Why Is Tita Was Literally Like Water For Chocolate

Tita had hope in her family’s future. She implemented her rebellion by naming Rosaura’s child, Esperanza, literally meaning “Hope”. “She wants her niece, who by default Rosaura’s youngest daughter, to escape the familial tradition that prevented Tita from marrying” (Philips 21). Tita clearly does not want her mother’s influence to also affect Esperanza, no matter the cost she will not allow Esperanza to go through the pain she did. “Tita was literally “like water for chocolate”-she was on the verge of boiling over...To prevent that from happening, she pressed both her hands against it hard”(150), Esquivel illustrates that Tita continues to be embittered towards this tradition and has decided that she will never abandon her plans to fully expose

She is extremely conformed with her family, this affects her children in countless ways. Mama Elena forces her customs because of her secretive past of being rebellious, similar to many other women of this time period. However, she regrets her past and attempts to amend herself by making her daughter's follow past generation’s beliefs. During the early 1900’s, women were afraid to break away from their family’s customs and began to exhibit parsimonious characteristics. Esquivel demonstrates this by stating Elena “had repressed Tita her entire life, but for the person who had lived a frustrated love”(Esquivel 138), by isolating Tita to follow these traditions, Tita has also developed some of the same discontented characteristics Elena has. In the past, many women have had to hide their emotions to remain loyal to their family. It appears that Elena lacks passion for her daughters, but this develops into Elena realizing they share the same dominant passions. This inclines towards Elena’s concerns of her daughters feeling the same pain she has. “One reason to explain her harshness is that she loves someone outside tradition, suffers a broken heart, and spends the rest of her life obeying and enforcing tradition” (Hutchinson 2), although Mama Elena began representing the more confined women of the 1900’s, she later represented the recalcitrant women through herself and through the qualities that Gertrudis and Tita embodied from