Like Water For Chocolate:

A novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances and home remedies, is a novel by Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. It was published, originally in Spanish as Como agua para chocolate, in 1989. The novel has been translated into thirty languages since then. It is a story about a young girl, Tita who struggles for her entire life to be with her true love. Protagonist of the novel and also the youngest daughter of a family lives on a Mexican ranch at the time of the Revolution.

Emotional Oppression It is evident, especially in the first few chapters, that Tita has been emotionally oppressed by her dictator-like mother. Her mother, enforcing a family tradition, decrees that Tita is not allowed to marry because she is obligated to care for her mother until she dies. Deprived of the love of her life, Tita is forced to repress her feelings and transmute them into her cooking. The feeling she pours into her cooking then affects the people who eat it, contributing to the magical realism evident throughout the novel, as her repressed emotions have tangible, magical consequences.

Self Growth At the beginning of the novel, Tita was a generally submissive young lady. As the novel progresses, Tita learns to disobey the injustice of her mother, and gradually becomes more and more adept at expressing her inner fire through various means. At first, cooking was her only outlet, but through self-discovery she learned to verbalize and actualize her feelings, and stand up to her despotic mother.

Tradition The romantic love that is so exalted throughout the novel is forbidden by Tita's mother in order to blindly enforce the tradition that the youngest daughter be her mother's chaste guardian. However, the traditional etiquette enforced by Mama Elena is defied more and more throughout the novel. This parallels the setting of the Mexican Revolution growing in intensity.

The entire story in divided into twelve chapters marked as monthly installment and named after the months of the year. Each chapter begins with a recipe of some Mexican dish and the cooking and food imagery is interwoven quite intensely throughout the story. The main episodes on each chapter involve preparation or consummation of these dishes that Tita prepares to express her feelings. Tita is 15 years old at the onset of the story. She and Pedro are madly in love with each other. Pedro Muzquiz comes to the ranch to ask Titas hand in marriage. She domineering mother, Mama Elena, bluntly refuses to the proposal stating the tradition in De La Garza family which forbids the youngest daughter of the family to marry, as she is supposed to stay at home and look after her parents.

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Pedro reluctantly marries Rosaura, Titas oldest sister, but makes it clear that he has married Rosaura solely to be near Tita. Pedro and his new wife live on the family ranch which makes it possible for Pedro to constantly remain in contact with Tita. Unable to marry her love, Tita is distraught with grief and transfers all her energy into her culinary skills, which Rosaura lacks. She excels the art of cooking and uses the power of food, unconsciously, to draw Pedro towards herself and away from Rosaura. Tita cooks a meal with rose petals given to her by ...

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