierarchies. More traditional characteristics of the carnivalesque—

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grotesque realism, hyperbole, exaggeration, escathology, reiteration and enumeration—are also upheld in the symbolic context of the novel. While Like Water for Chocolate contains Rabelaisian qualities in abundance, it is Mikhail Bakhtin’s proposal that facilitates a comparison between Esquivel’s novel and the writings of the French novelist. By enumerating (and thus validating to a degree) the carnivalesque elements in literature, Bakhtin’s proposal had a twofold effect: it shed light on carnivalesque elements in literature as a whole, and it asserted an enduring influence on subsequent art forms by validating “the carnivalesque,” in its disruption of societal norms, as a literary mode. Whether Laura Esquivel was an active partisan or an innocent bystander with regards to Bakhtin’s theories is debatable; the substantial degrees to which Rabelaisian qualities appear in Like Water for Chocolate, and the empowering effect they have on the female condition in the novel, are not. Works Cited Bajtín, Mijail. La cultura popular en la Edad Media y en el Renacimiento. El contexto de Francoise Rabelais. 2ª. reimepresión. Madrid: Alianza Editorial S. A., 1989. Cros, Edmond. Propositions pour une sociocritique. C.E.R.S., Montpelier, France: Université Paul Valéry, 1982. Duchet, Claude. “L'idéologie de la mise en texte”. París: La Pensee, No. 215, 1980. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies trans. Carol and Paul Christensen. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Genette, Gerard. Seuils. París: Editions du Seuil, 1987. Hoek, Leo H. La marque du titre. Dispositifs sémiotiques d'une pratique textuelle. The Hague: Mouton Editeur, 1987. Kristeva, Julia. El texto de la novela. Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1974. ņņņņ. Semiótica 1. Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 1978. Pérez-Rioja. Diccionario de Símbolos y Mitos. Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, S. A., 19

Chile Conquest: Like Water for Chocolate’s “Revolutionary” Impact on Perceptions of Mexican Food in the United States Ellyn Lem University of Wisconsin – Waukesha “You are the salsa in my enchilada/ The meat in my burrito/ The olive in my tamal/ The chocolate in my mole/ The chile in my beans.” Beverly Silva, “Sin ti no soy nada/ Without You I am Nothing” (359) “If one is what he eats, with whom he eats it, and how he eats it, then we can conclude that we Mexicans are children of the corn, but we are formed of chile.” Laura Esquivel, “Cooking With Chiles” (118)

At first glance, nothing may seem odd about Hardee’s recent promotion of their new “jalapeno burger” or Dora the Explorer teaching toddlers how to make empanadas on the Nick Jr. web site while her cousin Diego helps the Green Giant sell cans of “Mexicorn” on grocery store shelves. But anyone even vaguely familiar with this country’s early nineteenth and twentieth century history knows that the United States has not always embraced the cultural offerings of its immigrants and neighbors, particularly those emanating from south of the border. However, today, there is little doubt that Latino cuisine has entered the mainstream, with both successful fast-food Tex-Mex chains (e.g., Taco Bell and Qdoba) and expensive fine dining establishments, where “Latin America tastes and cooking techniques have boomed” (Valle and Valle 172; Ruggless 36). While some people may attribute this attitudinal shift to the growing presence of Latinos in the US—nearly 14.8% of the population—there is convincing evidence that another powerful influence was Laura Esquivel’s immensely popular novel, Like Water for Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate), published in the United States in 1992, and its equally successful film adaptation the same year. 1

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The book appeared on bestseller lists in Spanish and English and was on its fifteenth hardcover printing just a year after the US debut (Galbraith). Meanwhile, the film, directed by Esquivel’s former husband, Alfonso Arau, distinguished itself as the highest grossing foreign film in the US, an achievement that was touted on promotional material as follows: “After 63 consecutive weeks in theatrical release, Like Water for Chocolate has entered the history books as the most successful foreign language film of all time! . . . Gross to date over $20,400,000” (qtd. in Wu 178).2 Critics also have noted that no other film about Mexico had ever been so popular in the United States, and have asserted that its presence was so ubiquitous that when a person mentioned he was Mexican, an often-heard reply was, “Ah, yes, Like Water for Chocolate” (Badikian 46; Wu 185). On the surface, the remarkable US success of both works seemed surprising since Like Water for Chocolate does not follow a conventional plot; instead, it is loosely structured around the months of the year, following the daily experiences of Mama Elena’s youngest daughter Tita on their family ranch around the time of the Mexican Revolution. Also, its integration of magical realism might have seemed strange for the average reader or filmgoer unfamiliar with this literary technique.3 Another potential barrier could have been the awkward places in the English language translation that come across stilted at times, both in the novel and the subtitles accompanying the film. Perhaps even more unexpected, though, was that US audiences embraced the Mexican delicacies that dominate the storytelling from beginning to end. This occurred despite the fact that for nearly a hundred years, the rich and colorful foods of Mexico were feared and shunned throughout most regions of this country. One example of the cloud of suspicion surrounding Mexican food was a 1899 newspaper article from the Los Angeles Record that reported on a young woman who was poisoned from eating a tamale; the article claimed that “bad meat is often used in the manufacture of tamales, the offensive taste being disguised by the fiery condiments that are used” (qtd. in Valle and Valle 170). The stigma that Mexican food was “dirty” and, as a result, unhealthy lingered for many years. When Gebhardts, a Chili powder company, put out product pamphlets with recipes for “American Housewives,” they always included a twopage spread on their “spotless, white tiled” plants in San Antonio, where “every nook and corner. . . are cleaned daily with boiling water and live hot steam” (20-21).4 The effect, of course, from all these assurances that the facilities were “spotless” and “white” actually

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undermined this message by instead reinforcing the stereotype that Mexican food cannot be trusted to be “clean.” Other misrepresentations of Mexican food also led to the general public’s estrangement from it for decades. The Gebhardts’ pamphlets contained recipes for many items that were not Mexican at all. In fact, the 1932 edition includes recipes for chop suey, fondue, and canapés, and the suggested “menus for Mexican meals” contained dill pickles, parsley-butter sandwiches, lemon tarts and shrimp cocktail” (33). Similarly, a 1945 edition includes a recipe for “Sombrero salad,” which is cup of cottage cheese on a pineapple ring with none other than a dash of Gebhardt’s Chili powder on top. Inaccurate portrayals of Mexican dishes continues through the years. Old El Paso’s 1978 Sun Country Mexican Cookbook includes chili manicotti, Mexican lasagna, deviled eggs, and “hearty fiesta burgers.”5 Without having authentic illustrations of meals found in Mexican homes, the public did not have a means to move beyond a false image of what people of Mexican descent were likely to eat. Besides publications either slandering or distorting food associated with Mexico, another problem that affected the acceptance of Mexican food was the obsession with French cooking, which overshadowed cuisines from other parts of the world, especially countries like Mexico with discernible poverty. An illustration of French-centrism in the cooking sphere comes from a 1965 series entitled Wonderful World of Cooking. Volume One on French specialties begins with the following elitist declaration: “To include all the French specialties would fill many books, for wherever civilized man sits down to dine you will find dishes of French inspiration. They are the backbone of the International haute cuisine [sic] revered by great chefs and epicures the world over” (Bateman 4). With the emphasis on “civilized,” a clear separation is made to differentiate a Western European standard from other cultures viewed as “primitive” and clearly the mestizo cuisine with its Indian, Spanish, and Mexican influences likely would have been identified as such. The glorification of French cooking and the resulting invisibility of Mexican cooking also were pronounced in a number of international cookbooks and reference books put out from the 1930s through the 1960s. For example, Philip Harben’s 1956 Cookery Encylopaedia [sic] contains no entry for Mexican food but five paragraphs devoted to French, which it claims “is the international language of food and cooking” (156). The supplemental material at the end of the book includes four maps—two of France and two of Italy—along with a

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glossary of “culinary vocabulary” that only includes English and French. While a few exceptions could be found (e.g., Better Homes and Gardens Meals with a Foreign Flair included 5 Mexican items amid its 100 recipes), food from Mexico mostly appeared to be ignored as world cuisine through the 1960s. Mary Zimmerman’s The Tupperware Book of Picnics, Parties, and Snacks Around the World, for example, published recipes from Manila, Melbourne and Beirut but does not contain a single recipe from the nation south of the border. Lesley Blanch’s 1956 Round the World in 80 Days does include a Central and South America section with three recipes from Mexico, but one for Chile con Carne is incorrectly identified as Mexican and the illustration introducing that section features an unidentifiable animal in a big sombrero, quite unlike the author’s glamorous self-portrait at the beginning of the book.6 The irony of these food guides omitting or slighting food from Mexico (which dates back to an ancient civilization) while emphasizing French haute cuisine was acknowledged in at least one cookbook from the period. Thus, a 1965 Mexican cookbook by Jan Aaron and Georgine Sachs Salom includes the observation that: French cooking, which is so highly revered today, is about four hundred years old. Mexico started out with a great many staples with which to create a varied and interesting style of cooking as far back as 300 to 900 A.D. when the Maya civilization was at its peak. The Spanish introduced some of their favorite recipes around 1520, but the Indians were, by that time, already known for their elegant and sumptuous repasts. (10)

Nonetheless, Aaron and Salom’s opinion regarding this inequity certainly was a minority voice during the long French “reign” of supremacy. 7 According to Dan Strehl in the introduction to Encarnacion’s Kitchen , when Mexican cookbooks began to appear in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, they were rarely written by anyone of Mexican origin and relied heavily on recipes culled from the authors’ hired help (Strehl 27). Food historians have noted that a majority of these cookbooks emphasize Spanish elements in the recipes, especially in the names assigned to recipes (e.g., a chicken or rice dish with “a la Espanola”--Spanish style-- added), in order to emphasize a European rather than Latin American origin and to make the unfamiliar food seem less threatening by being more “white.” John Steinbeck made this similar claim for Spanish equaling “white”

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early in his 1935 novel Tortilla Flat when describing a “paisano,” someone of mixed ancestry--Spanish, Indian, Mexican and/or Caucasian. He writes that when a paisano is questioned about his race, “he indignantly claims pure Spanish blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm is nearly white” (2). Even the recent discovery of an 1898 cookbook, thought to be the first collection of Mexican recipes by a Hispanic woman (Encarnación Pinedo) is called El cocinero español/ The Spanish Cook. Besides identifying many items with clearly Mexican origins (e.g., tortillas) as “Spanish-style,” Pinedo appears to dilute her own ancestors’ contributions to international cooking by highlighting French accomplishments in her introduction: “The French and Italians have been the most advanced [in their cooking styles], although the French system was very imperfect until the Italian taste was introduced in France by the princesses of the royal house of the Medici; since then the excellence of the French makes them the best cooks in the world” (49). One unfortunate aspect to Mexico’s elusive presence in this early cookbook and others like it is that research has shown that cookbooks in general have the power to bridge cultures, and in particular, Mexico’s cultural life could have been communicated through cookbooks to break down stereotypical perceptions of the country, its inhabitants, and their food. Part of the reason that cookbooks can be a more influential source of cultural transmission than ethnic restaurants, according to Sylvia Ferrero in an essay in Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies, stems from the fact that restaurants too often try to cater to the expectations of what they believe their customers want a certain culture to be like. She refers to restaurants’ actions as “staged authenticity” in order to satisfy consumers’ “cultural voyeurism”; examples of such staging at Mexican restaurants might include imagery of Spanish senoritas, large sombrero hats, and other artifacts of the Spanish missions (194; 200). Even Mexican-style restaurants that flourished in the Southwest during the second half of the twentieth century revealed limited cultural realism in terms of atmosphere and food, which tended to be influenced more by the “Tex” or “Cal” than Mex. The Velveeta-like cheese, nachos, fajitas, chili, and enchilada combination plates are just a few examples of foods likely to be found in these restaurants that may be viewed as Mexican but are not (Andrews 68-70). Cookbooks, on the other hand, she argues, have the possibility of bringing non-Mexicans closer to the “home experience” of Mexicans and providing language opportunities

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(e.g., glossary, pronunciation, etc.) that will “enhance authenticity” (213). Examples of early Mexican cookbooks for American cooks that carry out Ferrero’s theory can be found but are rare. One example, though, would be a 1946 edition of Concha’s Mexican Kitchen Cook Book by Catherine Ulmer Stoker, which includes a Spanish-English index with proper pronunciation for each item, seven chapters before the recipes integrating Spanish and English that explain how festivities like weddings and baptisms are celebrated in Mexico, and repeated deferential references to the Aztecs, including the subtitle of the book, “Exciting and Delicious Recipes for Mexican and Aztec Dishes.” Other cookbooks provide in-depth analysis of certain foods central to Mexican cooking, such as the chile. A 1966 inexpensive paperback Sandoval’s Mexcian Cookbook includes Spanish as well, providing pronunciation assistance for simple words like chile (“CHEE-lay) and expressions like pegadas al metate (pay-GAH-dohs AHL may-TAH-tay--“glued to the maize” to describe a woman making tortillas all day). Amid these progressive cookbooks that sought to teach the language and the cultural traditions through the dissemination of recipes were many others that did not do much of either. For example, a 1958 cookbook Discovering Mexican Cooking begins with the authors, one who “has never been farther [sic] into Mexico than the border towns,” interviewing each other. Among the questions are: “If tortillas are so popular, don’t they [Mexicans] know about wheat bread?” (Young and Henderson ix; 11-12). A final example of strange but true early Mexican cookbooks is Trader Vic’s Book of Mexican Cooking (1973) with offerings like “Texas-Mex Son-of-a-Bitch Stew,” enchilada sauce made with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup (and MSG), and illustrations in which everyone looks like Ronald McDonald. The 1970s and 1980s brought significant developments to broadening the American public’s knowledge of Mexican food through the achievements of Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless; however, their impact would not have the same force as Like Water for Chocolate due to the somewhat restricted confines of their main audiences—urban, affluent, and highly educated. Kennedy published her first book Cuisines of Mexico (1972) after living in Mexico with her husband, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. The book came about once she returned to New York and hosted a series of cooking classes, one of which was attended by Frances McCullough, an editor at Harper & Row, who persuaded her, along

