Like Water For Chocolate Magical Realism

Like Water for Chocolate is a novel that offers recipes as monthly segments while narrating the life of De La Garza family. Each recipe is unique from the others, but it’s not only the mere fact that it’s a different dish but rather the spectrum of emotions it sparks for the characters. Here we can witness how magical realism, a type of fiction that integrates elements of fantasy and otherwise realistic settings becomes intertwined with the culinary focus of the story. The recipes not only serve their conventional purpose but because them we learn the true motives and aspirations of the major characters along the storyline.

“Likewise for Tita the joy of living was wrapped up in the delights of food.’’ (Esquivel 7) Tita is the character with

This alone was cause of distress for her but then, her mother decides to arrange a marriage between her sister Rosaura and the man she loved. “Nacha, with all her experience, knew that for Tita there was no pain that wouldn’t disappear if she ate a delicious Christmas Roll. But this time it didn’t work. She felt no relief from the hollow sensation in her stomach. Just the opposite, a wave of nausea flowed over her. She realized that the hollow sensation was not hunger but an icy feeling of grief.” (Esquivel 19) Furthermore, food plays its part of becoming Tita’s voice; since she is constantly abused emotionally and physically by her mother. "...she had been killing her a little at a time since she was a child, and she still hadn't quite finished her off." (Esquivel 49) The kitchen is under Tita’s dominion and this allows her to take ownership and resist the oppression she faces

The preparation for the wedding cake is critical to the story; due to the fact that Tita mourns as she makes the cake, the outcome brings out several responses to the guests. “The moment they took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of longing…Mama Elena, who hadn’t shed a single tear over her husband’s death, was sobbing silently.” (Esquivel 39) This is an important insight for the Mama Elena character; she who became the matriarch of De La Garza family and had to manage their estate all on her own shows a glimpse of weakness. Considering the historical background of the novel and the male – dominated Latin American culture; men have always been in charge and were responsible for providing for their families while women cared for the household and children. The traditional gender roles have been established in Hispanic countries for a long time so, the mere fact that Mama Elena holds so much power in a patriarchal society is an empowering idea. However, having experienced herself oppression from being a female as Esquivel herself said in an interview “Mama Elena transforms herself into a repressor because she herself was repressed, they did not let her follow her heart” (Loewenstein); her attitude toward her daughters would be different. Instead, she turns into a tyrannical character that no one is able to please and that