In Laura Esquivel’s, Like Water for Chocolate, the reader is treated to a multitude of relationships that seems to all intertwine in very dramatic ways. Love takes on many forms in the novel, but ultimately passionate, intense, romantic love takes preference over stable, convenient, or forced relationships. Sex however is also treated as a beautiful act in which persons may partake and together with love can reach their ultimate paradise.
There are two types of somewhat passionless love characterized by Esquivel in the novel; first being the peaceful comradery between Tita and Dr. John Brown, and second being the forced relationships of Mama Elena and Juan De la Garza, as well as Pedro Muzquiz and Rosaura De la Garza. Although Dr. Brown did feel romantic towards Tita, it was never fully reciprocated on her end. This led to a passionless love, but nonetheless a very stable relationship, which eventually made Tita question her passion for Pedro Muzquiz. It should not be said that Tita and Dr. Brown did not share a love however; there was just not a shared sexual passion for one another, something Tita and Dr. Brown both understood. Elena and Juan were forced to marry one another resulting in a passionless love much like that of Pedro and Rosaura. Both couples engaged in infidelity in which one partner (in these cases – Pedro and Mama Elena) would express their sexual passion outside of their marriages. The weakness to these relationships is that they are missing passion and desire. Often time’s love is expressed through sexual means and if that component is missing in a relationship then love may quickly fade – and thus the partners are engaged in nothing more than a social commitment.
Forbidden love is also depicted in the novel in the relationships of Pedro and Tita, as well as Mama Elena and her lover Jose Trevino. Mama Elena forbade, from the start, the relationship of Tita and Pedro, because Tita was to take care of her mother and not be married, “You...