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with Times Food editor Craig Claiborne to publish; Claiborne had written an article about her cooking classes in the Times. Several other books followed, including the 2003 My Mexican Kitchen; in addition, Kennedy was awarded an Aztec Eagle from the Mexican Government for her important contributions documenting regional Mexican fare. While no one dismisses Kennedy’s contributions, especially how she replaced the “odd, eclectic, and ineffective” Mexican restaurant food at the time with authentic and well-researched recipes, her title as “high priestess” of Mexican cooking, promoted on her books, reveals Kennedy’s distance from the mainstream public (qtd. in Gabbaccia 216). This distance resulted because the cooking classes and complicated directions were not easily accessible for the average person interested in knowing what Mexican cookery has to offer.8 Kennedy also was criticized by Chicana poet Teresa Paloma Acosta who chides the “fake recipes” in “Diana Kennedy’s expensive cookbooks” for “severing the traditions” by presenting them outside of their cultural context (qtd. in Blend 45). Rick Bayless at first seems the antidote to the apparent elitism perceived in Kennedy’s work; he appeared on the first episode of Iron Chef and incurred flak for endorsing Burger King’s chicken grilling methods.9 However, Bayless, too, has had limited influence in changing prevalent US attitudes toward Mexican cooking held by the general public. His 26-part PBS series Cooking Mexican in 1978 and 1979 would have been viewed by a demographic likely to watch public television, a small percentage of television viewers, and access to his restaurants in Chicago Frontera Grill and Topolobampo remains limited to Chicago’s “upper crust” due to the high prices of most menu items. 10 Since all the efforts to inform the general public about the desirability and authenticity of Mexican food preparation described thus far met with resistance and challenges, the fact that several historians note the nation’s slow acceptance of Mexican food makes sense. Richard Pillsbury in No Foreign Food is just one of many food historians who has observed that outside of areas in the Southwest— particularly California and Texas—prejudice and suspicion of food associated with Mexico did not go away easily (160). What happened, then? How did Mexican food become “trendy“ (Guillermoprieto)? How did it go from being often misspelled (e.g., “enchiladae”) and/or mocked (e.g., an Oklahoma restaurant TaMollys features a “Beeg-Bellied Burro,” cooked by Manny Finklestein, “expert Mexican chef”) to a billion dollar industry?11 Why has the

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restaurant chain Chili’s—1000 locations world-wide, a “hamburger grill”—now decided to appropriate the chile, “part of the ancestral memory of Mexicans,” for its logo?12 I believe the best-selling novel and high-grossing film Like Water for Chocolate quite clearly played a significant role in the changing of Americans’ viewpoint about culinary offerings from this ancient civilization. One obvious indication of the work’s influence became apparent as Mexican cookbooks and restaurants used Like Water as a promotional tool. Victor and Mary Valle’s prodigious family history cookbook Recipe of Memory: Five Generations of Mexican Cuisine (1995), which was nominated for Julia Child and James Beard awards, forges a connection between the two texts on its dust jacket, despite the fact that one is a cookbook and the other a novel and film: “In the tradition of Like Water for Chocolate, Recipe of Memory uses food and delectable recipes to trace the migrations of one family as they zigzag across the border separating Mexico and California.” In addition, the popularity of Like Water for Chocolate also became a marketing strategy for Mexican restaurants who beckoned restaurant patrons with meals patterned after those in the book and movie. La Valentina de Mexico, for example, a Dallas restaurant that had its origins in Mexico and moved North, included on its menu, along with dishes using cactus leaves, chiles and jicama, a dessert inspired by Like Water for Chocolate made from rose petals (Ruggless 39). Other Mexican restaurants recreated dishes from the book as well and even held contests for novice chefs to create “seductive recipes” for a prize trip to Mexico (Zubiaurre 32; Wu 186). This boon to business created by interest in Like Water for Chocolate likely was aided by Esquivel’s presence at Latin American restaurants throughout her U.S. publicity tour. Restaurant trade publications commenting on the explosion of “Nuevo Latino” cuisine usually credit the book and film for expanding the dining clientele at their establishments (Ruggless 36). Films that came after Like Water for Chocolate also benefited from its revitalizing outdated conceptions of Mexican food. The debt is particularly pronounced in Tortilla Soup (2001), the remake of Ang Lee’s 1994 Eat Drink Man Woman. Since Lee’s film centered on a Chinese chef in Taiwan, Samuel Goldwyn, who owned the distribution and remake rights, could have chosen any number of different cuisines in the United States to show how the family’s relationship to food creates tension and connection between its members. That the Naranjo family are clearly demarcated as Mexican-

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American who eat sumptuous, almost regal, feasts cooked by their chef-father demonstrates a remarkable change from pre-Like Water for Chocolate times. Whether intentionally or not, the film’s opening scene can be viewed as a paean to its ground-breaking predecessor by also filling the screen immediately with intense chopping of vegetables as the camera focuses seductively on nothing but the food at very close range. Another Latin American food movie that seems to owe a debt to Like Water is the 2000 film Woman on Top with Penelope Cruz as a Brazilian chef who, as several reviewers have noted, demonstrates artistry in the kitchen in a very Tita-like vein. A worthwhile question to ask at this point is why was Like Water for Chocolate so successful in the United States in general and, in particular, how was it successful in changing prejudicial views of Mexican people and what they consume? First, Esquivel replaces stereotypical representations of Mexicans with characters like Tita who display magnetism and beauty. This is in direct contrast to Steinbeck, often thought to be a chronicler of the Southwest, who includes a number of characters with Mexican ancestry in Tortilla Flat. Besides the tippling men, halfway through the novel the reader meets Señora Teresina Cortez and her mother, who at fifty is described as “ancient, dried, toothless.” Cortez has nine children and sometimes “could not remember who the father of the impending baby was”; a school doctor learns that the family’s diet consists of “tortillas and beans” for every meal, which he describes as “slow poison,” suggesting they will follow in the footsteps of Señora Cortez’s sickly mother (124-26). Depictions of Tita and even her sister Gertrudis offer striking contrasts to Steinbeck’s infirm portrayals of Mexican women. Tita’s physical descriptions come well after her magical culinary powers are described, but they are equally as pronounced. When the American doctor John Brown sees her for the first time since she was a child, he notes what a “beautiful woman” she has become—her “lovely” teeth “within perfect harmony of delicate features that formed her face” (LWFC 72). Gertrudis also makes a striking figure when, after eating Tita’s quail and rose petal dish, she sheds her clothes and rides off on horseback “loosened hair falling to her waist, luminous, glowing with energy” (LWFC 51). The actresses playing these parts in the movie only amplify these desirable qualities, with Lumi Cavazos as Tita being especially radiant. Another strategy that Esquivel uses to alter US audiences’ view of her native land is to reverse the binaries of Mexico/bad and the United

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States/good. Although some critics, like Beatriz Badikian, believe the American doctor John Brown comes off as a savior figure, the “perfect mirror for . . . American audiences,” closer examination of the American characters and their food contradicts Badikian’s assessment and highlights their shortcomings. While Tita forges a relationship with Brown, she never desires him. His Aunt Mary, who comes to visit Tita at the ranch, is deaf, which creates humor when she misinterprets Tita’s tears at the dinner table but also can be seen to symbolically represent the hubris of the United States and its “deaf ear” to countries, like Mexico, which are regarded as poor relations. Also significant in this section of the book is the food offered to Tita when she is in San Antonio. The American food given to her “was bland and didn’t appeal to her” (LWFC 105); in fact, Tita remains so uninspired by food during her stint in the States that at some point she cannot remember how to cook until Chencha brings the ox-tail soup from home. Esquivel’s non-fictional writing and extensive interviews contain similar complaints about food in the US, but she tempers the comments with reconciliatory statements as well. For example, in an essay from Between Two Fires, Esquivel describes her New York roommates’ disbelief at the belabored process of making Oaxacan mole. She writes, “But what can you expect from people who have eaten frozen or canned food, sitting on the floor watching television, since they were born?” (63). In another essay called “Lowfat Mayonnaise” Esquivel describes “depressing American supermarkets” and how she cannot “find herself” in “these surroundings” (125-26). Elsewhere in the collection, however, she almost dismisses the binaries altogether and searches for connection: “If Mexicans are children of corn, then Americans have already eaten enough popcorn to be our cousins” (55). In the novel, then, Esquivel takes a more dramatic gesture to reverse the expectations of “Mexicans” and “Americans” while in her non-fictional pieces she seeks to discover some common ground.13 Besides the small sections devoted to US characters and their food, the novel and film are almost entirely a celebration of Mexican culture, particularly in the loving way in which the preparation of each recipe is described. The September chapter, for example, includes recipes for chocolate and bread for Three Kings’ day. The traditions surrounding the holiday are discussed—on the 6th of January the bread is cut to see who finds the baby Jesus doll, which will result in another celebration, Candlemas Day on the 2nd of February—but even more interesting are the constant interruptions following the developments

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of the bread and guiding the chocolate preparation, reminiscent of a mother who cannot help but continue to check on her child’s progress. In the faithful recording of ingredients and recipes’ steps, Esquivel pays tribute to the food and the country itself by proxy; indeed, Ksenija Bilbija in an article on Spanish American writers has described this practice as “gastronomic nationalism.” The national pride shown through the food descriptions is reflected and received by foreign audiences in addition to coalescing native readers who are empowered by being given a public voice. Before Esquivel, the writer-activist Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) also demonstrated intimate appreciation of her country’s heritage by metaphorically connecting food and ancestry: Indigenous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of cross-breeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions. Like an ear of corn…the mestiza is tenacious, tightly wrapped in the husks of her culture. Like kernels she clings to the cob; with thick stalks and strong brace roots, she holds tight to the earth--she will survive the crossroads. (81)

From Anzaldúa’s description, her multiple audiences are clear; she pays tribute to the past and gives hope to the future, while intentionally conferring status to the land and its inhabitants. Through the use of chiles in Like Water for Chocolate , Esquivel similarly exhibits “gastronomic nationalism,” a trait that likely contributed to U.S. audiences’ broadened perspective on Mexican food. Esquivel is not the only one to wax poetically about chiles and see them as the heart of Mexican cookery. According to Cocina Prehispanica/Pre-Hispanic Cooking, the chile, of which there over are a hundred varieties, is an “indispensable condiment in Mexican cooking” (Benitezi 75). Part of their centrality to the national cuisine could stem from the awareness that, like corn and turkey, chiles are considered indigenous and predate the arrival of the Spanish. Their health properties, known for years by Native Americans who used them to treat the pain of childbirth, have been touted as well for relieving joint pain, boosting the circulatory system, and acting as an antioxidant (Valle and Valle 125). For Mark Miller, a former UCBerkley anthropologist and creator of Santa Fe’s successful Coyote Café that often used pre-Columbian recipes, chiles in the United States have been “vastly misunderstood.” Instead of being just “hot,” Miller encourages people to see them as “shadings and variegations,

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like the weave of a textile, in terms of the ability to be expressive and be used as an aesthetic tool within the cuisine” (qtd. in Kamp 310311).14 Following Miller’s advice, Esquivel’s own ode to chiles takes many forms. First, the aforementioned essay “Cooking with Chiles” describes their universality in Mexican cooking. She writes, “The chile formed a fundamental part of the language, the flavor, and the food of the old Mexicans. . . .Even at the tables of the poorest families there were various types of herbs, nopal cactus, beans, tomatoes, and inevitably a portion of chile” (115). The essay provides expressions, folklore, and history that center around chiles, which she believes are “carried in our memory and in our blood” (118). With these tributes in the essay, Esquivel raises this pepper to icon status and enshrines it with cultural significance that seems too potent to ignore. The novel also pays tribute to the chile in various forms. It is an essential ingredient in most of the main course recipes introducing the chapters, and it actually appears in the titles of the last two recipe-chapters, Beans with Chile Tezcucana-style (November) and Chiles in Walnut Sauce (December). A preview to its significant presence in the last chapter occurs early on when Tita parallels her physical separation from Pedro, once he is married to her sister, with a lone chile in walnut sauce left on the plate that no one will eat in order to not appear gluttonous. The description of that chile that follows lures the reader with sensual detail: “[The stuffed pepper] . . . contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as a pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love” (LWFC 54). This dish lives up to this billing in the final chapter as the chiles create a climax in more than one way. At the wedding of Tita’s niece the chiles that she prepares ignites the guests’ lustful desires and brings Tita and Pedro together for a sexually climactic experience; unfortunately, the pyrotechnics of their love making results in the equally climactic burning down of the family ranch, leaving only Tita’s cookbook in the ashes. The reader cannot help but be awed by this powerful food that is described before its consumption as donning the colors of the flag: green, white and red, a final reminder that chiles are Mexico and that Mexico is its chiles. There likely are a host of other reasons that Like Water for Chocolate captivated the American public and altered some of the deep-seated prejudice towards Mexicans and their culinary offerings.

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Surely, the fantasy aspect of the narrative—Gertrudis riding her horse naked into the sunset and taming a wild revolutionary to be her manservant comes to mind—helped to negate grittier images of Mexico— begging children in Tijauna or the pollution of Mexico City—and create an unmarked palate that was open to new imagery. But Like Water for Chocolate always will be first and foremost a work about food and that food is unabashedly Mexican. The subtitle of Like Water for Chocolate reads “A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies,” and Esquivel’s work itself can be seen as a “home remedy.” She “remedied” the false illusions of her native land that many in the States harbored and showed her “home” of Mexico as place of wonderment, lore, and, of course, the legendary chile.

Notes 1

The statistic on Latinos in the United States is a 2006 estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau. 2 Several years later Il Postino (The Postman) would replace Like Water for Chocolate as the highest grossing foreign language film. 3 Harmony Wu argues that promoters of the film actually used the magical realism connection to draw out its “Latinness” for “art house” crowds familiar with the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, but having taught the novel and film to a variety of students--traditional age college students to adult continuing education students--I found most people unfamiliar with the term and its literary adherents. 4 Over the years I have acquired at least four different editions of Gebhardt’s pamphlets from 1919 through 1945. While the content does change to some degree through the years with greater authenticity of recipes over time, the commentary on the “spotless” kitchens barely ever is altered. 5 Product pamphlets continue to be a poor source for authentic ethnic fare. A 2008 Ortega Zesty Mexican Dishes has recipes for Fiesta pasta salad, Mexican grilled cheese sandwiches, and Salsa Mac, macaroni and cheese with salsa. 6 There may have been confusion in Blanch’s day as to the origins of chili, but scholars today are quite emphatic that chili had its origins in Texas, not in Mexico. Donna Gabaccia provides useful background, and an article in Saveur by Colman Andrews explains how chili should be viewed as more “Tex” than “Mex.” 7 Another exception to the solely French-focused cooking material from mid-20th century could be found in a most unlikely place, a 1957 edition of House Beautiful. In an entire issue devoted to Mexican culture, two lengthy articles advise readers not to neglect the cuisine there, especially if one wants to be truly cosmopolitan. Rosa Haden advises in “What We Can Learn from Mexican Food” that, “If you are worldly enough to want to borrow from the French, the Chinese, the Hungarian…then Mexican (and Guatemalan) cookery should be in your repertoire. The Mexican tastes and flavors are unique and alluring” (125).

