Like Water For Chocolate Gender Roles

Traditionally society sets up a norm of how a person should handle their duties creating gender identities and it comes to play with the aspect of how females should conform to these identities. Even in modern households, society habitually views women doing domestic work in the kitchen such as making food, cleaning, and taking care of people. This notion of following to the norms is set by a person’s core values and it becomes an obstacle for females to express her own opinions limiting them from creating their own sense of identity. However, the novel Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel views the kitchen as an individual source of self-expression that liberates feminine terrain as well. Even though, many of the female characters

Pedro seems to follow this tradition because he only lusts for Tita and when she serves him food he is pleased. This is a sense of ritual too because often a women cook for her husband to make them happy. Pedro and Tita did not have any connection besides food and lust; therefore, they both are infatuated with each other and are not in love. Tita cooks for passion while Pedro takes it as pleasure for lust. Pedro thinks it is love when it is coming from traditional views. However, based on how they were brought up knowing only their culture, they do not know the difference between love and lust. This is shown through Cairns statement that “men seek pleasure through food while women repress their own desires and achieve pleasure only by serving food to others” (Cairns 9). This represents a tradition unconsciously because Pedro finds it pleasing when he eats Tita’s food and Tita is pleased serving him. Pedro seeks for physical desires and since he can’t get Tita, he takes Rosaura in order to be near Tita. He played the role of a family man by enlarging his manliness from marrying Rosaura and having kids. His love for Tita is impure with lust “when Pedro directs a longing look at Tita's bosom pushing against the thin fabric of her blouse, her breasts immediately react to sexual desire “(Esquivel 44). He just wants to please himself and considers Tita as his longing, not as his