Content Warning: Spoilers for the 1989 novel “Like Water for Chocolate” and its 1992 film adaptation. Even though this book/movie has some of the most mouth-watering food descriptions you’ll ever encounter, I will be talking about a few stomach-turning aspects of the story, so you may want to put down any microwave burritos you’re currently munching on.

In Laura Esquivel’s novel “Like Water for Chocolate,” ill-fated Tita’s life is decided for her from birth. As she is the youngest daughter, her family’s tradition dictates that she can never marry. Instead, Tita is an indentured servant to her mother, Mama Elana, who she must take care of and keep company until either of them dies (presumably her mother).

When Tita is a young teen, she meets the handsome Pedro, the man/boy who inflames her soul and makes every cell in her body feel like a live wire. Pedro wants to marry Tita, but as their love is forbidden, he marries her older sister, Rosaura. He reasons that this union will allow him to at least live near the woman he loves, even if he must wed another. His plan goes perfectly, and he, Tita, and Rosaura are perfectly content with this unconventional arrangement in which Pedro loves Tita but is bound by law, physical intimacy, and children to her older sister.

Except I’m lying.

Everything goes to sh*t almost immediately, and everyone is miserable until they die, except for the briefest moments of joy and passion.

So before anyone thinks this blog becomes a “Don Pedro is the Real Villain of ‘Like Water for Chocolate'” post, I want to state that I don’t think Pedro is a terrible person. The clear villain of “Like Water for Chocolate,” is the abusive Mama Elena, a vile hypocrite who runs her ranch with an iron fist and treats her children like slaves. Mama Elana strikes me as the kind of person who would drown a newborn kitten if she thought it would be too much work to nurse it back to help. Don Pedro, by comparison, is just an idiot.

HBO will debut a six-episode miniseries adaptation of the novel on November 3rd, 2024. Considering that the 1992 film is an almost perfect adaptation of the book (as the screenplay was also written by Laura Esquivel), I do not know how this miniseries will improve upon or add anything new to the story (unlike the ballet, which from the two seconds I’ve seen online, is the most enchanting thing I’ve ever seen and the perfect medium for this book). However, my hope is that the miniseries will give some compassion to some of the novel’s maligned characters.

I first watched this film over a decade ago, and my biggest complaints were, “there’s no chocolate in this movie,” followed by, “what a f*cking bummer of an ending.” In 2024, my complaints remain mostly the same, although I have more appreciation for the importance and necessity of tragedy in storytelling. When told carefully, tragedies can help us feel that cathartic release and make us more appreciative of the beauty of our world. Fictional tragedies must exist, and “Like Water for Chocolate” should remain a bummer.

What I still have difficulty grasping is why the narrative is so relentless in its cruel depiction of Rosaura.

In “Like Water for Chocolate,” Rosaura commits a major sin: she knows that Tita is in love with Pedro but marries him anyway. Rosaura likely went ahead with the wedding because it’s what Mama Elena requested, and Rosaura embodies the traditions and social expectations that Tita finds so oppressive. Rosaura chooses to uphold the social values her small corner of the world finds most important, and for this, the story punishes her.

Throughout the rest of the story, Rosaura’s life becomes a grotesque farce as she’s subjected to increasingly humiliating and tragic circumstances. For instance, on her wedding day, the book and movie mostly focus on Tita’s misery as Mama Elana forces her to prepare an elaborate wedding feast for her sister. The poor girl is devastated and feels betrayed by her family and her beloved. Tita weeps into the batter of Rosaura’s monstrous wedding cake, inadvertently poisoning the cake and everyone who eats it, Rosaura and Pedro included. Right before he’s cake-poisoned, Pedro does confess his brilliant scheme to Tita, which was to marry into the family so to be closer to her. In the movie, we’re spared the goriest details as the scene instead focuses on the unexpected passing of Nacha, the beloved ranch cook who is like Tita’s fairy godmother. The result of the wedding day food poisoning is that Pedro has a handy excuse to postpone consummating his marriage. Rosaura just goes along with it because she has understandably spent the day barfing and had her wedding ruined. In the book, what happens is so much worse.

Here is the direct quote from the book:

“Rosaura struggled to control her nausea, but it was too much for her! Her only concern was to keep her wedding dress from being fouled, but as she crossed the patio, she slipped, and every inch of her dress ended up coated with vomit. She was swept away in a raging rotting river for several yards; then she couldn’t hold back anymore, and she spewed out great noisy mouthfuls of vomit, like an erupting volcano, right before Pedro’s horrified eyes.”

This pitiful woman gets food poisoning, slips in the combined vomit of all of her guests, and then vomits herself in front of her new husband. On her wedding day.

From then on, Rosaura’s chances at happiness are cooked. Pedro entered their union under false pretenses with no intention of ever loving her beyond paying the barest hints of respect to her as his legal wife. And while Tita remains Pedro’s beautiful beloved, Rosaura continually takes on the role of the grotesque troll he’s legally bound to.

