The Significance of Blurred Gender Roles for the Key Male Characters in ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Like Water for Chocolate’
WORLD LITERATURE ASSIGMENT ONE
The significance of blurred gender roles for the key male characters in ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Like Water For Chocolate’
Word Count: 1497
Banana Yoshimoto’s novella ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ by Laura Esquivel explore the blurring of gender roles through the characterisation of the key male characters, Eriko and Pedro. The obscurity of gender roles is utilised by both authors as a literary tool in the formation of interpersonal relationships with the protagonists of each text. Furthermore both authors employ this blurring in the deconstruction of their respective audience’s societal expectations. Yoshimoto on the conventions of conservative 1980’s Japan, and Esquivel as a 3rd wave feminist writer on the patriarchal expectations of 1980’s Mexico. Finally, both texts delineate the underlying danger of the absence of clear gender roles in society, existentially in ‘Kitchen’ and from a feminist perspective in ‘Like Water For Chocolate’.
Yoshimoto’s ‘Kitchen’ utilizes Eriko’s gender shift to form an interpersonal relationship with protagonist Mikage in the form of an unconventional family. Eriko’s transsexuality provides Mikage with a mother and father figure in one, “Even though I’ve lived all these years as a woman, somewhere inside me was my male self…But I find that I’m body and soul a woman.” Eriko’s awareness of the male and female components of herself allows her to provide a parental entity to orphaned Mikage. The use of caesuras in the form of apostrophes and full stops, combined with the short syntax of the last two sentences prolongs the rhythm, heightening its sense of importance. The event of Eriko’s death leaves Mikage “utterly devoid of hope”, and she grieves intensely for Eriko: “I had never felt so alone as I did now”, the use of the superlative ‘never’ creates emphasis on Mikage’s sense of loneliness as she metaphorically looses both a mother and a father. The interpersonal relations formed by Eriko’s blurred
The significance of blurred gender roles for the key male characters in ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Like Water For Chocolate’
Word Count: 1497
Banana Yoshimoto’s novella ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ by Laura Esquivel explore the blurring of gender roles through the characterisation of the key male characters, Eriko and Pedro. The obscurity of gender roles is utilised by both authors as a literary tool in the formation of interpersonal relationships with the protagonists of each text. Furthermore both authors employ this blurring in the deconstruction of their respective audience’s societal expectations. Yoshimoto on the conventions of conservative 1980’s Japan, and Esquivel as a 3rd wave feminist writer on the patriarchal expectations of 1980’s Mexico. Finally, both texts delineate the underlying danger of the absence of clear gender roles in society, existentially in ‘Kitchen’ and from a feminist perspective in ‘Like Water For Chocolate’.
Yoshimoto’s ‘Kitchen’ utilizes Eriko’s gender shift to form an interpersonal relationship with protagonist Mikage in the form of an unconventional family. Eriko’s transsexuality provides Mikage with a mother and father figure in one, “Even though I’ve lived all these years as a woman, somewhere inside me was my male self…But I find that I’m body and soul a woman.” Eriko’s awareness of the male and female components of herself allows her to provide a parental entity to orphaned Mikage. The use of caesuras in the form of apostrophes and full stops, combined with the short syntax of the last two sentences prolongs the rhythm, heightening its sense of importance. The event of Eriko’s death leaves Mikage “utterly devoid of hope”, and she grieves intensely for Eriko: “I had never felt so alone as I did now”, the use of the superlative ‘never’ creates emphasis on Mikage’s sense of loneliness as she metaphorically looses both a mother and a father. The interpersonal relations formed by Eriko’s blurred
Bibliography: Esquivel, Laura. Like water for chocolate. Trans. Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen. London: Transworld Publishers, 1992. Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen. Trans. Megan Backus. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. [ 6 ]. Susan Lucas Dobrian. “Romancing the Cook: Parodic Consumption of Popular Romance Myths in ‘Como agura para chocolate’”, Latin American Review 24, no. 48 (1996), http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119730 [ 7 ]