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8 A New Yorker feature by Alma Guillermorpieto on Kennedy that ends with an elaborate description of the meal that she prepared for Prince Charles does little to challenge her image as out-of-step with the common person. 9 The most vitriolic attack came from fellow chef Anthony Bourdain who called him a “pimp for the Evil Empire” (qtd. in Sagon). 10 Bayless does have a product line called “Frontera” that is distributed nationally, but many of the items do not seem to keep to his own standard of challenging misperceptions of Mexican food that are discussed in David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula (312). Chili mix and Mexican pizza are two such products. 11 The information on the misspellings comes from John Milbauer’s study of Oklahoma restaurants in The Taste of American Place (1998). The reference to TaMollys restaurant is from a menu that I acquired, along with other Southwest menus. Statistics on the Mexican food market can be found in various sources; this particular number was mentioned in Sylvia Ferrero’s article on consumption of Mexican food in Los Angeles. 12 Laura Esquivel’s ode to the chile’s cultural importance of Mexicans can be found in the essay “Cooking with Chiles” in her non-fictional collection Between Two Fires. 13 One of the most political comments stems from her disillusionment during the Vietnam War when she writes, “Coco-cola began tasting bitter…the black water of Yankee imperialism” (51). 14 The sales of Miller’s fairly famous “Great Chile Poster,” published by Berkley’s Ten Speed Press, were no doubt helped by mass interest in Like Water for Chocolate.

Works Cited Aaron, Jan, and Georgine Salom. The Art of Mexican Cooking. New York: Doubleday, 1965. Andrews, Colman. “The Capital of Tex-Mex.” Saveur 69 (2003): 6675. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1987. Badikan, Beatriz. “Food and Sex, That’s All We Are Good For: Images of Women in Like Water.” Film and History 28 (1998): 46-48. Bateman, Ruth. Wonderful World of Cooking: French Specialties. Los Angeles: Harwood and Tjaden, 1965. Benitez, Ana. Cocina Prehispanica/ Pre-Hispanic Cooking. Perugino (Mexico): Euram, 1974. Better Homes and Gardens: Meals with a Foreign Flair. New York: Meredith, 1963. Bilbija, Ksenija. “Spanish American Writers Simmering Identity Over a Low Flame.”Studies in 20th Century Literature 20 (1996): 147-165.

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Blanch, Lesley. Round the World in 80 Dishes. London: John Murray, 1956. Blend, Benay. “‘I Am an Act of Kneading’: Food and the Making of Chicana Identity” In Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food. Ed. Sherrie Inness. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. (41-61) Esquivel, Laura. “Cooking with Chiles.” Between Two Fires: Intimate Writings on Life, Love, Food and Flavor trans. Stephen Lytle. New York: Crown, 2000. (111-118) ———. Like Water for Chocolate trans. Carol and Thomas Christensen. New York: Anchor, 1992. ———. “Lowfat Mayonnaise.” Between Two Fires. (119-127) ———. “Oaxacan Black Mole.” Between Two Fires. (57-66) Ferrero, Sylvia. “Comida, Sin Par. Consumption of Mexican Food in Los Angeles: ‘Foodscapes’ in a Transnational Consumer Society.” In Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. eds. Warren Balasco and Philip Scranton. New York: Routledge, 2002. (194-219) Gabaccia, Donna. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1998. Guillermorpieto, Alma. “Disappearing Dishes: How Diana Kennedy Is Rescuing Everyday Food.” New Yorker 19 August 2002: 98. Lexis-Nexis. University WI-Waukesha Lib., Waukesha, WI. 28 April 2008 Haden, Rosa. “What We Can Learn from Mexican Food.” House Beautiful 99.9 (1957): 122+. Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula. New York: Broadway Books, 2006. Kaufman, William. Mexican Dinner Party. Anaheim: Buzza, 1971. Milbauer, John A. “The Geography of Food in Eastern Oklahoma: A Small Restaurant Study.” In The Taste of American Place. eds. Barbara Shortridge and James Shortridge. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. (201-213) Old El Paso Sun Country Mexican Cookbook. Des Moines: Meredith, 1978. Ortega Zesty Mexican Dishes. Lincolnwood: Publications International, 2008. Philip Harben’s Cookery Encylopaedia. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Pillsbury, Richard. No Foreign Food. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.

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Pinedo, Encarnacion. Encarnacion’s Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California ed. and trans. Dan Strehl. Berkeley: U California P, 2003. Ruggles, Ron. “Fine Dining Discovers New-World Flavors of ‘Nuevo Latino’ Cuisine.” Nation’s Restaurant News 16 December 1996: 36-39. Sagon, Candy. “Fast Food Flap: Why a Celebrity Chef is Taking Heat Over a Spicy Chicken Sandwich.” Washington Post 3 December 2003: F1. Proquest. University of WI-Waukesha Lib., Waukesha, WI. 28 April 2008 . Sandoval’s Mexican Cookbook. New York: Merchant, 1966. Silva, Beverly. “Sin ti no soy nada/ Without You I am Nothing.” In Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature. eds. Tey Diana Rebolledo and Eliana Rivero. Tuscon: U Arizona P, 1993. (359) Steinbeck, John. Tortilla Flat. 1935. New York: Viking, 1962. Stoker, Catharine. Concha’s Mexican Kitchen Cookbook. San Antonio: Naylor, 1946. Strehl, Dan. Introduction. Encarnacion’s Kitchen: Mexican Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth Century California. Berkley: U California P, 2003. (19-40) Trader Vic’s Book of Mexican Cooking. New York: Doubleday, 1973. United States. “State and County Quick Facts.” U.S. Census Bureau. 26 April 2008 http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html. Valle, Victor, and Mary Lau Valle. Recipe of Memory: Five Generations of Mexican Cuisine. New York: New Press, 1995. Wu, Harmony. “Consuming Tacos and Enchiladas: Gender and the Nation in Como Agua Para Chocolate.” Visible Nations: Latin American Cinema and Video. Ed. Chon Noriega. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2000. (174-192) Young, Alice, and Patricia Stephenson. Discovering Mexican Cooking. San Antonio: Naylor, 1958. Zimmerman, Mary Ann. Tupperware Book of Picnics, Parties, and Snacks From Around the World. New York: Benjamin Company, 1967.

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Zubiaurre, Maite. “Culinary Eros in Contemporary Hispanic Female Fiction: From Kitchen Tales to Table Narratives.” College Literature 33 (2006): 29-51.

Section V: LWFC and the Mexican Revolution

National Myths and María Teresa Martínez-Ortiz Archetypal Imagery in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate The Mexican Revolution as an Active Participant in Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate

Eric Skipper

National Myths and Archetypal Imagery in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate María Teresa Martínez-Ortiz Kansas State Univeristy Two decades after the publication of the popular Like Water for Chocolate (1989), much has been written on whether or not the novel promotes a feminist agenda.1 By analyzing the novel and the film while examining literary criticism compiled to date, one can argue that Laura Esquivel’s text is neither feminist nor it is non-feminist but a complex hybrid novel that both resists and embraces traditional Mexican patriarchy. While the text cannot fit within the limits of radical feminism, it would also be problematic to definitely remove Like Water for Chocolate from the feminist shelves. A distinctive aspect of the novel is the predominant presence of female characters that perhaps make the text more feminine than feminist. Concepts of the feminine can be traced through universal archetypes, and, in the case of Esquivel’s novel and film, these are intimately linked to Mexican history. Traditional historical aspects of Mexico are represented in Like Water for Chocolate with an interesting twist when Tita de la Garza’s grand-niece opens the story by recounting “(her)story” over the narrative of the official “(his)tory,” and in defiance of the fact that almost all Mexican literature taking place during the 1910 Revolution derives from the long tradition of the “novel of the Mexican Revolution,” a category traditionally dominated by male authors. Like Water for Chocolate is one of but few female-authored novels in the genre, alongside Consuelo Delgado’s Yo también Adelita (1936) and Elena Poniatowska´s Hasta no verte Jesús Mío (1969). In Esquivel’s novel, the de la Garza family saga is narrated in the form of a cookbook, a genre traditionally considered feminine since the nuns in convents began to compile collections of recipes during the Mexican colonial period. Thus, by rescuing a culinary history, the remnants of

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ancient myths and ever-changing national feminine archetypes are recovered, and the roles are embodied in Like Water for Chocolate by Tita de la Garza and the women who interact with her. The fact that a family of women plays such a key role in the context of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 is indeed quite revolutionary even in 1989 when the novel was first published. By analyzing the myths and diverse archetypes present in Like Water for Chocolate, this essay focuses on their connection to the Mexican national discourse established by the narrative. The maternal archetypes represented in the Guadalupe-Malinche Mexican oppositional binary provide the structural frame of this study; the study is appended by an analysis of two more popular Mexican archetypes that are prominent symbols in Esquivel’s novel and film: the “soldadera” and the “curandera.” While some critics2 have discussed the maternal element in Like Water for Chocolate, what has been published so far does not explore the mother figure against the background of the traditional Guadalupe-Malinche cultural paradigm. Therefore, I emphasize the roles of feminine archetypes within the long history of Mexican popular myths and deep rooted traditions as they appear in Esquivel’s narrative. Before analyzing Like Water for Chocolate and exploring the Mexican mother archetype, it is important to underscore that the universal mother archetype is an essential ancient element to most cultures. In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Carl G. Jung3 proposes the unconscious as the mother-complex place of origin and underscores the fact that the mother archetype can appear under an almost infinite variety of aspects. It can be personal when it refers to a real mother and/or grandmother although the term can be figurative as well. To the latter category belong the goddesses and Madonna-like images such as the Virgin Mary within the Christian tradition. In addition, Jung posits that the mother archetype may possess a positive or negative meaning, although he stresses that there are also ambivalent aspects of this archetype that can be seen in the goddesses of fate such as Moira, Graeae and Norns, as well as in paradoxical representations embodied in goddesses such as Kali, who in India simultaneously represents both “the loving and terrible mother” (110). Jung emphasizes that within the context of world history, after the rise of patriarchal monotheistic religions, the image of the mother as origin began to dominate the collective unconscious in the form of the universal Madonna-Whore dichotomy.

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In Meso-American civilizations such as the Aztec, the mother archetype appears in the goddess Tonatzin, but the most ambivalent aspect of the symbol can be found in the goddess Coatlicue.4 Both are the fundamental archetypal origins of Guadalupe and Malinche as the modern national archetypes that have captured the imagination of “Mestizo” Mexico. Therefore, a conspicuous element in Esquivel’s narrative, essential to the understanding of the text’s connection to modern Mexican history and culture is the central role of motherhood and its relationship to nationalism. During and after Mexico’s independence, competing discourses and narratives began to shape the nascent identity of the young nation. Within the construction of a national discourse, the institution of motherhood attained a patriotic status when unconscious archetypes and dormant myths were revisited in order to strengthen a sense of patriotism and unity. The Christian equivalent of the universal maternal oppositional Madonna-Whore model is the Mary-Eve binary. The Mexican representation is the Guadalupe-Malinche5 paradigm, a duality that was essential in shaping the popular psyche of Mexico after independence, and one that has undergone continual reconfiguration since the nineteenth century during every national project. Since the beginnings of nationalism, Guadalupe’s oppositional complement has been the most indigenous, ambiguous and multifaceted female Mexican archetype. Malinche6 was an actual historical person. This Amerindian woman has become a battleground of emerging discourses that have constructed her identity over the centuries in all sorts of forms according to male-oriented agendas and ideological national projects. Malinche is a fascinating archetype because her continuously reinvented image clearly reveals her absence and silence as a real subject. The never-ending transformation to which Malinche has been subjected since being given as a gift to the Spanish Captain Hernán Cortés, underscores the disparate stories and representations surrounding her actual participation in the conquest of the Aztecs. Within the context of this palimpsest-process, the historical persona of Malinche is elided, becoming merely a rhetorical tool in the whole system of myths supporting the collective psyche that sustains Mexico as an “imagined community” (6-7), as Benedict Anderson calls it in his classical study of the origins of the nation. Within the process of constructing the nation, the Guadalupe and Malinche oppositional archetypes complement and balance each other. On the one hand, the Malinche tale of disloyalty is shaped during the XIX century when a long period of instability, political turmoil, and

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domestic and international wars took place before the strong-arm dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz solidified. In this case, Malinche, who traditionally represents the collective human Indian mother of the Mexican people, falls into shame by following Cortés and betraying her own “symbolic” children. On the other hand, the negativity attached to the Malinche as mother archetype is neutralized and redeemed by the powerful image of the Madonna of Guadalupe, the “figurative” Indian-Virgin mother and protector of all Mexican people, who rescues her children from infamy and restores faith in the women who are willing to follow her example of sacrifice, submission and patriotic loyalty. Representations of the “Guadalupe-Malinche” dichotomy are found in various aesthetic expressions of popular culture that emerge at the turn of the century, especially after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. But even before that time period, nineteenth century readers were already indulging in romantic literature dealing specifically with the Malinche archetype, such as José Olmedo y Lama´s essay “Malintzin” (1874) and the first novel dealing with the Malinche myth: Doña Marina (1883) by Irineo Paz. Both texts are examples of cultural representations that were competing for the hearts and minds of a selected group of educated Catholic Mexican white male readers, and a few privileged “Mestizos,” while simultaneously formulating an emergent discourse of nationalism. In Like Water for Chocolate, the mother archetype is initially embodied by the character of the widow Mamá Elena, who, in spite of being an independent mother, remains the loyal steward of the Mexican patriarchal cultural tradition, functioning as the keeper of her family´s reputation and good name. Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen, who explores feminine archetypes in depth, would likely align Mamá Elena with traditional male-oriented females “who are allied with patriarchy, whose identities and value come through their relationships with men and male institutions” (58), even if the character seems unaware of this alliance. For instance when her priest expresses concern about her being without a man on her ranch, Elena says: “‘I´ve never needed a man for anything; all by myself, I’ve done alright with my ranch and my daughters. Men aren’t that important in this life, Father’—she said emphatically— ‘nor is the revolution as dangerous as you make it out!’” (LWFC 80). Apparently, she believes that a male figure is not necessary because she feels fully capable of being in charge of her destiny. However, she has brought Pedro Musquiz into her house even though she is aware that he was going to

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cause temptation, pain and strife between her daughters. Moreover, she imposes an inflexible patriarchal order on the ranch, in which female feelings and sexual desires must be contained and constantly monitored. Mamá Elena fails to realize that she also has been a victim of the very system she enforces: she has repressed her own affective needs by marrying not the man she loved (José Treviño, the Mulatto biological father of her eldest daughter Gertrudis), but the one she was expected to wed according to social impositions demanded by her race and class status. Mamá Elena can be linked to neither the Malinche nor the Guadalupe archetypes; she rather represents only the “terrible” aspect of the Jungian mother archetype that, without the “loving” complement of the symbol, becomes an aberration of the concept.7 Her middle daughter Rosaura, on the other hand, is a weaker copy of Mamá Elena since her role and influence as mother of both Roberto and Esperanza is substantially limited and undermined because of her incapacity to feed them, due to her chronic depression and digestive illnesses, as well as her physical confinement to the space of her bedroom. A Jungian analysis of the character of Tita as a mother would allow the observation of the positive aspect of the archetype in terms of a real mother/grandmother image. Tita’s grandniece (no name is provided) opens and closes both the novel and the film by narrating her great aunt’s story. Significantly, at the end of the film the ghosts’ images of both Esperanza and Tita appear standing on either side of the narrator, who symbolically recognizes them as her mother and grandmother respectively. They have become spirits who will continue to live through the narrator’s memories and the process of cooking the family recipes. Although Tita never gives birth, she performs motherly functions and tends to her nephew Roberto and niece Esperanza. From birth, both children long to be under her protection since their biological mother is unable to care for them. By exploring the role and the relationship that Tita establishes with her nephew and niece it is possible to also observe the image of the Mexican mother archetype in the form of the Guadalupe-Malinche paradigm. On the one han,d Tita, in spite of being a virgin, is able to breastfeed her nephew when he needs it most: “The baby clamped desperately onto the nipple and he sucked and sucked…she saw the boy’s face slowly grow peaceful and…heard the way he was swallowing…Tita looked like Ceres [Demeter for the Greeks] herself, goddess of plenty” (LWFC 76). Indeed, the virgin-mother image of

