Gender Power: The Revolution Begins in the Kitchen

While the kitchen has normally been viewed as a place where women must cook because the "women's place" is in the kitchen, and they must cook just to please their husbands, Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate describes the kitchen as a meaningful place where one's culinary creations have the influence to titillate, liberate, and most significantly empower. "The kitchen suddenly turns from the paradigmatic site of female enslavement and drudgery into the ideal place for women to exert their power, sexuality, and creativity." (Zubiaurre 4) In the novel, food is inevitably tied to emotions; it can recklessly drive one character into a fit of tears of sadness, produce gastronomical problems, create a wild hunger for passion, or simply satiate the mind, body, and spirit. In Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Tita's culinary dishes have the power to free her from an oppressive mother(Dona Elena) and her cruel sister Rosaura; to coerce her sister Gertrudis to leave home and change her lifestyle; and finally win back her true love Pedro and unite them. "In Like Water for Chocolate...there is a woman within the confines of a kitchen, who discovers that within that intimate space she can communicate with others and create a genuine revolution.."(Laura 2).

Tita's true passion and creative outlet is cooking, and she uses her culinary powers to embrace and reward those who love her and castigate those who reproach her. Tita was born on a kitchen table, and she can't help but feel a genuine connection toward that space of the household. "It wasn't easy for a person whose knowledge of life was based on the kitchen to comprehend the outside world. The world was an endless expanse that began at the door between the kitchen and the rest of the house." (Esquivel 7). Tita's eloquently shaped world of love and comfort was the kitchen, anything outside was wrought with danger. Since her mother fails to show maternal tenderness and affection toward Tita, Nacha, the indigenous house maid and expert cook becomes a substitute mother for Tita. Nacha teaches Tita important cooking skills and further deepens her respect and worship of the kitchen. "The kitchen is a pedagogical institution and that cooking is not an innate wisdom nor a sudden inspiration, but a science that must be taught and learned." (Zubiaurre 11) Cooking is a physical and spiritual art; it is only within the confines of the kitchen where Tita feels safe, and it is there where she can freely express her emotions through culinary concoctions and share her feelings with others. As the narrator of the novel notes: "just as a poet plays with words, Tita juggled ingredients and quantities at will, obtaining phenomenal results." (Esquivel 69) When Tita isolates herself in the kitchen, she is really liberating herself through the art and cooking and radiating creative energy through her scrumptious delicacies.

Tita's food has the profound power of stirring up all sorts of emotions in those who consume it. When Tita prepares a delicious Quail in Rose Petal Sauce Dish Pedro, her true love, is absolutely delighted by the taste, Dona Elena bitterly comments that it's too salty (even though she knows it is delicious), Rosaura feels nauseous and barely eats, while on Gertrudis, the food acts as an aphrodisiac that makes her run off with a Mexican revolutionary soldier. Food works effectively as Tita's medium of communication. Since her mother has forbid her from marrying Pedro and has reserved him for her sister, they both live in the same household, yet they can not express their love for each other overtly. Tita's food emanates pure passion and desire for Pedro, and it is only when he consumes it that he can understand and feel Tita's feelings toward him. Through food Tita communicates her sadness and discontent with the oppressive restrictions her mother Dona Elena, has imposed on her, but also her sister Rosaura's heartlessness and selfishness in marrying the man Tita was in love with. "It was as if a strange alchemic process had dissolved her entire being in the rose and 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, voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous." (Esquivel 52). Tita is embodied in the food, and for Pedro, eating Tita's food is a sensual act. They cannot consummate their love for each other physically, but through the communal act of eating, Pedro can taste Tita's soul, passion, and creative essence, all embodied through the meal. While Tita made a wedding cake for Rosaura and Pedro's wedding, tears of sadness fell into the cake batter. As a result, the wedding guests felt a profound sadness, and Rosaura, the bride, vomits and spoils her wedding gown.

In the novel, the act of cooking should be viewed as a feminist act, not a patriarchal one where a woman is helplessly stuck in the role of cooking. Tita doesn't cook just to please Pedro, but she primarily cooks for herself, just for the joy of cooking. Cooking is an art for Tita, one which she is very proud to participate in and wholeheartedly enjoys. Stuck in a nightmarish household, where her authoritarian mother oppresses her, and her heartless sister Rosaura marries Tita's one true love, Tita savors every second of her blissful respite in the kitchen. Cooking is an escape for her, one where she spends time alone from everyone else, meticulously and efficiently preparing lavish meals.

The kitchen acts a mother by providing physical and spiritual nourishment for Tita but it also enables her to feed others. "Like Water for Chocolate refers to the kitchen as a locus conclusus by turning it into a cogent metaphor-a natural extension-of the secluded protection offered by the maternal womb." (Zubiaurre 3). Tita, although a virgin, begins to produce breast milk, and when Rosaura is unable to produce any so Tita temporarily takes Rosaura's spot as the maternal-nourisher and begins to breast feed her sister's baby. Tita not only cooks food, but can biologically and miraculously produce food to nourish her baby nephew. Tita, becomes a motherly figure, her food nourishes others, not only in a sensual way but also in a maternal way. "The four elements of nature are brought together harmoniously in food from the kitchen, plus a fifth that I would add, which is loving sensuous energy which each person transmits to food as it is prepared. This energy is what converts the act of eating into an act of love." (Esquivel "Between Two Fires" 82) . Tita cooks because she loves cooking and her love is shared when others consume her food.

Both Tita's mother and sister die of mysterious gastronomical problems, their sicknesses probably induced by Tita's food (which seems to have a negative effect on them). Once they are dead, Tita no longer has anyone preventing her from being with Pedro. Tita is finally united with Pedro, and they consummate their love for each other. Unfortunately the passion ignited between them is so great that Pedro dies after they make love. But at least Tita was able to be united with Pedro once again, freely and without oppression. Tita was liberated ultimately by her talent in the kitchen, and it is essentially what transformed her into the person she became, freed her from oppression, and allowed her to experience the bittersweet taste of love.
In Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Tita's culinary dishes have the power to free her from an oppressive mother (Dona Elena) and her cruel sister Rosaura; to coerce her sister Gertrudis to leave home and change her lifestyle; and finally be united with her true love Pedro.

Works Cited
Esquivel, Laura. Between Two Fires. New York: Crown Publishers, 1998
Esquivel, Laura. Like Water For Chocolate. New York: Random House, 1992
Lugo, Victor. "The Poet and the Visionary: A Conversation with World- Renowned Writer Laura Esquivel". Hispanic 19.4 (2006): 28-30.
Zubiaurre, Maite. "Culinary Eros in Contemporary Hispanic Female Fiction: From Kitchen Tales to Table Narratives". College Literature 33.3 (2006): 29-51.