As much as the narrative wants us to focus on Tita’s emotional journey, it’s hard to ignore the bleakness of Rosaura’s life. She was as trapped as Pedro in a loveless marriage, but she didn’t know the love was doomed. Even though she’s the mother of his children, that position hardly brings her any respect or devotion from him. The novel describes the horrible things that happen to her while she’s pregnant and in labor: she gains over 65 pounds, almost dies during both deliveries, is too weak to take care of her babies, and then becomes unable to have any more children. She’s referred to as “fat” for almost the rest of the book, which, in the 90’s, was synonymous with “disgusting” and “unloveable.”  

And I haven’t even started on the farting.

Listen, everyone, we all do it. If you have a digestive tract, then you flatulate. It’s an unfortunate reality of existing. It’s much worse for humans because, in addition to dealing with the discomfort that comes from gastrointestinal distress, we also have the cognitive abilities and hundreds of years of social conditioning to feel shame at a normal bodily function. My dogs may toot with abandon, but if I were to do so, I would be shunned.

Rosaura’s character experiences digestive issues her entire life. In her youth, she’s depicted as a fussy eater, and then after her wedding and insemination (because that is the most accurate way to describe her child’s conception), she is constantly depicted as a smelly, flatulent cow. She remains in this pathetic, revolting state until her stinky death. It’s bad enough in the movie, but the description in the book is horrifying.

“At first Pedro didn’t find it odd that he could hear Rosaura breaking wind even with the door closed. He began to notice the unpleasant noises when one lasted so long it seemed it would never end. Pedro tried to concentrate on the book he was holding, thinking that drawn-out sound could not possibly be the product of his wife’s digestive problems.”

“The floor was shaking, the light blinked off and on. Pedro thought for a moment it was the rumble of cannons signaling that the revolution had started up again, but he discarded the thought; it had been too calm in the country lately. Maybe it was the engine of one of the neighbor’s motorcars. But motorcars didn’t produce such a nauseating smell. How strange that he could smell it even though he’d taken the precaution of walking all around the bedroom with a spoon containing a chunk of burning charcoal and a pinch of sugar.”

“Worried, he went over to the door that communicated between the two bedrooms; tapping with his knuckles, he asked Rosaura if she felt all right. Receiving no answer, he opened the door: there he found Rosaura, her lips purple, body deflated, eyes wild, with a distant look, sighing out her last flatulent breath.”

So to recap, after near 20 years of a loveless marriage, our girl farts herself to death. It’s the kind of death that would happen to a character in one of the Scary Movies.

To add insult to injury, the book’s descriptions of her funeral are even worse:

“John’s diagnosis was an acute congestion of the stomach. Her burial was poorly attended, because the disagreeable odor Rosaura’s body gave off got worse after her death. For that reason not many people chose to attend. The ones determined not to miss it were the buzzards–a flock of them circled the funeral party until the body had been buried.”

Rosaura died in a manner more embarrassing than death-on-toilet, and her putrid corpse smelled so repulsive that people in her community, the ones whose opinion she cared about so greatly, didn’t even attend her funeral. I am not at all an expert on Mexican culture and funeral rituals, but I can’t help but think that in the deeply religious Mexican society presented in this book, Rosaura’s community avoiding her funeral would be considered one last final laceration to the 999 cuts she’d received over a lifetime.

Despite the horror of her passing, Rosaura’s death is a positive event. It frees her daughter, Esperanza, to marry her sweetheart, Alex, and allows for Tita and Pedro to finally be together. Even if people at the wedding bemoan Rosaura’s absence, she still has a legacy as the stinkiest dead body.

Laura Esquivel is the third of four children, and I can’t help but speculate that her older siblings were terrible to her, and the only way she could get revenge on them was to immortalize them in her story and then make them fart themselves to death. It’s probably something I would do if I resented my sibling that much. I do not know how else to account for such a sad story as Rosaura’s, who couldn’t even have the dignity in death that she lacked in life. My armchair analysis of “Like Water for Chocolate” may be laughably incorrect, but I think there may be a grain of truth to what I say. As we’ve seen from this story, bitterness can be a powerful motivator, especially when writing.

I don’t want readers to think I’m confused or “missed the point” of the book. I understand that much of Rosaura’s digestive problems were symbolic of her irrational adherence to the rules and structure of the society that was actively harming her. I do understand what Esquivel was attempting to relay; however, I think it could have been done in a way that gives this character some humanity.

Characters like Rosaura can be really interesting. The ones who do everything “correctly” and yet are punished for it. These characters can easily be twisted into self-righteous villains who choose to take out their anger on the people they see as shirking their responsibilities. If Rosaura was going to be a villain, then I think the narrative should have made her so. Unfortunately, Rosaura was portrayed with just enough sympathy that I yearned to know more about her. I feel for the young woman whose mother traded her into a loveless marriage, just as I feel for Tita. I think both women were victims of unfortunate circumstances – the major difference was in how they were portrayed. One sister got the magic cooking gene and went to a heaven-metaphor with her lover. The other died alone, with only the sounds of her digestive tract to keep her company.

As beautiful as the rest of this book is, that ending will always make me feel melancholic, like I’m Tita cutting onions.