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Tita considerably approaches the Guadalupe archetype. But on the other hand, Tita does become sexually involved with her sister’s husband, an act which places the character at the very opposite side of the Guadalupe model. As in the Malinche myth,8 Tita’s first truly physical sexual encounter with Pedro is so notably violent that it can almost be considered rape: “‘Pedro! What are you doing here?’ Without answering, Pedro went to her, extinguished the lamp, pulled her to a brass bed that had once belonged to her sister Gertrudis, and throwing himself upon her, caused her to lose her virginity…” (LWFC 158). By becoming Pedro’s mistress from that moment, and by betraying her sister in her own house, Tita fulfills the traditional Malinche myth. Therefore with respect to the Mexican mother paradox, Tita is capable of representing both Guadalupe and Malinche archetypes simultaneously. While it is obvious that neither of these female representations is feminist, both are fundamentally feminine in accordance to ShinodaBolen’s analysis of the traits of Greek goddesses. Demeter (the mother) and Persephone (the maiden) could be easily paired with Guadalupe and Malinche respectively. Sinoda Bolen explains that along with Hera (the wife of Zeus), these goddesses were vulnerable because “they represent the relationship-oriented goddess archetypes [who] were raped, abducted, dominated, or humiliated by male gods” (17). The traditional myth and popular opinion within the Mexican culture continue placing Guadalupe as the submissive mother and Malinche as the traitor prostitute of the national history, nevertheless, these traditional views have continually been questioned and contested by “Chicana” authors9 who have portrayed both Guadalupe and Malinche in non-traditional roles and who also argue for a separation of Maliche from “la Chingada,” the “fucked” one. Therefore, when observing both Guadalupe and Malinche through the lens of innovative “Chicana” writers and by taking into account Shinoda Bolen’s analysis on the Olympians, it is possible to compare both Guadalupe and Malinche to goddesses such as Artemis (the hunter) and Athena (the goddess of wisdom and handicraft). These were “called virgin goddesses because they represent the independent, self-sufficient qualities in women. These goddesses were not diverted from what they considered important” (21). A prominent historical aspect that is consistently overlooked by Mexican tradition is the indisputable fact that both Malinche and Guadalupe had attained fame through military and political national and even trans-national enterprises: Malinche as the Indian interpreter in the conquest of the

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Aztecs, and Guadalupe since the independence of Mexico10 all the way to contemporary rallies and protests in defense of undocumented workers in the U.S. From the foundational dichotomy of Guadalupe-Malinche other female archetypes of Mexican culture are derived, such as the “soldadera” and the “curandera.” These archetypes are also prominent in the analyses of female characters in Like Water for Chocolate, because both are potentially capable of transgressing the stability of the traditional binary paradigm. The “soldadera” archetype represents a woman who can fight and use firearms, does not appear secluded in the private sphere but moves from one place to another, sometimes even dressing like a man; thereby the “soldadera” appear to have some resemblance with the Greek “virgin” goddesses Artemis and Athena mentioned earlier. After the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the “soldadera” archetype became popular through “corrido” songs, film and literature. A combination of real and fictional female characters like “Adelita” and “Valentina” became the most famous “soldaderas” in popular culture. However, these “soldaderas,” despite their courage and determination, continue to obey the social expectations culturally traced for Mexican women, performing all the domestic duties even in the midst of the battlefield and fulfilling the sacred patriotic role of motherhood. Therefore, traditionally the “soldadera” has been praised not because of her courage and active role as a female soldier but rather because of her role at maintaining the status quo vis-à-vis the patriarchal order, while simultaneously fulfilling the national mother ideal through her femininity and her submissive-sacrificial-suffering nature. Juxtaposing Like Water for Chocolate and the film Enamorada (1946) proves useful in its classic portrayal of the incipient “soldadera” archetype containing the Guadalupe-Malinche cultural paradigm. Directed by Emilio Fernández and interpreted by the last Mexican diva María Félix, this movie was a huge success during the golden age of the Mexican film. In a Mexican twist on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the rich, proud and rebellious Beatriz Peñafiel becomes a national heroine when she decides to abandon everything and follow her “Juan”—José Juan Reyes, a poor yet noble revolutionary general whose integrity, bravery and commitment conquer Beatriz’s heart. The last shot of the film is highly symbolic because it underscores the submissive, suffering and sacrificial spirit characteristic of marianismo when Beatriz and several other “soldaderas” leave the town of Cholula, Puebla, walking behind their

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men who ride their horses. Therefore Beatriz, who started as a Malinche-figure, assumes towards the end of the film the sacrificial image of Guadalupe, an image that redeems her and changes her to a model suitable for all Mexican woman to emulate. Gertrudis in Like Water for Chocolate is a more recent example of a “soldadera” who transgresses the traditional notion of marianismo to a certain degree. Gertrudis abandons her upper class household and becomes a “soldadera" by following her own sexual desires, not the man she loves or a revolutionary conviction as in the case of Fernández’s Enamorada. It is helpful to analyze the anagnorisis of both Beatriz and Gertrudis in each of these stories in order to understand the impact they pose on the national mother GuadalupeMalinche paradigm. In Enamorada, when the protagonist makes the crucial decision to leave the upper-class family house, Beatriz, proud and chaste, abandons her Yankee fiancé in the middle of the civil marriage ceremony, and, after hugging and kissing her old father goodbye, she becomes a “soldadera” surrounded by an aura of dignity, decorum and patriotic grandeur that crowns the glory of her heroic sacrifice. On the other hand, Esquivel’s story takes place within a plot that combines romanticism, magic realism, and parody. After eating an aphrodisiac dish that her sister Tita prepares, an aroused Gertrudis excuses herself and leaves the table in order to take a shower to mitigate the sexual urgency she is experiencing, but the intensity of her corporal desire ignites a fire that propels her to abandon the burning shower room. Gertrudis runs naked through the field of her tyrannical mother´s hacienda from where she is lustfully swept away by a revolutionary soldier; subsequently the two making love on horseback, galloping away from the family house. These two examples represent contrasting images of the popular “soldadera” archetype in the last century. The former, situated in the context of the 1940s,11 exalts the mother image and fully inscribes the “soldadera” archetype into the Guadalupe-Malinche oppositional binary when Beatriz rejects her comfortable status and her foreign fiancé, and instead embraces the revolutionary cause by obediently following the noble general she loves. Hence, Beatriz moves far from the Malinche archetype and approaches the ideal image of Guadalupe with all the characteristics of marianismo that society expects from her: submission, obedience and sacrifice. Opposed to this image is Gertrudis, who follows her own desires and escapes the hacienda of her mother. She is not carried away or robbed by a soldier, but rather is prompted by her individual needs, which in turn allow her to

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liberate herself from a claustrophobic bourgeois domestic space. Her actions take her close to the traditional Malinche archetype since she betrays her maiden status and does not care about her mother or family; indeed, she is selfish for thinking solely about herself and her desires. Later in the story, it is revealed that Gertrudis became a revolutionary general in charge of fifty men. However, her “soldadera” rebellious nature is overturned towards the end of the novel when she is incorporated into the traditional Mexican mother archetype. Victoria Martínez has underscored the aspect of Gertrudis´s domesticity present in the last part of the novel (38-39). Gertrudis arrives at Esperanza and Alex’s wedding reception in a fancy car, as the upper-middle class wife and mother that cultural tradition expects after the Revolution. In the film (moreso than in the novel), Gertrudis’ manners and demeanor now appear more feminine and softer, her attire more elegant and discrete. She is a woman who has been civilized and domesticated according to the national patriarchal frame that her social status demands. Her initial rebellious nature and sexual urgency have become more docile and easier to monitor and control through the institutions of marriage and motherhood. Another prominent archetype in Esquivel’s novel is the “curandera” archetype. Tita inherits the power of the “curandera” (the female healer of the Mexican indigenous mythology) from Nacha, the family’s old Indian cook who becomes her nurturer and spiritual guide from birth. The “curandera” is also potentially able to destabilize the traditional Guadalupe-Malinche dichotomy in order to position herself in a third space or border location in which she is neither one thing nor the other but something else—a “curandera,” a hybrid archetype able to surpass binary oppositions and fixed identities. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa proposes the archetype of “la curandera” as a combination of Guadalupe and Malinche that deconstructs the opposition Madonna-whore by seizing a neutral location from where this New Mestiza is able to build her own alternate story. Because of her polysemic nature, “La curandera” is a healer venerated and deeply respected in the community, yet she is feared because she has dominion over the spiritual world and possesses supernatural powers like a witch. Representations in Chicano/a literature that emphasize on the “curandera” archetype may be found in poetry and prose, with one of the earlier and most famous examples being Rodolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972). The few female characters that appear in Anaya’s novel are posed in accordance to the Guadalupe-Malinche dichotomy

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with the exception of Ultima´s more complex persona. As a traditional “curandera” (faith healer), Ultima exhibits ambivalent aspects that cannot fit within the simplistic good-bad binary. Instead, as mentioned at the outset of this paper, in light of Jung’s archetypal analysis, Ultima can be more closely associated with the goddesses of fate since she can be both a “saint” and a “witch” simultaneously. Thus, Ultima can align better with Coatlicue, goddess of life and death in Aztec mythology, than with Guadalupe or Malinche. The locus from which a “curandera” draws her power and prepares her magic is the kitchen, the domestic space to which women have been historically relegated in western societies. The success of Like Water for Chocolate encouraged the production of a large body of culinary texts that revisited the treatment of food within the field of literature and cuisine. As emphasized at the beginning of this analysis, Esquivel’s novel possesses rich and complex dimensions that may not be fundamentally feminist but are positively feminine, sensual and hybrid. Within the traditionally private and constricted domestic space of the kitchen, Tita achieves a significant degree of power and control over the desperate circumstances that surround her. For example, Tita is the recipient of Nacha’s ancestral Indian knowledge of cooking and healing. After Nacha’s death, Tita remains spiritually connected to her teacher through the persistence of memory and oral tradition, as evidenced in chapter III: “Quail in Rose Petal Sauce,” a recipe that Tita had never made before: “All at once she seemed to hear Nacha’s voice dictating a recipe, a pre-Hispanic recipe involving rose petals” (LWFC 49). Nacha lives in Tita through the indigenous knowledge they both share, at times Nacha is even able to inhabit Tita’s body: “So skillful was she that it seemed Nacha herself was in Tita’s body doing all those things: dry-plucking the birds, removing the viscera, getting them ready for frying ” (LWFC 50). The episode of the quail in rose petal sauce is the most representative example in the of the spirit possession process that takes place in the story. Not only does Nacha take over Tita’s body in order to kill and prepare the birds, but the guests at this feast ingest Tita’s body literally and figuratively. At the table, Tita’s spirit left her body in order to enter Pedro’s by means of the food she cooked, and, in the body of Gertrudis, the copula is completed.

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[Gertrudis] began to sweat, imagining herself on horseback with her arms clasped around oneof Pancho Villa’s men…She turned to Tita for help, but Tita wasn’t there, even though her body was sitting up quite properly in her chair; there wasn’t the slightest sign of life in her eyes. It was as if a strange chemical process had dissolve her entire being in 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 (LWFC 51-52).

In this gastronomic process of spiritual transference, Tita does not just invade Pedro’s body: the power of the “curandera” is underscored with metaphorical subversion of sexual intercourse, since in this case Tita is the one who penetrates Pedro’s body. The sensual aspect of the lower senses is also underscored by the central importance that the experience of taste, texture and smells have in this mystical passage. Tita remains spiritually tied to Nacha through practice of memory and by cooking and preserving her recipes in the form of a cookbook. She also becomes a healer, such as the time when Pedro is badly burned. Again, Nacha´s voice whispers to Tita the best remedy to prevent severe scarring: “in a case like this the best remedy was the bark of the tepezcohite tree, which must be placed on Pedro … [Tita] got Nicholas up and told him to get this bark from the best brujo in the region” (LWFC 202). “Brujos” are the male “curanderos” in Mexican and Mexican-American cultures, who like their female counterparts, practice traditional remedies. It is significant to note that Tita does not ask for the curandero to come and cure Pedro because she recognizes herself as “curandera” through her connection to Nacha’s wisdom. The healing power is a positive aspect, but another more obscure element of the “curandería” that connects it with witchcraft is the “maldición” or curse that, through the enunciation of words, releases a strong negative energy that can seriously harm the recipient of such words. The “maldición” concept of “la curandera” and the power of her curse has its equivalent in other cultures. In Sensuous Scholarship, 12 Paul Stoller explains that in and around the republic of Mali, West Africa, words can be dangerous because they are infused with “nyama” or “energy of action” (74). As previously mentioned, the “curandera” archetype is ambivalent; it can have an overwhelmingly positive as well as a distinctively negative meaning, according to the context and the circumstances present in a given moment. As a “curandera,” Tita fatally sickens her sister Rosaura through the curses imparted via food she has prepared.

