ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the key rites of passage experienced by Tita as the heroine of this female Bildungsroman, and their interspersing with fairy tale and mythical archetypes. It also progresses, to look to the past in order to uncover now hidden meanings can be an act of empowerment that ultimately undermines the negative implication of tradition in the construction of gender roles and social structures. In Como agua para chocolate, Laura Esquivel presents her reader with a female Bildungsroman recounting the life, from birth to death at the age of thirty-nine, of Tita de la Garza, youngest daughter of the fearsome, widowed Mama Elena, and youngest sister of Rosaura and Gertrudis. Como agua para chocolate begins at the very beginning, with its protagonist's birth. In the end, while some critics see the inclusion in Como agua para chocolate of fairy tale and other stock characters as prescriptive, author find this enormously revelatory, if perhaps not radical.