Como Agua Para Chocolate

10 Pages 2483 Words

ought unfair to women. “We weren’t allowed to wear pants in school, so we fought to be able to wear them. And we thought that was change. But, I tell you, in all that I did sometimes forget some

Elledge 2
essential elements and that’s when I had to rediscover all that was happening in the home...It was my own experiences that I wanted to transmit when I wrote Like Water for Chocolate.” Laura Esquivel (Literature and Its Times, Volume 3)
Like Water for Chocolate was influenced by parts of Laura Esquivel’s Mexican heritage and their history. The novel sets out to parody popular women’s magazines of the nineteenth century. The magazines, according to Joyce Mass and George Wilson in Literature and Its Times were called “calendars for senoritas” were some of the first literary pieces directed towards women in Mexico. They were similar to almanacs and they generally had a moral tone to them expressing the “proper” role of the female in Mexican society. The magazines contained fiction, which eventually opened doors for female authors, generally the publications didn’t remain in business very long. Two years was considered an outstanding success. Some of the “calendars for senoritas” were created to further the neglected education of the women. El Semanario de las Senoritas Mejicanas, was specifically published as an educational journal, originally divided into sections on the fine arts, physics, literature, and morality (Literature 196). Editors of the magazines eventually added a section on home economics that provided information on household budgeting, hygiene, and articles on the art of cooking. La Semana de las Senoritas Mejicanas, was the only magazine that carried a home economics section, and the magazine developed into a magazine that published signed stories, poems, and serialized fiction. La Semana contained a calendar of historical anniversaries and gave advice on almost any subject, ...