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While going through her mother´s mementos, Tita learns of her family’s unchaste history and the social conventions and destructive traditions that have limited her and are threatening the future of her niece. Thus Tita’s “curandera” words became destructive weapons against her sister Rosaura when the latter expresses her desire to continue the family’s tradition of preventing her daughter from getting married: “If only Rosaura had burned her mouth to a crisp! And had never let those words leak out, those foul, filthy, frightful, repulsive, revolting, unreasonable words. Better to have swallowed them and kept them deep in her bowels until they were putrid and worm-eaten.” (LWFC 150). From that day on, Rosaura suffers from a chronic digestive disease that keeps her in isolation due to a powerful bodily odor and develops into a terrible physical affliction that eventually kills her. Thus Tita as a “curandera” is polyvalent and complete, showing not only the positive side of the image but also its more sinister aspects, such as those manifested by goddesses such as the Indian Kali or the Aztec Coatlicue. In the film, Tita recites the ‘curse’ while preparing Rosaura´s lunch, thereby protecting her niece Esperanza’s freedom while also casting a lethal spell on Rosaura’s body. By healing and also cursing, Tita as a “curandera” does transgress the Guadalupe-Malinche paradigm by placing herself in a third locus of enunciation and action from which she is able to exercise other practices such as spirit possession and spirit mediumship that do not fit within the absolute dichotomies that the myths of both Guadalupe and Malinche represent in Mexican traditional culture. On the other hand, the crucial irony in Like Water for Chocolate is that Tita apparently fights only for her niece’s right to become a wife, not for Esperanza’s right to choose an education or an independent life of her own over marriage. Therefore, Tita is ultimately caught in the vicious cycle of Mexican cultural traditions and expectations for women who are supposed to feel content and fulfilled within a patriarchal system and its male-oriented institutions. The exploration of historical Mexican archetypes allows for an analysis of Esquivel’s text that reveals the simultaneously subversive and conforming nature of the women in the novel. Moreover, the persistence of myths based on both the Guadalupe and the Malinche archetypes places the concept of nation at the very center of the analysis. Benedict Anderson stresses that the idea of belonging to a delimited community is constantly articulated and sustained by different cultural practices, myths and symbols that contribute to the

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creation of an ideal homogeneous collective identity. Thus, myths and archetypes promote a shared sense of synchronicity and simultaneity within history through collective expressions of patriotism. As pointed out above, the role of ‘motherhood’ has long been one of those Mexican national myths based on unchallenged systems and social conventions. Hopefully, in this brief cultural analysis of Like Water for Chocolate in light of feminine Mexican archetypes, evidence has been provided that Tita embodies both Mexican ‘mothers,’ Guadalupe and Malinche, depending on the context in which she operates. While Gertrudis initially transgresses the traditional “soldadera” archetype, she eventually falls into compliance with the established institutions of marriage and motherhood, and transforms from Malinche to Guadalupe in a manner reminiscent of Emilio Fernández´s Enamorada. Finally, Tita almost fulfills the “curandera” archetype through her connection to Nacha’s indigenous wisdom and powers; however, she ultimately deflects the role in her physical and emotional dependence on relationships with men (Pedro-John-Pedro). Indeed, her higher aspirations are intimately tied to a married life, thus approximating the Greek goddess Hera79 archetype studied by Shinoda Bolen. In fact, marriage is the main motivation for Tita´s use of her “curandera” abilities. She curses her sister and rival Rosaura in order to exact revenge and to protect her niece Esperanza’s right to marry. Although the conclusion of Like Water for Chocolate is romanticized a-la Shakespeare with the death of Pedro followed by Tita’s suicide, her fate is clearly based on an old cautionary tale for women, inscribed within a long tradition of cultural representations of the “whore only redeemed through death” formula. This cultural dichotomy became a recurrent element for narratives as early as Federico Gamboa’s popular Santa (1908) and achieved its climax during the 1940s, the golden decade of Mexican cinema. Even when the Like Water for Chocolate novel and film version offer images that, to a certain degree, transgress traditional Mexican culture, both texts ultimately shy away from any complete subversion of women’s roles. Nevertheless, proposing a narrative in the context of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 that relegates men to supportive characters while placing women in the leading roles and foregrounding practices such as cooking, knitting, giving birth, nursing and keeping a journal in the form of a romantic cookbook is indisputably original and deeply feminine. Clearly Like Water for Chocolate sets the stage for more complex, bolder subversions of traditional Mexican feminine archetypes of national historical myths

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that for too long have severely limited the participation of women in non-traditional roles. With the innovative contributions of contemporary Mexican women novelists, screenwriters and film directors, female characters are beginning to step outside the domestic space in which Tita meets her doom. Notes 1

Critics such as Kristine Ibsen, Janice Jaffe and Celia Lawless, among several others, have underscored the subversive powers in the novel while others, including Dianna Niebylsky and Harmony Wu reject the idea that Esquivel’s text could propose a liberating path for women in the kitchen. 2 Articles such as those of Joanne Saltz and Maite Azubiaurre discuss several maternal aspects present in the Like Water for Chocolate without discussing Mexican feminine archetypes within Mexico’s history. 3 For a comprehensive study on universal archetypes, consult Carl G Jung´s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. The collective unconscious is perhaps controversial but it is Jung’s most relevant theory. Jung’s acute observations of the fantasies and dreams of his patients led him to propose its origins. These dreams and fantasies, Jung argues, cannot just be traced to the individual’s personal experiences but to archetypes or primordial images that have deep roots in religion and mythical themes. 4 Gloria Anzaldúa has theorized on Mexico’s most powerful creator goddess Coatlicue, the female deity that preceded the rise of male oriented societies. She gave birth to Huitzilopochtli, the highest god of the Aztec empire. Another aspect of Coatlicue is Tonantzin but dispossessed of her more sinister aspects, living her incomplete. After the conquest, the Spaniards and their church continue splitting the deity and from Tonantzin emerged Guadalupe, who is the Indian representation of Virgin Mary. 4 Coined by Evelyn P. Stevens, marianismo stands for the ideal submissive, suffering and sacrificial nature of Virgin Mary and that every “good” mother should imitate. These are the main characteristics that make mothers “spiritually” superior to men while paradoxically have placed women in an inferior status among strong patriarchal societies such as that of Mexico. The Virgin of Guadalupe has been the patron saint of Mexico since 1531, just a decade after the final conquest of the Aztecs by Spain. According to the popular tale, the Virgin Mary (incarnated in Guadalupe) appeared to the Indian Juan Diego requesting to be adored in her temple; this “miracle” made Catholicism more attractive to Indians and facilitated their conversion. During this initial colonial period, the conquest was not just a military but also a religious undertaking. 5 There is no historical consensus about critical facts on this Indian woman who served as an interpreter. The exact place and date of her birth and death remain unknown. Although very limited, Bernal Díaz del Castillo is the one who provides the most detailed information about her life and deeds in the conquest of Tenochtitlan. He goes as far as to affirm that doña Marina discovered the plans of the ambush that the Tlaxcalans had prepared for the Spaniards, and they were saved because of her in that occasion.

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Critics such as Ana Ibánez Moreno and Martín Moreno have compared Esquivel´s novel to Federico García Lorca´s La casa de Bernarda Alba. Ibáñez Moreno´s article cites Jung´s analysis on “the terrible mother.” 7 The representation of Malinche´s sexual encounter with Cortés in Esquivel´s novel Malinche (2006) continues the traditional myth regarding la Malinche as “La Chingada,” or the raped one from whom Octavio Paz draws to theorize Mexican idiosyncrasy in his Labyrinth of Solitude, first published in 1950. According to the popular belief, a key mythological and popular aspect that is left unquestioned in Esquivel’s novel, Malinche enjoyed being raped by Cortés and was delighted to submit to his will in spite of betraying her own people: [Cortés] lifted Malinalli out of the water and carried her to the shore, where he forcefully penetrated her…his member pushed and opened the tight walls of the girls’ vagina. He did not care if his passion and force hurt Malinalli…All he cared about was going in and out of that body…With each thrust, Malinalli felt the pleasure of Cortés´s naked, hairy torso brushing up against her breasts… [She] felt relief in reclaiming her condition of submission, for it was a much more familiar sensation to be an object at the service of men than to be a creator of her destiny (78-79). 8 For decades, ¨Chicana¨ writers have been committed to the subversion of Mexican myths concerning women. Tey Diana Rebolledo devotes an excellent introduction to Mexican female archetypes including la Malinche, and shows how “Chicanas” have contested binary oppositions through creative writing (2-9). Sandra Messinger Cypess proposes the first semiotic study of la Malinche as a palimpsest. “Chicanas” in other aesthetic fields have also contested traditional Mexican archetypes; such is the case of painter Yolanda López and her series on the Virgin of Guadalupe. 9 Until the nineteenth century, Guadalupe would remain a venerated image strictly associated with Catholicism; however, the image became a key element of nationalism from 1810, when Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a liberal Creole priest, also known as “the father of the nation,” recruited an impressive mass of Indians who took up arms and started the revolution of independence. Symbolically, he used the sacred image of Guadalupe as a banner, arguably the first Mexican flag. To this day, Guadalupe is the inspirational icon that legitimized (and blessed) almost every single national struggle—a sign that could interchangeably evolve into both the protective mother of all Mexicans as well as the national liberator. Guadalupe is a sacred icon, venerated in contemporary Mexican society; every year, the day of Guadalupe, December 12, is a widely celebrated national holiday. 10 During and after the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, along with the nationalization of the oil and other institutions that previously were in foreign hands, a modern national project was born. It is within this context that a renewed more complex and misogynist reconfiguration of the Malinche archetype was re-shaped. 11 Oral tradition is essential in most many non-Western societies. Stoller refers to “the griot,” the one in charge of telling the history of the community. Griots of the Sahelian West Africa are considered masters of words; they are the living memory of Africa. Their training is strenuous and long, it can take up to thirty years before they are able to impart knowledge to the next generation. 12 Marriage is the aspect through which the Greek Goddess Hera achieves perfection. Shinoda Bolen asserts: “The Hera archetype first and foremost represents a woman’s yearning to be a wife. A woman with a strong Hera archetype feels fundamentally incomplete without a partner (142).

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Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 1983. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Fontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of the New Spain trans. J.M. Cohen. Baltimore: Penguin, 1975. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate trans. Thomas and Carol Christensen. New York: Doubleday, 1992. ────. Malinche trans. Ernesto Mestre-Reed. New York: Atria Books, 2006. Ibáñez Moreno, Ana. “Análisis del mito de la madre terrible mediante un estudio comparado de La casa de Bernarda Alba y Como agua para chocolate.” Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios 32 (2006): 111-117. Ibsen, Kristine. “On Recipes, Reading and Revolution: Postboom Parody in Como agua para chocolate.” Hispanic Review 63.2(1995): 133-46. Jaffe, Janice. “Hispanic American Women Writers’ Novel Recipes and Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para chocolate.” Women Studies 22.2 (1993): 217-30. Jung, Carl G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 Part 1). Princeton: Princeton U P, 1981. ────. Aspects of the Feminine. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1982. Lawless, Celia. “Cooking, Community, Culture: A Reading of Como agua para chocolate” in Recipes for Reading, Community: Community, Cookbooks, Stories, Histories ed. Anne L. Bower. Amherst: U Massachusetts P, 1997. Martínez, Victoria. “Como agua para chocolate: A Recipe for Neoliberal-ism.” Chasqui 33.1 (2004): 28-41. Messinger Cypess, Sandra. La Malinche in Mexican Literature. Austin: U Texas P, 1991. Niebylski, Dianna. “Heartburn, Humor and Hyperbole in Like Water

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for Chocolate,” in Performing Gender and Comedy, Theories, Texts and Contexts. Ed. Shannon Hengen. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998. Paz, Irineo. Doña Marina: novela histórica. Mexico: Irineo Paz Press, 1883. Paz, Octavio. Labyrith of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico trans. Lysander Kemp. New York: Grove, 1962. Poniatwska, Elena. Hasta no verte Jesús mío. Mexico: Ediciones Era, 2007. Rebolledo, Tey Diana. Women Singing in the Snow. Tucson: U Arizona P, 1995 Saltz, Joanne. “Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para chocolate: The Questioning of Literary and Social Limits.” Chasqui 24.1 (1995): 30-37. Shinoda-Bolen, Jean. Goddesses in Everywoman. New York: QuillHarperCollins, 2004. Stevens, Evelyn P. “Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo in Latin America,” Hembra y macho en Latino-América: Ensayos. ed. Ann Pescatelo. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1973. Stoller, Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1997. Wu, Harmony. “Consuming Tacos and Enchiladas: Gender and the Nation in Como agua para Chocolate,” in Visible Nations: Latin America Cinema and Video ed. Chon Noriega. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2000. Zubiaurre, Maite. “Culinary Eros in Contemporary Hispanic Female Fiction: From Kitchen Tales to Table Narratives.” College Literature. 33.3 (2006): 29-51. Filmography Cited Enamorada. Dir. Emilio Fernández. María Félix, Pedro Armendáriz. Script: Íñigo de Martino, Emilio Fernández and Benito Alazraki. Panamerican Films, 1946. Like Water for Chocolate [Como agua para chocolate]. Lumi Cavasos, Regina Torné. Dir. Alfonso Arau. Script: Laura Esquivel. Miramax, 1993.

The Mexican Revolution as Active Participant in Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate Eric Skipper Gainesville State College

In Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1992), the heroine Tita de la Garza’s hopes for marrying Pedro Muzquiz are quashed by her authoritarian mother Mama Elena, who, in accordance with tradition, declares that her youngest daughter cannot marry since she must take care of her mother until she dies. Despite being forbidden a union with Tita, Pedro cleverly marries her sister Rosaura and moves in with the Garza family in order to remain close to his true love. Mama Elena, aware that her household is now ripe for insurrection, is then forced to keep a close watch on the lovebirds. Despite Mama Elena’s domineering control, events occur on the ranch that fall outside the range of her harsh supervision: her eldest daughter Gertrudis runs off with a rebel soldier; the ranch is plundered by revolutionaries and bandits; Tita forges a secret means of communicating with Pedro by way of her sublime culinary skills—just to name a few glitches that interfere with her plan. The Mexican Revolution, with its open battles waged in nearby towns, provides an effective backdrop for such events on the ranch, where Tita and her mother are engaged in their own conflict, with bloodshed and heartbreak as parallel consequences. Several critical studies have called attention to the importance of this time frame to the novel’s structure. For example, Cherie Meacham has observed that the Revolution foregrounds the conflict between Mama Elena and Tita (120), while Leah Cheyne notes that the “novel can be read as an allegorical examination of the Mexican Revolution, tracing the effects

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of the conflicting ideologies underlying the Revolution through the displacement onto the family structure” (1). Laura Esquivel, the author, is even more specific about the role of the Revolution in her novel: “I see [Mama Elena] as the norm or the world of the masculine, whereas the feminine world I would portray as being that of intimacy, of life, reproduction, and of the earth” (qtd. in Loewenstein 594). Film director Alfonso Arau (coincidentally Esquivel’s husband at the time he made the popular film based on the novel) takes matters a step further, offering the opinion that “the male mentality is defined with the Mexican Revolution and the mother, even though she’s female. The heroine, Tita, and the maid Nacha represent intuition, passion, sentiment associated with the female mentality” (qtd. in Elias 19). Indeed, the Mexican Revolution has multiple functions within the context of the novel. Besides suggesting a paradigm of war versus non-war (violence versus nurturing), which is enacted on a personal level by Mama Elena and Tita, the Revolution’s opposing factions, the Federales and the revolutionaries, mirror the oppressiveness and the counteracting rebelliousness found in the Garza family household (endorsed, again, by Mama Elena and Rosaura on the one side, and Tita, Gertrudis and Nacha on the other). From a technical standpoint, the Revolution’s mere presence, as it is a prevalent topic of conversation and its outbreaks are often witnessed by bystanders, lends an ambience of peril and tension to the novel’s unfolding. As a homefront military conflict rife with pillaging and bloodshed, the Revolution provides an effective contrast to the aromatic, often sensuous, setting of the Garza kitchen. As noted above, these functions of the Revolution in LWFC have been studied by various scholars, including Cheyne, Meacham and Angélica Silva. On yet another level, the Revolution interacts directly with the Garza family and its retinue of characters in a tangible and substantive way. From the beginning of the novel when Tita’s sister Gertrudis is spirited away by a rebel soldier, to the scene of riotous festivity near the end when Tita hosts an entire troop of revolutionaries at the ranch—and in several instances in between—the Revolution plays a direct role in shaping events, almost as if it were a character itself. This essay proposes that the Revolution, in its tangible effect on the action, bears a function in the novel is tantamount to that of a prominent character. While it does, as proposed by certain critics, provide a diametric backdrop upon which the characters with their

