BOOK REVIEW - Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate

Like Water for Chocolate


I. INTRODUCTION

THE BOOK

A magic realism made by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. The title, Like Water for Chocolate, refers to the temperature that water must be brought to in order to melt chocolate; it is also used as a slang to describe anger, sexuality, and passion. A magical book it is. The original Spanish version, Como Agua Para Chocolat, was the top-selling book in Mexico in 1990. As a work of Latin magical realism, it can't be topped by any other work to date. Tita, youngest of three daughters, was born to one of the vilest mothers ever, Mama Elena, the cruel matriarch of the family estate, the De la Garza ranch. Tita is rather special: even while still in Mama Elena's womb, she wept so violently as her mother chopped onions that she caused an early labor which meant that Tita quite literally was born on the kitchen table where a fragrant noodle soup was being prepared. Tita was both blessed and cursed to be one with the food — more than a mere cook as her cooking is truly magical.

It was made into film in 1992. The film based on the book, with a screenplay by Laura Esquivel, swept the Ariel awards of the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures, winning 11 in all, and went on to become the largest grossing foreign film ever released in the United States. In 1994, Like Water for Chocolate won the prestigious ABBY award which is given annually by the American Booksellers Association. The book has been translated into thirty languages and there are over three million copies in print worldwide.

LAURA ESQUIVEL
From bookbrowse.com

Laura Esquivel was born on September 30, 1950 in Mexico City, Mexico. She was born third of the four children of Julio César Esquivel, a telegraph operator, and wife Selena Quintanilla. She began writing while working as a kindergarten teacher, writing plays for her students, and then went on to write children's television programs during the 1970s and 1980s.

Her writings often explore the relationship between men and women in Mexico. She is best known for Like Water for Chocolate, an imaginative and compelling combination of novel and cookbook, published in Spanish Mexico in 1989 and in English in 1992. The movie version, written by Esquivel, was released in 1993 and became one of the largest grossing foreign films ever released in the US; and in Mexico it won the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures award. Once married to director Alfonso Arau, Esquivel is divorced and lives in Mexico City, Mexico.

II. SUMMARY OF CONTENT

PLOT

In a style that is epic in scope yet intensely personal in focus, Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate tells the story of Tita De La Garza, the youngest daughter in a family living in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. Each installment features a recipe to begin each chapter. The structure of Like Water For Chocolate is wholly dependent on these recipes.

Like Water for Chocolate tells the story of Tita De La Garza, the youngest daughter in a family living in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. Tita's love, Pedro Muzquiz, comes to the family's ranch to ask for Tita's hand in marriage. Because Tita is the youngest daughter she is forbidden by a family tradition upheld by her tyrannical mother, Mama Elena, to marry. Pedro marries Tita's oldest sister, Rosaura, instead, but declares to his father that he has only married Rosaura to remain close to Tita. Rosaura and Pedro live on the family ranch, offering Pedro contact with Tita. When Tita cooks a special meal with the petals of a rose given to her by Pedro, the still-fiery force of their love has an intense effect on Mama Elena's second daughter, Gertrudis, who is whipped into a lustful state and flees the ranch in the arms of a revolutionary soldier. Meanwhile, Rosaura gives birth to a son, who is delivered by Tita. Tita treats her nephew, Roberto, as if he were her own child, to the point that she is able to produce breast milk to feed him while her sister is dry.

Sensing that Roberto is drawing Pedro and Tita closer together, Mama Elena arranges for Rosaura's family to move to San Antonio. This separation devastates Tita. A short time later, news arrives that Roberto has died, most likely due to his removal from Tita's care. The death of her nephew causes Tita to have a breakdown, and Mama Elena sends her to an asylum. Dr. John Brown, a local American doctor, takes pity on Tita and brings her to live in his house. He patiently nurses Tita back to health, caring for her physical ailments and trying to revive her broken spirit. After some time, Tita is nearly well, and she decides never to return to the ranch. No sooner has she made this choice than Mama Elena is injured in a raid by rebel soldiers, forcing Tita to return. Tita hopes to care for her mother, but Mama Elena bitterly rejects Tita's good will. She refuses Tita's cooking, claiming that it is poisoned. Not long after, Mama Elena is found dead from an overdose of a strong emetic she consumed for fear of poisoning.

