Many things get passed down in families, from eye, hair and skin color to the grandfather clock in the front hall and the antique dishes in the china cabinet. Among these inheritances are the intangibles such as family traditions, mythologies and code of conduct. Sometimes these intangibles make life richer, other times they do nothing but make life bitter and hard. The book, Like Water for Chocolate, is about one family of women and how they deal with their particular inheritances of joy and grief and pain. Esquivel uses family recipes and home remedies to discuss the other intangible inheritances that have been passed down from generation to generation. In fact, the title is taken from a food term used in the book to describe one character's fury with the outcome of things in her family (151).
The setting is the De la Garza ranch in northern Mexico during a tumultuous time in Mexico's history at the turn of the 19th century. Since the De la Garza family lives on a ranch, there is pressure to maintain a certain level of social standing. This affects behavior, expectations, choices, and the roles that they play in each other's lives.
Matriarch of the De la Garza family, Mama Elena rules the ranch with her iron will. The most telling description of her is in regards to her ability to carve watermelon. "Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying or domination, Mama Elena was a pro" (97). The positive aspect of this was that it made Mama Elena formidable, so that when she was faced with revolutionaries she was able to hold her own (91).
On the surface, Mama Elena appears to have inherited the concept of responsibility and duty. Underneath she also inherited the mistaken concept that true love was frivolous, often evil, and needed to be weeded out or repressed. However, this need to repress love may stem from the fact that the death of her husb...