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various functions may be categorized, its direct bearing on the plot is vital to the story’s development. A cursory glance at the Garza household reveals that Mama Elena and Tita represent opposite sides of the conflict within the Revolution. In the microcosm of the ranch, Mama Elena stands in for the Federal troops and the oppressive and brutal dictatorship (of Porfirio Díaz) that they uphold. Besides the throttlehold she exerts on everyone in the household—especially Tita—Mama Elena also demonstrates strength and efficiency when it comes to killing. Tita wishes she had her mother’s strength when she must kill doves to eat, for Mama Elena is “merciless, killing with a single blow” (LWFC 45). Tita, on the other hand, stands in for the revolutionaries, characterized by socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist and agrarian movements, and led by the dashing, valiant likes of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Continually being chided for her rebelliousness, Tita embraces revolt even when she is trying to be good. In one instance when she forgets to baste an article of clothing before sewing it, Mama Elena says: “Are you starting up with your rebelliousness again? It’s enough that you have the audacity to break the rules in your sewing” (11). Similarly, no matter how hard Tita tries, she can’t draw Mama Elena’s bath water just right. Her cooking, no matter how delicious it is, also continually draws the ire of Mama Elena. Tita’s rebellious nature manifests itself more deliberately when she feigns a headache in order to avoid her sister Rosaura’s wedding. Her mother responds to the ploy: “I won’t stand for disobedience” (25). In addition, at the age of nine, she plays hooky to swim in the Rio Grande with boys, both acts—playing hooky and playing with boys— being forbidden to young women (35). In a parallel to a burgeoning revolt of the oppressed masses fomenting in its nascent stages, Tita begins to stand up to Mama Elena. Specifically, when her sister Rosaura can’t produce milk for her newborn baby, Tita, who is suddenly able to produce milk via “a supernatural act” (74), surreptitiously takes on the role of wet nurse. When the child dies after being sent to San Antonio with his parents, Tita blames her mother, an act that ultimately results in her removal from the ranch. When Tita returns, she is finally able to fully stand up to her mother without fear, in part because her mother has been partially paralyzed from an attack by bandits.

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Besides what can be extrapolated by their personal behavior, Mama Elena and Tita both demonstrate their partiality towards the political factions that best represent them. Because of her Federalist leaning, Mama Elena sees the revolutionaries as greedy and gluttonous (84). These negative feelings are further reinforced by the mayor of Piedras Negras and Father Ignacio, who have “told her how the rebels entered houses, destroyed everything, and raped all the women in their path” (84-85). Tita views the Federales in the same negative way that Mama Elena views the revolutionaries. When her sister Gertrudis has “run off with one of Villa’s men, on horseback…naked,” Tita lies to her mother about it, blaming the kidnapping on Federal troops instead (LWFC 55). Later, after Mama Elena has died, Tita hosts and welcomes an entire troop of revolutionaries, including Gertrudis and her now-husband Juan Alejandrez, at the ranch for several days. A chronological survey of the instances in which the Revolution is mentioned or one of its opposing factions makes an appearance reveals that, besides supporting the paradigm proposed by critics such as Cheyne and Meacham, the conflict often bears a tangible and significant effect on events as they unfold, as if it were an active participant in the story. The Revolution is first mentioned in the second chapter, when it is noted that a crafty Chinaman has traveled the war-ravaged countryside in order to deliver the French silk used to make Rosaura’s wedding sheet. Though the Revolution has no direct bearing on the story here, it sets the stage for the role it will play throughout by establishing an undercurrent of conflict. The snowy whiteness of the wedding sheet nearly blinds Tita, and the description of its effect on the heartbroken girl is reminiscent of “The Whiteness of the Whale” chapter in Moby Dick—perhaps something to be explored in another study. The fact that the material for the wedding sheet, which “reveal[s] only the bride’s essential parts while allowing marital intimacy”(LWFC 31), has been delivered through such tempestuous conditions serves as a precursor to the tumultuous effect Rosaura and Pedro’s marriage will have on the Garza household in the future. That the French silk arrived successfully would appear to indicate, at least in the early stages, that the Revolution is to benefit the Federalist-leaning (Mama Elena and Rosaura) side of the Garza household.

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The next reference to the Revolution occurs in the ensuing chapter, when Tita’s sister Gertrudis is overcome by sinful thoughts after consuming Tita’s exquisite ‘Quail in Rose Petal Sauce’: She began to sweat, imagining herself on horseback with her arms clasped around one of Pancho Villa’s men: the one she had seen in the village plaza the week before, smelling of sweat and mud, of dawns that brought uncertainty and danger, smelling of life and death (LWFC 47-48).

The passage serves to promote a romanticized view of the rebel insurgence, as well as to establish a powerful counterpoint to Mama Elena’s (and the Federalist camp’s) adherance to tradition and the status quo. The romantic vision materializes, and Gertrudis sexual yearning is satiated a few pages later when the rebel captain she has imagined, upon finding her running naked through a field, sweeps her up and the two make love riding off on horseback (51). Tita, who has witnessed the event along with Pedro, decides to lie when she is confronted by Mama Elena a few pages later. “She settled on a version in which the Federal troops, which Tita hated, had swooped down on the ranch, set fire to the bathroom, and kidnapped Gertrudis” (LWFC 55). If we align Mama Elena with the Federal troops, it stands to reason that Tita, in assigning guilt to the Federales, is effectively blaming her mother for Gertrudis’ kidnapping. When a parish priest informs Mama Elena that a week later Gertrudis was working in a brothel on the border, Mama Elena, true to her callous and unforgiving nature, burns Gertrudis’ birth certificate and pictures and says she never wants to hear her name mentioned again in her house. Subsequent events reveal that the image of passionate abandon as represented by the revolutionary soldier will hold for the rest of the story. It bears mentioning that each year after Gertrudis’ ‘kidnapping,’ Tita prepares the quail in rose sauce “in tribute to her sister’s liberation” (55). To the oppressed youngest daughter, being swept up naked by a rebel soldier and spirited away from Mama Elena’s tyrannical environment is considered liberation, and not kidnapping. This too is in the spirit of revolution and rebellion. In the following chapter, when Tita and Pedro are about to consummate their love for the first time, the maid Chencha interrupts them with an account of the latest bloody battle in the town plaza. The

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scene is one of agonizing opposites. Pedro has accidentally encountered Tita grinding almonds and sesame seeds. Bent over a grinding stone, she is “moving in a slow regular rhythm” (LWFC 64), her breasts moving freely inside her blouse, a trickle of sweat disappearing into her cleavage. Tita, at home in the kitchen, is portrayed as an overtly sensual being, ripe for the picking. The image of sensuality and domesticity is disrupted jarringly by Chencha’s interruption and her subsequent vivid descriptions of the violent battles in the town plaza. Naturally, Tita is so frustrated by her unfulfilled longings that even Chencha’s exaggerated tales of hangings, shootings, dismemberments, and so forth, barely interest her (LWFC 66). So the Revolution and the events therein thwart yet again Tita and Pedro’s physical union. If Mama Elena is to be identified with the Mexican Revolution in general (as Alfonso Arau and various scholars maintain) and with the disruptive force of the war as a whole, we can chalk up yet another point to her side of the struggle. It also bears mentioning that the Revolution, in its evolution from backdrop to actual participant in events, serves as an object of gossip and hearsay in the novel—almost as if it were a person. The next instance in which the Revolution plays a direct role in the action occurs when Pedro, en route to Eagle Pass for a doctor when Rosaura is about to give birth to Pedro’s child, is captured by Federal troops and thus detained from getting medical assistance (LWFC 69). (Note: the previously established paradigm requires that it be Federal troops who capture Pedro.) At the same time, Mama Elena and Chencha are forced to take refuge in Lobos due to the shooting that has broken out in the village. While the war has indirectly thwarted Tita and Pedro’s lovemaking in its previous incursion into the Garza household (an episode that shall be discussed presently), it now affects Tita directly, for she has to deliver Rosaura and Pedro’s child alone, an act she performs with loving success. The Revolution again asserts its influence into the narrative when Lupita, the wet nurse obtained when Rosaura can’t produce milk, is “struck by a stray bullet from a battle between the rebels and the Federales and [is] mortally wounded” (LWFC 73). Initially the wet nurse’s death benefits Tita in that it enables her to nurse her nephew Roberto when she is miraculously able to produce milk, an act that strengthens her bond with Pedro, the child’s father and her intended lover. The end result is tragic, however, because when Mama Elena

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senses Tita and Pedro’s growing affection for one another, she sends Pedro, Rosaura and their baby to live in San Antonio. Since Roberto is thus separated from Tita’s nurturing, he dies shortly afterwards, an event that devastates Tita. At the end of the same chapter, the Revolution’s effect is articulated even more obviously when the narrator states: “The threat of the revolution hung over them, bringing famine and death in its wake” (LWFC 78). Mama Elena, in response to Father Ignacio’s concerns about her sending Pedro to San Antonio, states that she doesn’t need a man’s help on the ranch. “Men aren’t that important in this life, Father […] nor is the revolution as dangerous as you make it out!” (LWFC 79). In the ensuing pages Mama Elena’s stubbornness and her assessment of the conflict turn out to be as willfully naïve as they are ironically prophetic. When rebel soldiers later arrive at the ranch in search of provisions, a shotgun-wielding Mama Elena allows them to take chickens and doves, but does not allow them to enter the house. Her valor impresses the captain (she doesn’t know it is Juan Alejandrez, the rebel who carried Gertrudis off some months earlier) and he leaves her alone. Despite the fact that Mama Elena, along with the mayor of Piedras Negras and Father Ignacio, hates the rebel forces, after seeing that they “don’t fit the picture of the heartless ruffians she’d been expecting…she would not express any opinion about the revolutionaries” (LWFC 87-88). It is important to note that two chapters later when a violent attack on the ranch leaves Mama Elena paralyzed and the maid Chencha violated, the culprits are conveniently labeled “bandits.” In keeping with the established archetypes, it is necessary that those who inflict the damage be defined as such, while for all practical purposes, considering the setting, they rightfully should be partisans that support either the rebel or the Federal cause. However, according to the established paradigm, the author can assign them neither label; the ‘bandits’ designation offers a loophole. If the raiders were Federal troops they would, in essence, be attacking one of their own: Mama Elena. Likewise, such a disparaging depiction of revolutionary soldiers would undermine the standard that portrays them as decent and passionate. After Mama Elena’s death, Tita hosts an entire troop of revolutionaries at the ranch. By now Juan Alejandrez is a general, and

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so is Gertrudis. “She fought like mad on the field of battle. Leadership was in her blood…” (LWFC 175). In an interview, Esquivel explains Gertrudis’ role in the novel: “She goes out and becomes a part of the Revolution. She becomes a general, she participates in the public phase of the Revolution, she kills people. Tita makes her own Revolution in the family environment” (qtd. in Loewenstein 594). The rebel troops’ visit to the ranch has the feel of an old friend returning home. Indeed, when readers have been able to view the rebels as a single entity, the influence has usually been seen as a positive one rather than negative. The troops’ presence creates an environment in which other events occur, including Pedro’s catching fire so that Tita can direct her doting attentions on him as she nurses him back to health. Not even the tale of one Sergeant Treviño’s brutal murder of a spy who had infiltrated the regiment can undermine the jolly, dashing presence of the rebel troops. “It was the only savage act Treviño had committed in his life; except for that, he was refined and elegant, even in killing. He always did it with perfect dignity” (LWFC 189). Finally, at the wedding party at the end of the novel, the former revolutionary captain Juan arrives in the company of Gertrudis. Now cutting a more domestic figure, in his “elegant tight-fitting suit, a top hat, and spats” (LWFC 229), Juan is the last standing representative of the Revolution. Despite his docile persona, the raw potency of his sexuality recalls his personality during his soldiering days. Mircea Eliade likely would have viewed the amorous free-for-all (initiated by Gertrudis and Juan) that follows the wedding banquet as a precursor to regeneration, i.e. the new life that ultimately will spring from the ranch. Eliade writes: social confusion, sexual license, and saturnalia symbolize regression to the amorphous condition that preceded the Creation of the world […] the orgy is a return to the cosmic night, the preformal, the waters, in order to ensure complete regeneration of life and hence the fertility of the earth and an abundance of crops (147).

