The National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico
1986, Museum Documentation Systems
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Abstract
In the western division of labor, traditionally, domestic spaces are considered to be inferior to public spaces. Food preparation is simply a necessary function for the satisfaction of basic needs. It is also a task that within the family is the responsibility of the feminine elements and generally does not receive any social recognition or financial compensation. Therefore, food preparation belongs to the field of the feminine, the domestic. And the private. In opposition, there are public occupations, particularly policies, which traditionally correspond to the superior masculine element. One of the subversive factors of Laura Esquivel's work constitutes, precisely, the conversion of the kitchen into a battlefield and the affirmation of political identities, displacing the traditional consideration of a private domestic action space, to an action space National public Women who participate in food preparation are part of the active agents that build the Mexican national identity, through the preparation and intake of food. Fast as Desire [2] cooking is the place where women responsible for food preparation exercise their power in defiance of the traditional forces that seek to maintain food preparation within the framework of purely domestic and inferior chores. In Como agua Tita uses her power to transform raw materials into exquisite delicacies, as a quasi-magical, but totally corporeal, power in a constant challenge to her mother's dictatorial attitude. For its part in So fast, the kitchen is, again, a battlefield between the pre-Columbian forces and the European colonizers, through dialogues between the Mayan grandmother and the Spanish wife. This constant, veiled battle between women with different levels of power, or between the importance that society artificially attaches to the activities assigned to the sexes, and therefore to the sexes themselves, and equally between cultures considered superior and inferior, constitutes one of the most significant elements in Laura Esquivel's literature. According to Lillo and Sarfati-Arnaud, this management and subversion of roles constitutes a "twist" -in the sense of distorting or distorting understood concepts -that plays with the traditional concept of space and gender and confirms Laura Esquivel's intention to marginalize the center and centralize the margins. It also confirms its intention to grant women occupied in food preparation a central role in the constitution of national identity. In other words, the author converts the sacred figure of the country and the feeling of citizens for their nation, patriotism, into an entity that is prepared in the kitchen. Laura Esquivel moves the kitchen to the National Museum, or vice versa. When food preparation is constituted in an identity producing artifact, food preparation is positioned at the same level as the National Museum
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In the western division of labor, traditionally, domestic spaces are considered to be inferior to public spaces. Food preparation is simply a necessary function for the satisfaction of basic needs. It is also a task that within the family is the responsibility of the feminine elements and generally does not receive any social recognition or financial compensation. Therefore, food preparation belongs to the field of the feminine, the domestic. And the private.
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For feminists, the kitchen is a symbol of the world of traditionally marginalized woman. It is a space that associated with repetitive work, lacking any "real" creativity, and having no possibility for the fulfilment of women's existential needs, individualization or self-expression. Latin American women writer Laura Esquivel through her debut novel Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies (Como agua para chocolate: Novela de entregas mensuales can recetas, amores y remedios caseros ) expresses a different, quite parodic and critical gender perspective that women can use food as a path to power and a part of a cultural cauldron involving sensuality and machismo. This paper is focuses on how food imagery is particularly important in the novel as a voice for women and their abundant emotions.
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