and (two days after birth of her youngest daughter, Tita) is caused by a heart attack he has after hearing that his oldest daughter is the result of an illicit love affair between his wife and a man of mixed racial heritage (137).
As mother of three daughters, it was Mama Elena's duty and responsibility to pass concepts of respectability and correctness on to them. She does this by never praising them and always correcting them. Tita especially, seems to have earned her criticisms in all that she did, including her cooking. At no time, however, does Mama Elena appear to have inherited any love at all that she feels free to pass on to her daughters. In effect, Mama Elena forbade all true love that fell within her sphere of influence, since she herself had been denied. For example, besides forbidding Tita to marry at all (due to the tradition of the youngest daughter being forced to care for the mother until she dies), she essentially forced Rosaura to marry Tita's boyfriend, as well as keeping away any suitors that Chencha, the maid, may have had (152). Mama Elena may indeed have inherited this from her own mother since it was her mother who forced Nacha, the cook, to turn her beau away so many years ago (36). This drastically affected the lives of all the women on this ranch as
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