In addition, Eliade might have perceived the fire that consumes the ranch following Tita and Pedro’s climactic union as a more scientific step in regeneration. As Esquivel describes it in the text: “They say that under those ashes every kind of life flourished, making this land the most fertile in the region” (LWFC 241). Like the

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embattled Revolutionaries who staked a claim on the future of their country, Tita has emerged as not only victor but as a savior who solves the familial conflict that stifled the Garza ranch for decades. Clearly the Revolution wields on the plot a tangible manifestation of the Mama Elena/ Tita Federal/ revolutionary paradigm pointed out by aforementioned critics, and places obstacles in the way of both Mama Elena and Tita’s objectives. Three different components of the Revolution help shape events in the novel: revolutionaries, Federales, and the Revolution itself in a general sense. For the most part, Revolutionaries and Federales wield influence in a premeditated way, duly supportive of their counterparts within the Garza family. The Revolution as a singular non-partisan entity (event), however, leans decidedly against Tita, a trend that is ironic given that social revolutions typically represent a thorn in the side of the establishment, i.e. the upper classes and the bourgeoisie—and a salve for those oppressed. Rather than foiling Mama Elena’s objectives, the effects of the conflict in general run contrary to Tita’s goals more often than not. For example, the Revolution fails to deter the Chinaman from delivering the French silk used to make Rosaura’s wedding sheet; Chencha’s relation of the battle in the pueblo interrupts Tita and Pedro’s imminent consummation of their love; the wet nurse Lupita’s death from a stray bullet ultimately results in Pedro’s removal from the house. A chronological look at those instances in which the Revolution appears in the novel (either by active involvement or mere mention) reveals a story-telling schematic that is as symmetrical as it is traditional. The first instances—in which the Revolution serves as a (futile) foil for the delivery of the French silk and when the rebel soldier spirits Gertrudis away on horseback—present a romantic view of the Revolution and establish a paradigm that will hold for the rest of the novel. The next instances assist in developing the conflict (middle) portion of the plot: Chencha interrupts Tita and Pedro’s near consummation of their love with a hysterical account of a battle in town; Pedro is captured by Federal forces. Finally, Mama Elena is “impressed” enough with the rebels not to pass judgment on them, and the revolutionaries partake in a riotous festivities at the ranch. By this time, Gertrudis has become fully engaged in the conflict. More than just a leader (she has become a general), Gertrudis now personifies the Revolution in her rebelliousness. The reader’s final look at the former

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revolutionary generals—the dapper Juan and his stylish wife Gertrudis—offers a satisfying denouement. Esquivel incorporates the Revolution and its adversaries in a manner that builds conflict within the narrative. Her alignment of members of the Garza household with their revolutionary counterparts is so efficiently realized that it almost seems contrived at times. One example occurs when Pedro is captured by Federal troops. As a member of the bourgeoisie, it seems more likely that he should have been captured by revolutionary troops. In another instance, Mama Elena is crippled by (non-partisan) bandits rather than revolutionaries, as the paradigm would appear to dictate. Also, her statement that the Revolution is not as dangerous as it looks ends up being less prophetic (since it was not the Revolution that caused her demise) than her refusal of a man’s help on the ranch. Hence, during two opportune moments in which Mama Elena’s cruel obduracy might have been juxtaposed against the valiant revolutionaries as the paradigm might dictate, the occasions are passed over for the sake of keeping the plot tidy. On the whole, it can be argued that the Revolution in its interaction with members of the Garza household suffers from overmanipulation. Like the characters in the novel, the revolutionaries and the Federales are not rendered in depth. Indeed, the length and style of the novel do not allow such a rendering. As events in the novel are seldom dramatized with much specificity, the Revolution, as a peripheral player that wields influence rather than absorbing it, is often given but passing mention, even in those instances when its effects are amply felt. The end result is that the Revolution’s opposing factions, like the characters in the novel, deliver significant clout considering the rather lean depictions they are provided. Close examination reveals that the Mexican Revolution figures into the text on at least four levels. Besides offering a paradigm of war versus non-war (violence versus nurturing), which is enacted on a personal level with Mama Elena and Tita, the Revolution’s opposing sides, the Federales and the revolutionaries, mirror the oppressiveness and the rebelliousness found in the Garza family household. Thirdly, the Revolution’s constant suggestion of imminent peril provides an atmosphere of underlying tension (not to mention historical authenticity) that undergirds the story from beginning to end. On a fourth and final level, the Revolution and its opposing factions interact

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directly and indirectly with members of the Garza family in a tangible and irrevocable way, playing a direct role in shaping events. In that sense, the Revolution’s role in the novel is more than representational. Its role is distinctly active as well; and its respective factions carry the same fate, ultimately, as the protagonist and her mother whom they represent.

Works Cited Cheyne, Leah A. “An Allegorical Reflection on the Mexican Revolution: Gender, Agency, Memory, and Identity in Like Water for Chocolate” April 30, 2003 http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/water_chocolate. html Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harper and Row: 1957. Elias, Thomas D. “The Miracle Worker. How Alfonso Arau’s ‘Water for Chocolate’ Dream Came True.” Chicago Tribune 6 March 1994: Sec. 13, 19. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate trans. Carol and Thomas Christensen. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Loewenstein, Claudia. Interview. “Revolución interior al exterior: An Interview with Laura Esquivel.” Southwest Review 79 (1994). 592–607. Meacham, Cherie. “Como agua para chocolate: Cinderella and the Revolution.” Hispanic Journal 19.1: 117-128. Silva, Angélica. “Pancho Villa en una historia de mujeres en Como agua para chocolate de Laura Esquivel.” Cyber Humanitatis 36 (Primavera 2005). http://www.cyberhumanitatis.uchile.cl/CDA/texto_simple2/0, 1255,SCID%253D16297%2526ISID%253D577,00.html

Abstracts of Arguments Section I: LWFC and Gender Issues Tina Escaja’s “Women, Alterity and Mexican Identity in Como agua para chocolate” proposes an extraordinary affirmation of otherness as a differentiated One in Como agua para chocolate, an affirmation that is accomplished through a multiple re-distribution of traditional hierarchical spaces. The new center presented by Esquivel’s novel consists of the traditional universe of women, usually considered secondary and marginal. The fundamental spatial pole within which develops the story is symptomatic: the kitchen. However, this displacement of the center to the universe of the kitchen in not univocal, and the limits therein maintain a systematic process of continued displacement and “alteration.” This study considers some of the meta-discursive limits infringed upon or altered in Como agua para chocolate. The principle of “alteration,” in its multiple allusions to otherness, to alterity, to adulteration, to exaltation or change, imposes itself as an instrument of redefining the canon of modernity, and by doing so, deconstructs the patriarchal principles that have defined and marginalized the identity of Mexican women. Jorge Barrueto’s “Like Water for Chocolate: Cinematic Patriarchy and Tradition” examines Alfonso Arau’s film version of LWFC and the contradictions of patriarchal life in Mexico where personal choice and freedom defies notions of family tradition. The story is based on Laura Esquivel’s novel, and it is developed within the parameters of romantic love, magical realism and the historical background of the Mexican Revolution. The plot is imbued with tears, desires, weddings, disillusions and death all narrated in a culinary discourse; love and pain materialize in the preparation and the consumption of special dishes. There are, however, subtle misogynist propositions in the film. The narrative supports tradition and suggests that women’s life should be characterized by suffering, personal stoicism and obedience to social institutions. It also suggests that wild sexuality is an attribute of specific ethnic groups and that indigenous people in Mexico are destined to live happily in semi-slavery.

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According to Jerry Hoeg, recent advances in fields such as behavioral genetics, cognitive science, neuropsychology, and biology may offer new insights into the conflicts presented in Like Water for Chocolate. In his essay “Like Water for Chocolate and Human Nature” Hoeg examines how factors such as male-female rivalry, sibling rivalry, parent-offspring conflict, and male-male rivalry are represented in the novel, the goal being to determine the relationship between human nature and human culture in both creating and resolving said conflicts. Section II: LWFC, Magical Realism and the Critical Response to Its Use In “Like Water for Chocolate and the Art of Criticism” Jay Corwin points opines that after reading some of the criticism generated by Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1989), one is left with the sensation that fin de siècle Latin American literature is afflicted by critical machinations that are swayed by political, rather than aesthetic, considerations. The critical love affair with magical realism (the term, not its elusive meaning), popular appeal, and gender criticism are largely responsible for the favorable critical attention given to Laura Esquivel’s first published attempt at writing a novel. Such biased treatment raises concerns about critical objectivity and the point of critical analysis. Like Water for Chocolate, now considered a classic of 20th century Latin American literature, was initially perceived by critics at the time of its appearance as a poor avatar of magical realism. By taking advantage of the prestige of the great masters, it was said, Esquivel was simply applying a formula in the telling of the tale of a woman in order to please the general public. Beyond the intentions of the author and any value judgment concerning her work, Mónica Zapata’s “Under the Sign of Hyperbole: Magical Realism and Melodrama in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate” examines the intersection of two esthetics whose origins and purposes would at first sight seem to be antagonistic: on the one hand the disproportion between cause and effect characteristic of magical realism, and on the other hand the treatment of the theme of love characteristic of popular melodrama and certain “post-boom” productions. Magical realism and melodrama do in fact have in common a basic figure which is hyperbole, and whose effects are surely not unconnected to the euphoric effect the

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novel produces in its readers, despite the fact that it ends with the death of its two protagonists. Section 3: LWFC and the Cinderella Myth Laura Esquivel's first novel strikes a familiar chord with its tale of Tita, the virtuous young woman who suffers paternal absence and maternal abuse, but who eventually wins the status she deserves through the intercession of magical forces. In “Como agua para chocolate: Cinderella and the Revolution” Cherie Meacham suggests that the broad popularity of the novel (and its filmed version) may be attributed to the elements it shares with one of the most ancient and popular of folk tales. With its central motifs of conflict between mothers and daughters, relationships between sisters, empowerment of the domestic realm, and the search for a suitable mate, the Cinderella story provides a plot that inscribes the major concerns of women as they enter the domain of traditionally gendered adulthood. By placing this age-old story within the turbulent times of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Esquivel creates an effective mirror of and challenge to patriarchal acculturation while disclosing the detail of that specific historical and cultural context. One of the intents of this study is to examine the tension between elements that inscribe patriarchal tradition and those that transcend and transform it in Esquivel's Mexican version of the European folktale. In more contemporary versions of the fairy tale, writers often use the Cinderella motif in order to question the original patriarchal structures and paradigms in older versions of the tales. It appears that Laura Esquivel uses the Cinderella motif to question roles of women in Mexico and through the events in the novel, the protagonist subverts societal conventions and lives her life as she chooses. Victoria Martinez’s “Myth and Marginalization in Como agua para chocolate” takes another perspective and examines the roles of Tita, her siblings and her servants and uses the mythical and fairy tale references in the novel to question whether or not real social change actually takes place in the text.

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Section 4: Rabelaisian Appetites and Gastronomy in LWFC According to Amelia Chaverri, the social dynamics in a family ranch in México, presented in the novel Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies, redefines and updates the theoretical premises that comprise the so called carnivalesque literature, as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in his studies on the works of Francois Rabelais. In her essay “Female Rebellion and Carnival: Like Water for Chocolate” Chaverri posits that the transgressing nature of the carnival and its components, the beginning of material and bodily life and the perception of the world upside-down, expressed in a clear grotesque realism, and displayed in the text, are the coordinates with which, Tita de la Garza, as main character, confronts her mother Mamá Elena. Symbolically this confrontation is a transgression of the patriarchal space that leads to a search to strengthen female values and pre-Hispanic traditions. Ellyn Lem’s essay “Chile Conquest: Like Water for Chocolate’s ‘Revolutionary’ Impact on Perceptions of Mexican Food in the United States” focuses on the how the wide-spread popularity of Esquivel’s book and the subsequent movie by Alfonso Arau helped to remove some of the suspicion and prejudice connected with food associated with Mexico. In order to appreciate how Like Water for Chocolate comes to represent “gastronomic nationalism,” especially in its celebration of the chile as a major icon, the essay suggests that people need to understand the resistance and misunderstanding of Mexican cooking, perpetuated by cookbooks and restaurants in the United States for much of the twentieth century. After recognizing the barriers that kept Americans from truly understanding the rich culinary practices of their Southern neighbors, one can appreciate how the novel and movie offered a much-needed antidote that altered attitudes towards Mexican food forever.

Section 5: LWFC and the Mexican Revolution Mexican history and traditions are aspects that govern the fiction of Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1989) from the point of view of a woman narrator, Tita de la Garza’s grandniece, who opens the story by recounting “(her)story” over the narrative of the official “(his)tory.” While the notion of writing a Mexican romance located in the midst of the 1910 revolution derives from the long tradition of the

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“Novela de la Revolución Mexicana¨ subgenre, the fact that a family of women plays such a key role, in contrast to men, is indeed quite revolutionary even in 1989, with the exception of a few rare examples such as Josefina Niggli’s texts and, of course, Elena Poniatowska´s Hasta no verte Jesús Mío (1969). Moreover, by rescuing a culinary history, the remnants of ancient myths and ever-changing national feminine archetypes are recovered, and these roles are embodied in Like Water for Chocolate by Tita de la Garza and the women in her life. María Teresa Martínez-Ortiz’s essay “National Myths and Archetypal Imagery in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate” analyzes the myths and the archetypes present in Like Water for Chocolate by focusing on their connection to the Mexican national discourse that the narrative establishes. Within the long history of Mexican popular myths and deep rooted traditions, archetypes such as the mother, the “soldadera” and the “curandera,” represented in the Guadalupe-Malinche oppositional binary, form the structural frame of this cultural analysis. In “The Mexican Revolution as an Active Participant in Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate” Eric Skipper suggests that besides serving as an effective backdrop for events as they unfold in Esquivel’s novel, the Mexican Revolution plays an active and substantial role in the development of the plotline of Like Water for Chocolate. An examination of the instances in which the Revolution is mentioned reveals the direct and tangible effect it often has on events as they unfold. An itemized look at the Revolution’s opposing factions—the Federales and the Revolutionaries—as they appear in the novel parallel and reflect similar oppositional divisions within the de la Garza household. However, the occasions in which the Revolution is merely mentioned offer rather ambiguous representations of the two sides. This essay offers an examination of the Revolution’s function as a tangible player in the action, rather than a diametric backdrop upon which the characters with their various functions may be tidily categorized.

About the Authors Eric Skipper, Editor. Professor of Spanish at Gainesville State College in Georgia. Author of scholarly articles, book reviews and fiction. He has presented papers on Spanish and American literature at international and regional conferences. His interest in Mexican and Mexican-American literatures and cultures has centered on works by John Steinbeck, Rubén Martínez, Ted Conover and Laura Esquivel. His Steinbeck scholarship includes contributions to Steinbeck Review, A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia, and the Rodopi volume The Grapes of Wrath: A Reconsideration. He has contributed profiles on Laura Esquivel and her novel Like Water for Chocolate to The Literary Encyclopedia. . His short story “The Runt” appeared in the textbook Literature and Ourselves (Longman 2003, 2006). Jorge J. Barrueto is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Walsh University. He earned his B.A. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University and completed his graduate work in Spanish and Cultural Studies at The State University of New York (M.A./Binghamton and Ph.D./Albany). He has published articles on the representation of women and native people in Latin American literature. His other research interests include postcolonial theory, colonial discourse and film. Amalia Chaverri. Native of Costa Rica, Masters in Latin American Literature from the University of Costa Rica. Member of the Costa Rican Language Academy, Director of the Costa Rican Museum of Art (1998-2002), Vice-Minister of Culture (2002-2006). Has published in national and international magazines and participated in literature symposia, seminars and congresses at home and abroad. Coordinator of a work group that led to UNESCO’s inscription of “The Tradition of Costa Rican Oxherding and the Painted Oxcart” on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2005). National Aquileo Echeverría Award, 2006 for coordinating the commemorative book El Quijote entre nosotros (Quixote Among Us). Professor at INCAE (graduate business school) since 2006.

