A Revolution in the Kitchen: The Significance of Food Reflecting the Attitude for Life
There were no other rooms in a house that can represent women better than kitchen. In traditional Mexican families, a woman was expected to feed the whole family while her daughters had to learn from their mother to carry on this responsibility. This type of culture turned kitchen into the center of women’s world. Kitchen was considered as the ideal place for women to spend their times. This stereotypical opinion about the relationship between women and kitchen depicted cooking as a burden and a symbol of constraint, which limits women from exploring the world. However, in Esquirel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate, kitchen was given a new definition. Setting most scenes of the stories around this traditional female centered room, Esquirel stepped out from the stereotypical image of the kitchen and promoted the self-awareness of the feminine role through different dishes in the novel. Every chapter started with a recipe. The recipe leaded to the main plot of the chapter and reflected the feeling and emotion of the characters in the chapter. Food, in Esquirel’s novel, went beyond people’s instinct. It became the artworks that can express characters’ internal world, their love, hate, sorrow and happiness. The three sisters each with a different attitude for food also developed different directions for life.
“This explains the sixth sense Tita developed about everything concerning food … Likewise for Tita the joy of living was wrapped up in the delights of food.” (7)
Tita was meant for Kitchen. From the day she was born on a kitchen table, the day she started to raise by the family cook, Nacha, “Tita’s domain was the kitchen” (7). Nacha did not know how to read or write, but she used all of her knowledge in cooking “educating the innocent child’s stomach” (6). Food was Tita’s earliest education. It was the earliest passage for Tita to connect to the world. She felt the world with food and ended up gaining the ability to express herself through food. Food did not only educate her stomach but her heart, her mind and her way to get to know this world. Tita understands the beauty of kitchen and the power of food, “the power to evoke the past, bring back the sounds and even other smells that have no match in the present.” (9) Her passion for food, her creativity in kitchen gave her kitchen a value to represent her own internal world.
“ She left her food untouched on her plate, or secretly fed it to Tequila, the father of Pulques, the ranch dog.” (31)
Rosaura was the exactly opposite from Tita. As an extremely conservative and traditional woman, Rosaura satisfied all the standards for a traditional Mexican woman. Her voice was barely heard in this novel. She always follows Mama Elena’s decision, without questions. Ironically, A traditional Mexican woman like Rosaura, never found her pleasure in the kitchen. Instead, Rosaura found kitchen, “full of unknown dangers.” (7) Compare to Tita, who devoted all her passion and love for her life into the kitchen, Rosaura’s fear for kitchen was like an intentional flaw in her personality to challenge the stereotype for the traditional women. Cooking was more than a skill, but an art to reflect the person’s soul. It requires effort, creativity and as Tita said, “love” into the dishes. However, Rosaura was soulless. She had no passion for cooking nor love for the person she was cooking for. She could not feel the beauty of cooking and the magic of food. She could not discover the magic in the kitchen. Her only attempt for cooking was to “impress her husband Pedro” (50), a person who she was only legally bonded to. Rosaura’s failure in kitchen reflected her plain and emotionless life. She did not have the ability to love, to feel and to connect herself to the world through her own independent passage. She is a person lost her interest in life. She is alive physically but was already rotten inside. Rosaura’s death was caused by “digestive problems” (233). Her disability to appreciate food finally led her body reacts physically the same way. She was never lived, because she never had her own independent soul to feel, to love and to reflect her feeling to this world into her most primitive instinct, eating. Rosaura’s death was a tragedy, but no one grieved for her. She did not leave anything that she is emotionally connected to. Her emotions never had a way to express and to influence others. She was always living her the shadow of Mama Elena and probably would turn into a replica of Mama Elena if she was still alive. She was the image of the women expected by her traditional value. However, her tragic life became Esquirel’s silent protest for restricting women’s internal growth and distorting their freely soul by limiting them in the frame of the traditional standards.
“Gertrudis stroked her hair tenderly, but was carefully to watch the fritter dessert that was on the flame. It would be a pity if she couldn’t eat it… ‘Just let me take this off the burner, and then you can go right back to crying, okay?’ ” (189)
As most passionate and rebellious daughter out of the three sisters, Gertrudis was born outside the standards of tradition. She was Mama Elena’s illegitimate child. If marriage represents the rational consummation between a man and a woman under the traditional expectation, then the birth of Gertrudis was a complete violation for the traditions. Gertrudis was the fruit of love, the most instinctive affection that can grow between two people. Unlike Tita, who was pursuing her personal growth inside the acceptable range of the traditional values, Gertrudis’s decisions and behaviors were purely based on the instinctive responses of her emotions. Although never adapted at cooking, Gertrudis expressed her connection with food in the most naturally occurring way. She was never educated in cooking, but her most naturally response to the food she ate was the most direct and obvious exhibition of her emotions and feelings. When Gertrudis was in the kitchen, although she did not know how to cook, she still “threw herself into it, with the enthusiasm she always showed where rhythm, movement, or music involved” (8).
“She began to feel an intense heat pulsing through her limbs. An itch in the center of her body kept her from sitting properly in her chair. She began to sweat…” (51)
Gretrudis’ most direct response to Tita’s food caused her became the react most strongly physically after She ate Quail in Rose Petal Sauce, the dish Tita cooked filled with her desire and love for Pedro. With Pedro and Tita was still limited by their fear for traditional values, Rosaura, who acted purely based on her naturally response, was influenced by Tita’s emotions in the dishes acted as the “medium” for Tita and Pedro’s spiritual consummation. Tita and Pedro’s emotional response to the dish was physically presented on Rosaura. Her feeling for food was so direct that she can easily detected the love and desire between Tita and Pedro.
“Naked as she was, with her loosened hair falling to her waist, luminous, glowing with energy, she might have been an angel and demon in one woman… the passion, the lust, that lept from her eyes, from her every pore.” (55)
Gertrudis was the loveliest person in the novel. With Tita given the talent of cooking to express herself and Rosaura was deprived the ability to cook due to her soulless personality, Gertrudis’s free soul was too precious to be regulated by any type of way to express her feeling. She did not need to learn how to cook or how to express herself through cooking. All she needed was to express her love and her instinctive response for food in the most primitive way. She did not need to know how to cook to find the pleasure in the kitchen. She has the eyes and passion to find pleasure with her purely soul. Her simple and rebellious soul also led her to follow her most instinctive response to leave the ranch with the rebel soldier. She was never limited to the frame limited by any of the traditional standards. When she returned, Gertrudis became a general in the army, a position that was stereotypical taken by a man. Gertrudis did not seek for change in her traditional value but a complete turnover from women’s traditional role.
The three sisters had three different types of responsibilities. Each of their personalities was reflect by their attitude for cooking and food. Food was the most basic instinct for human. It represented the most primitive nature of the human beings. Everything else was established upon the satisfaction for eating. Without a passion for food was like without the devotion for life and without the ability to find the beauties in life. The kitchen was the center of the world. A world filled with most simple but most significant meanings of life. Food was the soul of the kitchen. It gave a person a way to express, to communicate and to arouse the self-awareness for the growth of personal and independent role because it was the proof of passion to embrace life. A person lost appetite for food also lost his or her source of passion to develop a path for his or her own life.