The death of Mama Elena frees Tita from the curse of her birthright and she accepts an engagement proposal from John Brown, with whom she has fallen in love. In the meantime, Rosaura and Pedro have returned to the ranch and have produced a second child, Esperanza. Immediately, Pedro's presence throws into question Tita's love for John. The night that John officially asks Pedro to bless the marriage, Pedro corners Tita in a hidden room and makes love to her, taking her virginity. Soon after, Tita is certain that she is pregnant and knows that she will have to end her engagement to John. The affair between Pedro and Tita prompts the return of Mama Elena, who comes in spirit form to curse Tita and her unborn child. Tita is distraught and has no one in whom she can confide.

In the midst of Tita's despair, the long-lost Gertrudis returns to the ranch. Tita is overjoyed at the return of Gertrudis, who is just the companion she seeks. Gertrudis forces Tita to tell Pedro about the pregnancy. He is gladdened at the news, and he drunkenly serenades Tita from below her window. Outraged, Mama Elena's ghost returns, violently threatening Tita and declaring that she must leave the ranch. For the first time, Tita stands up to Mama Elena and, in forceful words, declares her autonomy, banishing her mother's spirit, which shrinks from an imposing presence into a tiny fiery light. As she expels the ghost, Tita is simultaneously relieved of all her symptoms of pregnancy. The light from Mama Elena's ghost bursts through Tita's window and onto the patio below where Pedro still sits, setting fire to his entire body. After rescuing Pedro, Tita is consumed with caring for him and helping him recover. John Brown returns from a trip to the United States and Tita confesses to him her relations with Pedro. John replies that he still wishes to marry her but that she must decide for herself with whom she wishes to spend her entire life with.

Years pass, and the ranch focuses its attention on another wedding, this time between Esperanza and Alex, the son of John Brown. Rosaura has died, freeing her only daughter, Esperanza, from the stricture that had previously forbidden her, as it had Tita, from marrying. With Rosaura dead and Esperanza married, Tita and Pedro are finally free to express their love in the open. On their first night together, Tita and Pedro experience love so intense that both are led to a tunnel that will carry them to the afterlife. Tita turns back, wanting to continue in life and in love with Pedro. Once she does, she realizes that Pedro has already crossed over. Wanting desperately to be with him, Tita attempts to ignite her inner fire by eating the candles that had lit the room until they extinguished themselves at the moment of Pedro's death. When she succeeds in recreating the climate of true passion, she reenters the luminous tunnel and meets Pedro in the spirit world. The final union of their bodies and spirits sets fire to the entire ranch, and the only remnant left of their love is the recipe book in which Tita recorded her wisdom.

CHARACTERS

Tita - The protagonist of the novel. Tita is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena, prohibited by family tradition from marrying so that she will be free to take care of her mother later in life. The novel follows Tita's life from birth to death, focusing mostly on her tortured relationship with Pedro and her struggle and eventual triumph in pursuit of love and individuality.

Mama Elena - The tyrannical, widowed matriarch of the De La Garza clan, Mama Elena is the prime source of Tita's suffering. Her fierce temperament inspires fear in all three of her daughters. She keeps Tita from her true love, Pedro, and it is later revealed that Mama Elena herself once suffered from a lost love, embittering her for the rest of her life.

Pedro - Tita's true love, and the father of Roberto and Esperanza. Denied marriage to Tita by Mama Elena, he agrees to marry Rosaura, breaking Tita's heart. Nevertheless, he asserts his continued love for Tita throughout the novel and pursues her secretly. Pedro dies after he and Tita are finally blissfully united while making love at the novel's end.