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Jay Corwin. Senior lecturer in Spanish at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. He is author of La transposición de fuentes indígenas en Cien años de soledad, Romance Monographs, 1997, and various articles on the works of García Márquez which have focused on the Guajiro and Chibcha mythological influences in the Cien años de soledad. He recently published “Fragmentation and Schizophrenia in Pedro Páramo,” the first study of the novel to examine madness as the basis of its multiple narrative voices. He is currently preparing an analytic book on the works of García Márquez. He has also recently guest edited the first literary edition of Theory in Action, a scholarly journal of the Social Sciences and Humanities. Tina Escaja is Professor of Spanish at The University of Vermont. She has published extensively on gender and contemporary literature from Latin America and Spain. Her research includes investigations on women, technology and representation in the turn of the nineteenth century and its connections with the current turn of the millennium. She is also the author of awarded poetry and fiction as well as experimental and multimedia works, including hypertext. Jerry Hoeg received the Ph.D. from Arizona State University, and is currently professor of Spanish at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Science, Technology, and Latin American Narrative in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Lehigh UP 2000), and co-editor of Science, Literature, and Film in the Hispanic World (Palgrave/Macmillan 2006) and The Encyclopedia of Latin American Women Writers (Routledge 2008). He is also the editor of the journal Ometeca, which treats the relations between the sciences and the humanities in the Hispanic world, and author of numerous articles and book chapters, including “Como agua para chocolate and the Question of Viable Alternatives to Technologies of Domination,” which appeared in Confluencia 12.2 (1997). Kline Howell is the Foreign Language Lab Coordinator at Gainesville State College’s Oconee campus in Watkinsville, Georgia. He received a B.A. degree in German and Spanish from the University of Maryland and later an M.Ed. and an Ed.D. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Georgia. His avocation as an amateur artist strongly influences his professional life. As a Fulbright Scholar and a Rockefeller Fellow in Europe he has researched,

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collected, and developed materials which incorporate and promote the fine arts in his foreign language instruction. Ellyn Lem is an assistant professor of English at University of WI-Waukesha. Along with teaching composition and literature, she often teaches interdisciplinary courses on diverse subjects ranging from ethnic food to war. Lem regularly reviews food studies books for The Journal of Popular Culture and is currently working on her own book entitled Textual Appetites: Critical Approaches to Food Literature. Victoria Martinez is an associate professor of Spanish at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Her books include a study of the essays of Roberto Arlt, a translation and co-edited bilingual edition of plays by Argentine playwright Diana Raznovich, and more recently a co-edited anthology of plays about the murders of women in Juarez, Mexico. She has written several articles on Argentine narrative and on Mexican narrative and theater, all dealing with issues of race, class and gender. María Teresa Martínez-Ortiz is an assistant professor of Spanish at Kansas State University. She received her Ph.D from Purdue University in 2001. Her research centers primarily on Latin American, cultural, women and film studies with an emphasis on Mexican and Latino/a literature and culture produced in the U.S. She has interviewed Mexican writers such as Ángeles Mastretta and José Agustín and published articles in Cuadernos de Aldeeu and Letras Femeninas that deal with maternal archetypes and myths in Mexican Literature and film. Martinez-Ortiz is currently preparing a monograph that explores testimonial literature and aesthetic forms produced by contemporary indigenous and “campesino” Mexican women. Cherie Meacham received a Bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Illinois at Champaign, a Masters in Spanish at Kent State University, and a Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from Northwestern University. She has taught at North Park University in Chicago since 1983, serving as Professor of Spanish and also as Director of Women’s Studies, Global Studies, and the Division of Cultural Studies. She founded and administrates North Park’s winter study program in Morelia, Mexico. Her research interests have focused on

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women’s testimonial literature from Latin America and she has published widely on writers from Mexico, Guatemala, and Chile. More recently she has begun researching on Caribbean writers, publishing articles on Julia Álvarez, Edwidge Danticat, Carmen Miraflores, and the anthology Blue Latitudes. Mónica Zapata is a Full professor at the Université FrançoisRabelais – Tours (France), specialist in 20th and 21st century Latin American narrative prose and literary theory (psychoanalysis, gender studies) and director of the Interuniversity Research Center on Culture and Education in the Iberian and Ibero-American World (CIREMIA). She is the author of L’œuvre narrative de Manuel Puig: Figures de l’enfermement (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1999), director of the on-line review Lectures du genre (www.lecturesdugenre.fr), and has published many articles on the works of Silvina Ocampo, Laura Esquivel, Angélica Gorodischer, César Aira, Pedro Lemebel, the McOndo Generation, among others. She is currently working on the esthetics of the grotesque and the deconstruction of gender.

INDEX

A Adelita 167, 173 Afro Mexicans 47 Allende, Isabel 44, 49, 69-70, 7576, 79-80, 89, 97, 159 Alteration 4-5, 197 Amado, Jorge 75 Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands 65-66, Anaya, Rodolfo 175 Anderson, Benedict 69, 178, 182 Andersen, Hans Christian 73-75; “Little Match Girl” 72 Anzaldúa, Gloria 157, 160, 175, 180, 182 Arau, Alfonso 26, 29-30, 32, 3536, 42-43, 45, 49, 51, 60, 8384, 97, 148, 183, 186, 190, 195, 197, 200 Archetypes xiv, 17-18, 21-22, 27, 104, 107, 167-182, 191, 201, 205 Artemis 172-173 Asturias, Miguel Ángel 73, 77, 79, 88, 96-97 Athena 172-173 Auto da fe 68 Aztecs 152-153, 169, 173, 176, 178, 180 B Bakhtin, Mikhail xiii, 24, 27, 133135, 139, 141, 143-144, 146, 200 Bandits 13, 19, 40, 52, 122, 186187, 191, 194 Banquet 25, 35, 66-67, 72, 139, 143, 145, 192 Bayless, Rick 152-153, 160 Behavioral Genetics xiii, 51, 198

Bettelheim, Bruno 101, 103-107, 109-111 Bloodlines 52 Bolen, Jean Shinoda 170, 172, 179, 181, 183 Bourgeois 10, 102, 116-119, 124126, 128-129, 175, 193-195 C Camayd-Freixas, Erik 72-74, 77 Campbell, Joseph 117, 121, 128129 Carreño’s etiquette manual 8, 18, 94 Castellanos, Rosario 17, 26 Castillo, Debra 127, 129 Cavazos, Lumi 49, 97, 183 Ceres 42, 142, 171 Chiampi, Irlemar 82-83 Chicana 21, 27, 153, 161-162, 172, 181 Chiles 25, 37, 88, 131, 147, 150, 152, 154, 157-161, 200 Chingada 17-18, 21, 172, 181 “Cinderella” xiii, 25, 96, 101-102, 105, 107, 110-111, 113, 117, 126, 129, 195, 199 Cirlot, J.E. 118, 123, 129 Cliché xii, 31, 44, 48, 80, 83, 92, 98, 129 Cline, Howard F 115, 129 Close-up 30, 33-34, 36 Coatlicue (Aztec goddess) 169, 176, 178, 180 Cognitive Science 52, 198 Colonial Discourse 204 Condiments 38, 148 Cooking 6, 10-11, 13, 27, 30-31, 33-34, 37-38, 42, 44-45, 56, 85, 89, 109, 120, 122, 134,

208

141, 171, 176-177, 179, 182, 187, 200 Cortés, Hernán 17, 169-170, 181 Crawford, Joan Mommy, Dearest 66 Criollo/ Criolla 18, 43-45, 124, 127 Cultural Adaptation 58 Curandera xiv, 168, 173, 175-179, 201 D Delgado, Consuelo 168 Demeter 171-172 Dialogism 23 Díaz, Porfirio 46, 48, 170, 187 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 180, 182 Duchet, Claude 136, 146 E Eat Drink Man Woman 154 Eliade, Mircea 192, 195 Escaja, Tina xii, 3, 26, 197, 204 Esquivel, Laura Between Two Fires 156, 160161; Malinche 180 Esteban del Campo, Ángel 80, 97 F Fairy tales 9, 71-72, 75, 101-102, 112-113 Fatalism 42 Federales xiv, 86, 186-191, 193194, 201 Female solidarity 110 Feminine writing xiv, 5-7, 10, 80 Feminist xiv, 31, 41-42, 45, 47, 49, 68-71, 80, 94, 96, 102, 112-113, 116, 129, 167, 172, 176 Fluids 8-10 Food xiii, 13, 15-16, 25, 38, 4142, 44, 58, 72, 87-89, 93, 96, 106, 112, 116-120, 127-128, 135-136,

Index

139, 141-145, 147-162, 176-177, 200, 205 Fragmentation 6, 204 Franco, Jean 22, 27, 70, 104, 113 French cooking 149-150 Fuentes, Carlos 115, 129 G Gamboa, Federico 179 García Lorca, Federico La casa de Bernarda Alba 137, 180, 191 García Márquez, Gabriel 75, 80, 83, 159 One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) 66, 72-73, 77, 9697, 204 Gargantua 137 Gardiner, Judith Kegan 108-109, 113 Gebhardt’s 148-149, 159 Gender studies xiii, 7, 47, 49, 53, 65, 69-71, 161-162, 182-183, 195, 197-199, 204-206 Genetic resources 56 Godoy, Lucila 70 Graeae 168 Guadalupe 17, 22, 48, 104, 168181, 201 H Hart, Stephen 31, 47 Hera 172, 179, 181 High-angle shot 34 Hirsh, David 76, 103 Human nature xiii, 51-52, 55, 5760, 106, 198 Humor 5, 7-10, 25, 27, 106, 156, 182 Hutcheon, Linda 7, 24, 27 Hyperbole xii-xiii, 61, 71-73, 75, 79, 81-83, 86, 88-89, 94-95, 146, 182, 198

Index

I Ibsen, Kristine 24, 27, 74-75, 77, 180, 182 Indigenous people xiii, 14, 18, 3132, 43-46, 58, 112, 115-116, 118-119, 121-127, 145, 157, 169, 175-176, 179, 197, 205 Infanticide 57 Inheritance xi, 51-52, 55-58, 90 Irrationality 8, 134 J Jung, Carl 168, 170-171, 176, 180, 182 K Kali (Indian goddess) 168, 178 Kennedy, Diana 152-153, 160161 Kitchen xii, 4-7, 9-11, 14-16, 19, 22-25, 31, 33-34, 36-38, 40, 45, 49, 66, 92-93, 96, 105106, 111, 117-126, 134, 136138, 150, 152-153, 155, 159, 162-163, 176, 180, 183, 186, 190, 197 Kristeva, Julia 134-136, 146 L Leonardi, Marco 26, 34 Llarena, Alicia 82-83, 98 M Machado, Antonio 3, 26 Magical realism xi, xiii, 30, 44, 46, 48, 65, 68, 71-74, 79-85, 88-89, 92, 95, 106, 117, 148, 159, 197-198 Male sexual jealousy 53 Malinche 17-18, 20-22, 104, 168176, 178-179, 181, 201 Marianismo 31, 42, 46, 49, 113, 173-174, 180, 183 Material resources 52, 54, 56 Matriarchy xi Matriphobia 103, 109

209

Meacham, Cherie xiii, 102, 115, 117, 128, 129, 186, 188, 195, 199, 205 Medium shot 30, 32, 34 Melodrama xiii, 7, 24, 46, 48, 79, 81, 82-83, 85, 89-96, 110, 198 Mestizo 18, 149, 169-170 Mise-en-scène 33 Mistral, Gabriela 68 Moby Dick 188 Modernity 3-5, 7, 94, 197 Moira (goddess) 168 Mora, Gabriela 75 Moses 53 Mulatto 12, 21, 36, 39, 52, 86, 109, 171 N Natural selection 52 Neuropsychology xiii, 51, 198 Norns 168 O Odysseus 23 Odyssey, The 23 Oedipal fears 111 Otherness 4-5, 197 P Paglia, Camille 69 Pantagruel 137 Parent-offspring rivalry 51, 5455, 59, 198 Parody xii, 5-9, 24, 27, 74-75, 77, 94, 111, 129, 135, 174, 182 Paterfamilias 37 Paternity 52-54, 59-60 Patriarchy viii, xi-xiii, 4-5, 7, 11, 14-16, 20, 22, 24, 26, 29, 3133, 35, 38, 41, 45, 70, 95, 101-102, 107, 109, 135, 137138, 144-145, 167-168, 170.171, 173, 175, 178, 180, 197, 199-200

210

Paz, Octavio 3-4, 17-19, 21, 2627, 48, 181, 183 Penelope (Greek goddess) 17, 2324, 26 Pirandello, Luigi 25, 27 Point-of-view shot 30 Poniatowska, Elena 167, 201 Porfiriato 104, 115-117, 124, 128 Post-boom 48, 79-81, 89-90, 95, 198 Postmodernism 7, 27, 98 Potvin, Claudine xii, 33, 48 Predestination 41-42 Pre-Columbian 11, 14, 19, 22, 124, 157 Pre-Hispanic 4, 10, 120, 135, 141, 145, 157, 160, 176, 200 Primogeniture 57, 60 Prince Charming 111, 121 Psychological manipulation 56 Puig, Manuel 90, 92, 96, 98, 206 R Rabelais, Francois xiii, 79, 133134, 137-138, 146, 200, 206 Ramos, Samuel 116, 118, 124, 128-129 Rape 17-18, 21, 40, 52, 122, 129, 172, 181, 188 Rationalism 41 Raymond, Leslie Williams 69-70, 74 Rebel 18, 45, 86, 92, 106, 115, 117, 125, 173, 175, 185-194, 200 Recipes 5-6, 8-11, 24, 27, 33, 37, 57-59, 66, 77, 107, 109, 111, 117-118, 120-121, 124-125, 133, 135-136, 138, 145-146, 148-154, 156-159, 162, 167, 171, 177, 182, 200 Reforma 18 Revolution (Mexican) xi-xii, xiv, 12, 18-19, 21-22, 27, 29-31, 38-40, 46, 47-48, 51-55, 58-

Index

59, 72, 79, 86, 101, 104, 106, 108, 111, 113, 115-116, 118, 125-129, 142, 147-148, 159, 167-168, 170, 173-174, 179, 181-182, 185-195, 197, 199201 Revolutionaries (revolucionarios) xiv, 86, 108, 115, 126, 185188, 191, 193-194, 201 Rich, Adrienne 23, 27, 103, 107, 109, 113 Rowe, Karen 102, 107, 113 S Sáinz de Medrano, Luis 79, 83, 98 Sexuality 27, 30, 39-40, 68, 104, 192, 197 Shame 17, 36, 106, 172 Shaw, Deborah 31, 48 Shaw, Donald 80-81, 95, 98 Sibling rivalry 51, 54, 56-60 Socialist Realism 71 Soldadera xiv, 40, 46, 168, 173175, 179, 201 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 70 Steinbeck, John vii, 203 Tortilla Flat 150-151, 155, 162 Stoicism 33, 41, 197 Stoller, Paul 177, 181, 183 Subversion 4, 102, 177, 179, 181 Swanson, Philip 46, 49, 75, 77 Sympson, Lesley Bird 116, 129 T Telenovelas 30 Tex-Mex 147, 160 Tolstoy, Leo 67 Anna Karenina 67 Tonantzin 180 Torné, Regina 26, 29, 49, 97, 183 Tortilla Soup (film) 154 Transubstantiation 10, 14, 15, 25 Trivers, Robert 53, 55-56

Index

U U.S.-Mexican border 10, 20, 25, 38-41, 44-45, 69, 140, 147, 150, 152, 154, 157, 160, 175, 189 V Valentina 154, 173 Villa, Pancho 46, 138, 177, 187189, 195 W Weaving 4, 6-7, 23, 158

211

Y Yolen, Jane 102, 113 Z Zapata, Emiliano 46, 187 Zapata, Mónica xiii, 79, 83, 94, 96, 98, 198, 206 Zeus 172 Zipes, Jack 101, 106, 113 Zubiaurre, Maite 37, 49, 154, 163, 180, 183