| Chapter 1: | Intellectual Appetites |
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takes care of her skin, and that keeps herself attractive” (15), and who force her constantly to mind her physical appearance in order to satisfy the male gaze.
Additionally, Castellanos employs cinematic tropes to express her views on marriage. At the sight of the meat that lies motionless like a cadaver, the protagonist imagines a scene from a movie. At the end, the perfect lovers vanish “and the words ‘the end’ will appear on the screen” (17). Hence, cinema is an expressive tool to parody the fictitious depictions of women in popular culture that are so different from their life experiences.
Through their own behavior, women play the male game, maintaining the status quo, which only serves to subjugate them. The protagonist does not follow the recipe, and because of it, the meat is ruined. As a result, she needs to come up with an excuse to give to her husband. On the one hand, she can follow the hypocritical and deceitful advice that the columnist would give to her homemaking readers: “open the window, plug in the air purifier” (18), which would probably result in the husband suggesting that they go to a restaurant. On the other hand, she could adopt a more sincere and daring tactic, allowing her husband to discover that she has burnt the meat.
She remembers her mother-in-law, who, in jest, used to describe her own tricks in the kitchen as a new bride: “That time, for example, when her husband asked for a couple of fried eggs and she took him literally and…ha, ha, ha” (19). The humorous pun by which her mother-in-law excuses her cooking blunder underscores Castellanos’ criticism of male-controlled language; it is as if to say that if women were to take things literally, a disaster would be likely to ensue. The protagonist remembers that with time her mother-in-law became a fabulous cook, “Since all that about widowhood came much later and for other reasons” (19). With this last enigmatic comment, the reader begins