Rosaura - The second daughter of Mama Elena, Rosaura marries Pedro, much to the despair of Tita. Rosaura leaves the ranch when Mama Elena sends her and Pedro to San Antonio to keep Pedro and Tita apart. Her first child, Roberto, dies as an infant; her second child, Esperanza, was prohibited like Tita from ever marrying but weds Alex after Rosaura dies.

Gertrudis - The eldest daughter of Mama Elena, Gertrudis escapes the ranch after reacting mysteriously to one of Tita's recipes. She runs away with a rebel soldier and eventually returns to the ranch as a general in the revolutionary army. It is eventually revealed that Gertrudis is the offspring of a hidden, extramarital affair between Mama Elena and her true love, a mulatto man.

Dr. John Brown - An American doctor who cares for Tita when she experiences a breakdown, and the father of Alex. John eventually falls in love with Tita and helps rehabilitate her soul, revealing to her the nature of the fire that resides in each individual. Tita becomes engaged to him, but eventually denies him marriage to pursue Pedro.

Roberto - The first child of Rosaura and Pedro, Roberto dies in America after being taken away from Tita's care.

Esperanza - The second child of Rosaura and Pedro, and the mother of the narrator of the novel. She is raised by Tita in the kitchen. Her marriage to Alex breaks the De La Garza family tradition that disallows the marriage of youngest daughters.

Alex - The son of Dr. John Brown, and the father of the narrator. He marries Esperanza.

THEME

In Like Water for Chocolate, Esquivel extends the religious-mythical themes of magic realism to the everyday world of the domestic realm of a female-dominated household. Though not a story of the battles, great figures, and moral challenges generally associated with the epic form, Esquivel elevates this story of women, and one woman in particular, to such proportions. This strategy leads the reader to explore the feminist properties of Like Water For Chocolate, which are evident in the depictions of Tita's struggle to gain independence and develop her identity, and also in the fact that this struggle is depicted at all. In creating this female-centered cast of characters, Esquivel imagines a world in which men are physically present only occasionally, though the legacy of sexism and the confinement of women to the domestic sphere persist. Esquivel does not offer her readers the vision of a utopian sisterhood, but rather insight into the way women are restricted by standards of societal propriety perpetuated by other women.

III. ANALYSIS OF TEXT

Like Water For Chocolate belongs to the genre of magical realism. The structuring of Like Water for Chocolate as "A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies" as it is subtitled, establishes the filter through which the reader will experience the world of the novel. Like Tita--whose knowledge of life is based on the kitchen-- the reader must explore the work through the role and power of food, guided by the recipes that begin each chapter. The division of the novel into "monthly installments" conjures up the image of serial narratives published in periodicals. This organization, along with the matter-of-fact weaving of recipes and remedies into the fabric of the narrative, underscores the fact that the novel offers substantial opportunities for feminist analysis.

IV. EVALUATION OF THE TEXT

I love the book. It was written creatively. Esquivel uses cooking as an extended metaphor throughout her story. The recipes and their preparation fit in with the story. The story often takes on aspects of fable or myth that sometimes seem out of place with the very matter of fact presentation of the story line. For example, the magical tunnel and Mama Elena's reappearance who tries to kill Pedro.

There are also elements of spiritualism and magic that make this book difficult to classify as straight fiction or as a fantasy. For the most part, the text reads as like a typical historical novel, but with increasing frequency toward the end of the novel, Esquivel includes obvious fabulous elements.

One could read or study Like Water for Chocolate at whatever depth desired. One could analyze the symbolic meaning of the various foods, the connection between the increasing number of fabulous events to Tita's decreasing faculties of love, desire, and mental abilities. Esquivel leaves the door wide open for a multitude of interpretations. And yet, the plot is a relatively simple story of a woman who is an expert in preparing food and very inexpert in handling her own life and affairs.

Presented by: Rochene J Relator of IV-Madame Marie Curie