Class and Gender Differences in Revolutionary-Era Mexico - Literature review Example

May 18, Breaking and Gender Barriers through Independence, Love, and Bravery in Esquivel’s Like Water for ChocolateLove is as satisfying as the process and results of an excellent cook. Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate shows the traditions of Mexican cooking and what it means for a land-owning family with an authoritarian mother. In addition, the novel shows class and gender differences in Revolutionary-era Mexico. Mexico has a strong social class division. The De La Garza family belongs to the upper class because they have a large farm. As a landed class, Mama Elena raises her three daughters, Rosaura, Getrudis, and Tita, to follow rigid social class and gender values and behaviors. The novel features relationships that are full of conflicts that are as hot as water for chocolate. The paper analyzes how the book depicts class relationships and gender norms. On the one hand, Esquivel disapproves of the values of the upper class who dominate the lower class and promote class differences, while she sympathizes with the lower class who display loyalty and simple aspirations, and, on the other hand, Esquivel portrays the traditional roles of women in the domestic sphere, but she also exhibits women who are willing to break traditions and lead, not only the Mexican Revolution, but Women’s Revolution too, through independence, love and courage. The setting is a social-class-divided society that Esquivel criticizes because of how the upper class tends to be oppressive. Mama Elena is a symbol for the upper class because of her social position. Esquivel shows her as a hard, domineering woman, who has no concern for the happiness of her employees. Her coldness goes back to her parents, when Esquivel narrates how Nancha used to have a fiancé, but Mama Elena’s mother sent him away. Esquivel shows the irony of the many wedding feasts that Nancha already prepared for others: “Since then, all she could do was enjoy other peoples weddings, as she had been doing for years without grumbling” (34). As a human being, Nancha deserves to have a family of her own, but the upper class sees their servants as their properties that they cannot share with others. Mama Elena’s mother might have considered that Nancha will not be able to focus on her housekeeping job as a wife and mother, so she prefers the selfish act of pushing away Nancha’s fiancé. Mama Elena is no different when it comes to her servants. The way she treats Chencha, for instance, right after the latter is raped, is quite heartless. Mama Elena does not want Tita to prepare her food because she thinks her daughter is poisoning her (Esquivel 130). Chencha suffers maltreatment from Mama Elena as her server though: “…once the shouts and reproaches started, [Chencha] realized that [she] cant have a slice without paying for the loaf” (Esquivel 131). Mama Elena must be irritable because she is paralyzed, but it is not an excuse to be abusive of the only servant in their house whom she can trust with her food. She shows the typical Señora attitude who looks down on the lower class and do not respect them as equals. These are examples of the upper class behaviors and attitudes that Esquivel criticizes. In opposite to these rude behaviors, Esquivel shows sympathy for the lower class because of their loyalty to their superiors and simplicity. Nancha is the role model of a servant for domineering superiors like Mama Elena. Esquivel, however, does not demean Nancha as merely a submissive servant, because she shows her as a real human being. Nancha is the mother that Tita does not find in Mama Elena. She is the one who dries Tita’s tears when they prepare the wedding cake for Pedro and Rosaura’s marriage, for instance. She cries with Tita too during this saddest day of her life: “And so, arms around each other, Nancha and Tita wept until there were no more tears in Titas eyes” (Esquivel 28). Nancha’s loyalty to Tita is shown in her great motherly love for her. Furthermore, Esquivel shows how the lower class have simple needs and wants that are not always complicated with traditions. Chencha believes that she can no longer marry after being raped. Once she visits her town, she meets Jesus again, her first boyfriend, and he does not think twice in marrying her at all: “It didnt matter to him that Chencha wasnt a virgin; he married her right away” (Esquivel 150). Esquivel shows the difference between the upper class and their strict moral conventions that are inhumane and the lower class who can bend these social conventions to find true love. The novel shows greater sympathy to the lower class who do not need social conventions to tell them who they are and who they can love. Besides showing sympathy for the lower class, Esquivel portrays women’s traditional roles that limit women’s freedoms. Revolutionary Mexico