Feminism and Magical Realism: A Monthly Dose of Recipe for Love and Passion in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate
I. ABSTRACT
Laura Esquivel’s most noted work is the novel like water for chocolate, which details the Dela Garza family during the Mexican revolution. Esquivel used magical realism to describe a realistic yet fantastical world. Esquivel’s also presented feminism in her novel by presenting a women empowerment. This paper aims to criticize the power of love, social barriers of class, domination against women community and the discrimination against their races.
II. SUMMARY
Like Water for chocolate tells the story of Tita Dela Garza, the youngest daughter in the family, she lives in Northern Mexico early 1900’s during Mexican
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And in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate there are clear feminism that is more on liberal feminism.
Liberal feminism aims for individuals to use their own abilities and the democratic process to help women and men become more equal in the eyes of the law, in society and in the workplace. By organizing women into larger groups that can speak at a higher level, lobbying legislators and raising awareness of issues, liberal feminists use available resources and tools to advocate for change.
The first woman who shows feminism is Mama Elena. Mama Elena takes over the role as the head of household of Dela Garza family after her husband died. She is a strong independent women doing all her best to protect and raise her family during Mexican revolutionary, where men usually do. Proved what she said to revolutionaries:
“I’ll volunteer to tell you to talks whatever you like from the corn crib and the stable. But that is the limit; I won’t allow you to touch anything inside my house. Understand? Those things are for my cause.” (LWFC, pg. 89)
In the piece above, Mama Elena proved that she can defend and protect her family even she is a woman. She shows liberal feminism that women are equal to men in any aspects and deserve an equal
“Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel, is a beautiful romantic tale of an impossible passionate love during the revolution in Mexico. The romance is followed by the sweet aroma of kitchen secrets and cooking, with a lot of imagination and creativity. The story is that of Tita De La Garza, the youngest of all daughters in Mama Elena’s house. According to the family tradition she is to watch after her mother till the day she does, and therefore cannot marry any men. Tita finds her comfort in cooking, and soon the kitchen becomes her world, affecting every emotion she experiences to the people who taste her food. Esquivel tells Titas story as she grows to be a mature, blooming women who eventually rebels against her mother, finds her true identity and reunites with her long lost love Pedro. The book became a huge success and was made to a movie directed by Alfonso Arau. Although they both share many similarities, I also found many distinct differences. The movie lost an integral part of the book, the sensual aspect of the cooking and love.
While they do recognize the inequalities women face, they do not see subordination as part of a larger system. Instead they believe there are many smaller factors that contribute to the imbalance. Liberal feminists work towards change by democratic means such as congressional acts and reform. This perspective of the feminist theory tends to follow the slow and steady wins the race method, unlike their radical feminist counterparts. Critics of this branch of feminism tend to criticize just that, claiming they fail to comprehend the bigger
Irigaray, Luce. "This Sex Which Is Not One." Feminism: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndle. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991.
Love, tradition, emotion are just a few of the themes that are covered in the movie Like Water For Chocolate directed by Alfonso Aráu(1992) and bases on the novel written by Laura Esquivel(1989). The movie tells the story of Tita, a young woman that longs her life to marry her lover, Pedro but can never have because of her family’s traditions. The story develops on how Tita is trying to rebel against her mother and her tradition of the youngest daughter not marrying but taking care of her mother until the day she dies. The story takes place in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. The movie was amazing at showing these themes and really easy to identify them.
Feminism is the public support for or recommendation of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. In a more simple way of stating it, women rights equivalent to those of men. Before suffrage begun, women were strictly to act as women should, or what they were expected to act like. They were expected to take care of the children, cook, and clean. Not only were they supposed to do house work, but they also couldn’t vote or own any property. On August 26th, 1920, after 72 long-lasting years of fighting, and prolonged anticipation, women finally won their rights to be treated equally. There have been, and still are, many feminists in this world. One very prominent feminist is Crystal Eastman.
In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel exposes her strong feminist attitude through a controlling first person limited narration and a detailed, descriptive portrayal of the characters. This exploitation of feminist views supports two major themes: change in traditional attitudes towards authority and freedom of expression. In this novel, Laura Esquivel shows how Mexican women can overcome the powerful traditional authority of men and the traditional mindset of women; and how women can overcome society's suppression and express themselves freely. . These two themes have a direct correlation to women's breakthroughs all over the world; especially throughout Latin America.
Women play a key role in this novel in many ways. In the case of...
Yet another believes that the gender roles controlling women are artificially created and not innate knowledge, and thus men and women are equals with only history the determining factor and how gender equality is established. There are clear feminist overtones in Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Esquivel points to a more radical definition of feminism in Like Water for Chocolate. The story focuses on mostly female characters that assume the gender roles typically associated with men. Esquivel presents these strong female figures in such a way as to make the reader begin to question any preconceptions previously held about the capabilities of women.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
How impressive it would be to read a book all about feminism. A quick glance over Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, and one may miss all the power women have, but let’s take a closer look and see what we find. Like Water for Chocolate, is a satirical story following a woman named Tita. She struggles through the constraints of her family's traditions, battling with feelings of love and unfamiliar empowerment. This theme connects throughout the book with other characters such as Gertrudis and Esperanza. The author was able to achieve satire, as she brought a new light to feminist power, by reversing the stereotypical roles often found in a romantic plot, such as ‘The Little Mermaid’.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Magical Realism evolved only in the last century. Franz Roh was the first to use the term to describe paintings and the new style that had come about after the expressionistic era (7, p.15), however it was Alejo Carpentier who used it to describe Latin America's fanatastical writing styles (3, p.373). He felt that magical realism expounded upon reality and "was able to elude realism's insufficiency, in its inablility to describe an ex-centric experience"(3, p.373). Latin America, though perhaps the first to name the new writing phenomena, was not the only country to use it. In the course of this paper I will compare and contrast several different novels from female authors who evoked magical realism into their writing styles. These authors come from Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean, showing the wide range of history and environments. Feeling that the Caribbean alone may prove to narrow a topic for a style that has taken the world by storm, I felt it only fitting that other countries should be included the theme of women in the paper. Also, I selected Africa and parts of Latin America to compare to Caribbean writings because these two continents play a pivotal role in shaping what the Caribbean has become today.
...Halevi-Wise, Yael (1997). Story-telling in Laura Esquivel's Como Agua Para Chocolate. The Other Mirror: Women’s Narrative in Mexico, 1980-1995. Ed. Kristine Ibsen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. 123-131.
McAfee, Noëlle. "Feminist Political Philosophy." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Winter 2011 Edition ed. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.
Throughout the 19th century, feminism played a huge role in society and women’s everyday lifestyle. Women had been living in a very restrictive society, and soon became tired of being told how they could and couldn’t live their lives. Soon, they all realized that they didn’t have to take it anymore, and as a whole they had enough power to make a change. That is when feminism started to change women’s roles in society. Before, women had little to no rights, while men, on the other hand, had all the rights. The feminist movement helped earn women the right to vote, but even then it wasn’t enough to get accepted into the workforce. They were given the strength to fight by the journey for equality and social justice. There has been known to be