Separation Ignites Intimacy

Separation Ignites Intimacy - This study will explore the seemingly paradoxical romantic situation that physical separation can actually lead to a closer, more intimate relationship between the characters Tita and Pedro in Like Water for Chocolate and Angela and Bayardo in Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

In literature, many authors have developed the theme of lovers and, ultimately, their separation. However, this motif may be taken even further when lovers' separations result in a closer, more intimate relationship. In Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold this concept holds true. Both writers develop characters with similar stories. Tita and Pedro's and Angela and Bayardo's relationships last despite tradition and culture. Both sets of lovers are separated for many years, and reunited only to find they have a stronger bond than they could have had without the separation. Additionally, both writers use magical-realism and absurdity in order to emphasize and intensify the relationships, the separations, and the bond which is created between the two lovers after they reunite.

Both Like Water for Chocolate and Chronicle of a Death Foretold are set in very traditional Latin America. In Like Water for Chocolate, Mama Elena, Tita's mother, separates Pedro and Tita because of the tradition that the youngest daughter must take care of her mother until her death. "If he intends to ask for your hand, tell him not to botherÐ'...You know perfectly well that being the youngest daughter means you have to take care of me until the day I die" (10). In Chronicle of a Death Foretold the tradition of maintaining a man's honor requires that Bayardo leave his bride because she is not a virgin. "Defense of honor" (48). "Honor is love" (97).

Both authors use traditional roles of women to express the passionate love that goes against tradition. In Like Water for Chocolate, Chapter 3, "Quail in Rose Petal Sauce," the flowers that Pedro picks to give to Tita are symbolically used as a sauce for a meal Tita prepares for the entire family. The flowers, roses, are a universal symbol of love. To use flowers to make a sauce for quail is unusual; however, cleverly, it becomes more than just a hiding place for the supposed discarding of a lover's gift and more than just a nod of appreciation from Tita to Pedro. Instead, the sauce becomes a magic potion. "She [Gertrudis] turned to Tita for help, but Tita wasn't thereÐ'...It was as if a strange alchemical process had dissolved her entire beingÐ'...that was the way she entered Pedro's body, hot, voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous" (52). The imagery of heat and intimacy is repeated throughout the novel, and strengthens the lovers' passion and sexual desire as it increases over the years of separation.

Like Tita's cooking, Angela in Chronicle of a Death Foretold secretly hides writing passionate letters to Bayardo behind the guise of her embroidery. "She wrote a weekly letter for over half a lifetime" (93). Through this visual image of Angela consistently writing to Bayardo, Marquez illustrates the intensity of the passion so great it forces her to go against her Latin American culture, which would have forever separated her from the husband she has wronged.

Separation can often result in loneliness and longing because a relationship is forced to live within the realism of memory and fantasy which can intensify the desire for a lover, sometimes to the point of obsession. In fact, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" (Eleanor Roosevelt). In Like Water for Chocolate, Pedro marries Rosaura, in order to be close to his true love, Tita. Everyday Tita and Pedro are reminded of their desire and are forced to hide and express their love in new ways. Tita's desire is driven to the point of obsession, when she knits a massive quilt; "The enormous bedspread she had knit during her endless nights of insomniaÐ'...drag behind the carriageÐ'...that stretched a full kilometer" (101). Tita's desire becomes an obsession, absurdly enough this passion stretches a kilometer. Pedro marries a woman he does not love, to be with the one he does love, and then he waits twenty-two years to marry his first love: "Do you remember when we heard this song for the first time? I'll never forget. I couldn't sleep that night, thinking about asking for your hand right then. I didn't know it would take twenty-two years before I would ask you to be my wife" (236). Finally, over twenty-two years, Pedro and Tita wait to express their love free of guilt and full of passion. The first time Tita and Pedro make love, the two have a very extraordinary experience. "Plumes of phosphorescent colors were ascending to the sky like delicate Bengal lights" (158). Magically, their love making becomes like a display of fireworks, bright colors dancing around like joyful spirits. Esquivel uses this imagery of brightness to illustrate the degree of Tita and Pedro's intimate feelings full of heat and passion. Esquivel closes Tita and Pedro's love story with their sexual climax. Their separation ends with a reunion of their souls. "They left together for the lost Eden. Never again would they be apart." (245). The moment of physical death for Tita and Pedro, after years of separation, results in their ultimate fate: They are consumed by their love.

On the other hand, in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, at the onset of the novel, the couple is not in love with each other: "Angela Vicario only dared hint at the inconvenience of a lack of love" (35). Angela is separated from Bayardo when, on their wedding night, Bayardo discovers Angela is not a virgin. Bayardo cannot accept this state of uncleanliness, and he returns Angela to her family as tarnished goods. Like Tita, Angela