has strict gender roles and expectations, where women must follow them to avoid shame for themselves and their families. Mama Elena is a rigid implementer of traditions. One of the rules she imposes is the custom that the youngest daughter should not marry because she should take care of her parents until they die. She reminds this to her daughter when she tells her that Pedro Muzquiz wants to come and speak with her mother: “You know perfectly well that being the youngest daughter means you have to take care of me until the day I die” (Esquivel 8). These words that include “death” underscore the permanence of gender roles for authoritarian parents. Esquivel shows that she challenges these unfair traditions through Tita who cannot understand the logic of it. Some of the questions that Tita asks are practical, while others examine the cruelty of these customs: “If Tita couldnt marry and have children, who would take care of her when she got old? ... If she couldnt marry, was she at least allowed to experience love? Or not even that?” (Esquivel 10). These questions are meant to attack the absence of logic and the nature of cruelty of some traditions that are imposed on women. Apart from traditions for women to follow, Esquivel shows the daily household tasks of women inside their homes. On the one hand, Esquivel indicates the mechanical approach of Tita to her household work to show how society conditions women to do these tasks without question. When Tita leaves home after Roberto dies because of grief and stays at John, she finds herself not knowing what to do: At her mother’s what she had to with her hands was strictly determined, no questions asked. She had to get up, get dressed, get the fire going in the stove, fix breakfast, feed the animals, wash the dishes, make the beds, fix lunch, wash the dishes, iron the clothes, fix dinner, wash the dishes, day after day, year after year. (Esquivel 107). These activities clearly consume Tita’s life day and night with no time for much reflection about her life. Indeed, women’s lives are supposed to be programmed this way, so that they cannot have the time and energy to question and change it. In a way, the monotonous tone of the work suggests that Esquivel dislikes that women are expected only to lead inside their homes and not in society too. On the other hand, Esquivel seems to see cooking as an important woman’s role because it conveys identity and transmits important family values and traditions. Cooking is the main activity of the novel, and even its structure puts the recipes first. Every time Tita cooks, her emotions are transferred to her cooking. When she cooks the wedding cake with Nancha, her feelings of longing and anger are transferred to it. As people eat the cake, something happen to them: “The moment they took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of longing” (Esquivel 37). The meaning of the ability to share these feelings through food is to provide a way for Tita to become an autonomous person without her mother always attacking her. Maria Elena de Valdes argues that cooking in the novel is a way of expressing identity and gaining control: “…the food [Tita] prepares becomes an extension of herself. The culmination of this process of food as art and communication is food as communion” (80). Tita cooks to be herself as a woman and as an individual. By communion, cooking is also meant to be shared. Cooking is then also seen as a way of sharing important family values and traditions. With Nancha and Mama Elena both dead, Gertrudis, after visiting Tita, prays for her long life because she is the only one who knows the family’s cooking secrets: “Neither she nor Rosaura knew how to make them; when Tita died, her familys past would die with her” (Esquivel 177). Through Gertrudis, Esquivel shows how cooking is a form of family tradition that can be passed on to future generations. Tita’s handwritten cookbook is an important part of their family’s history and identity. The narrator of the novel underscores how much she values Tita, her Great Aunt whose cooking lives on through Esperanza and then her daughter: My mama! . . . How wonderful the flavor, the aroma of her kitchen, her stories as she prepared the meal, her Christmas Rolls! I dont know why mine never turn out like hers, or why my tears flow so freely when I prepare them-perhaps I am as sensitive to onions as Tita, my great-aunt, who will go on living as long as there is someone who cooks her recipes. (Esquivel 244). The narrator shows how cooking is a social event because eating is also a social event. These women share cooking secrets together and become stronger because of it. Their family lives through the domestic role of women as cooks. While Esquivel appreciates cooking’s role in family life, she also celebrates women who are willing to shatter traditions and lead, not only the Mexican Revolution, but Women’s