Food Speaks

Introduction

There is no love sincerer than the love of food. Hunger is both a body's signal for refueling and an emotion in itself (just like love). Many pieces of literature explain the significance of food, cooking and as modes of communication (McIntosh p. 71). Like Water for Chocolate is a novel by Laura Esquivel, published in 1989, which is about the life of a woman (Tita), her relationship of with family, and the related importance of the kitchen and Mexican recipes from the time when her life is set (Herman p. 36). In the novel we can see a particular style, which employs magical realism to combine the supernatural with the mundane. In the book Water for Chocolate, food takes on the symbolic role of language and can be seen as a form of communication. Using the insights from Esquivel's book, this essay argues why food is so much an important element and mode of communication.

Body

In the novel by Esquivel, the plot is hinged on the battle between a mother and daughter in the early twentieth century. Most of the action happens in the kitchen, the traditional territory of the women. In a historical sense, the plot unfolds with the Mexico Revolution channels as background, portrayed from a nostalgic point of view. The plot revolves around the everyday life in the towns along the U.S. border. The reality of that era is that of a patriarchal, repressive, and sexist society, in which women adopt a social role limited to the domestic world, mothers responsible for their offspring, and breeding, far removed from the status of individual (Esquivel p. 60). In addition, the tradition Mexico established a tragic fate for the young daughters of the families. Condemned to solitude, they were forbidden to marry, as they should care her mother in old age. With an argument somewhere between comedy, melodrama and magical realism, the story has some ideas about women, love and patriarchy. Qualified as an example of realism magic, the novel became the best selling fiction book in Mexico in its first twenty years, translated into over twenty languages.

The rules of the family indicated that the last child had to devote her life to care for her mother. Tita had to surrender completely to the service family and forget her love, since she was the youngest daughter. Conjugation starts to get complicated when Tita falls in love with a young man named Pedro Muzquiz, whose profile is unacceptable to the customs of the family of Tita, her mother (Mama Elena) and her two sisters: Rosaura and Gertrudis (Esquivel p. 48). Tita is prohibited to relate any man. Pedro marries Rosaura, without feeling love for her. As expected, the event generated Tita deep sadness that makes her lose all interest in things she used to do, but her heart experiences great joy in knowing, in the words of Peter himself, that he only married his sister to be closer to his only love, Tita. Their joy is mitigated in part ...