Revolution too, through autonomy, love and courage. Getrudis is an example of a woman who actively led the Mexican Revolution. She leaves the brothel and fights like a soldier. She narrates her life to Tita and says that she fights “…mad on the field of battle. Leadership was in her blood, and once she joined the army, she began a rapid ascent through powerful positions until she arrived at the top” (Esquivel 177). She is a good example of what Tabea Alexa Linhard calls as “soldaderas” (34), many from the middle and upper class. Esquivel accurately represents some of the women in Mexican Revolution who actually fought in the war. Esquivel shows that, more than the Mexican Revolution, women can also change their oppressive social conditions. The novel shows that the Women’s Revolution will end gender inequality because it relies primarily on women’s finding the ability to assert their autonomy. Tita finds autonomy in cooking because it is her own domain. Susana Perea-Fox asserts that cooking is empowering for Tita: “Instead of feeling imprisoned in her own kitchen, Tita uses that space as a place of self-fulfillment” (3). She notes that the kitchen is not always a place of oppression, but a form of finding oneself. Kristine Ibsen agrees with Perea-Fox, but expands her argument by including that Tita does not grow as a woman because of her love for Pedro alone: “Tita’s awakening as a woman is not dependent upon men but, rather, upon her own realization of this ancient tradition” (2 “Like Water”). Cooking has become the tradition that frees Tita from her imprisonment as the youngest daughter. In another article, Ibsen argues that it is Tita who makes decision for herself, even her love life. Tita stands up against her mother and Rosaura for Pedro, not Pedro (145 “On Recipes, Reading”). Esquivel shows the power of women’s autonomy in breaking social norms. Apart from autonomy, love is important to women’s empowerment. Love includes getting support and advice from a community of women. For Tita, her community includes Gertrudis and Nancha, who are always there for her when she needs them the most. Finally, courage is essential. Tita faces Mama Elena’s ghost who is always following her to shame her for her love affair with Pedro. She tells her dead mother: “I know who I am! A person who has a perfect right to live her life as she pleases. Once and for all, leave me alone1 I wont put up with you! I hate you, Ive always hated you!” (Esquivel 197). This act of defiance is a brave closure to Tita’s guilt. Tita finally accepts her independence with love and courage. Esquivel has prepared mouth-watering recipes that are ironically matched with like-water-for-chocolate-hot relationship conflicts. The impact is an audience who undergoes a cultural awareness for Mexican history and identity and appreciation for a Mexican family’s love affairs of different types, while going hungry for time to time. Esquivel shows that Tita’s society has class and gender differences that oppress the lower class and women. Esquivel sympathizes with the lower class who have true loyalty and decency. She also shows that not all women’s roles in society are oppressive, like cooking. Cooking is an important tradition that preserves family history and positive values of solidarity. Mexican women, Esquivel notes, can learn a great deal from Tita and Gertrudis who broke social conventions for women to become autonomous women. Tita stays within the domestic version of autonomy through being a leader in cooking and embracing domestic duties, but she is empowered because she makes decision for herself. The Women’s Revolution starts with the belief that women are active contributors to their identity and leaders of their private and social destinies. Love is as satisfying as the process and results of an excellent cook, and cooking is one way to be true to the self and to be free to also free other women from cruel customs and gender roles. Works Cited de Valdes, Maria Elena. “Verbal and Visual Representation of Women: Como Agua Para Chocolate/Like Water For Chocolate.” World Literature Today 69.1 (1995): 78-82. Print. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 May 2014. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate: Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Print. Ibsen, Kristine. “Like Water for Chocolate.” Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series (1995): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 May 2014. ---. “On Recipes, Reading and Revolution: Postboom Parody in Como Agua Para Chocolate.” Hispanic Review 63.2 (1995): 133-146. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 May 2014. Linhard, Tabea Alexa. Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2005. Print. Perea-Fox, Susana. “Like Water for Chocolate.” Masterplots, 4th ed. (2010): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 May 2014. Read More