Cooking Lesson by Rosario Castellanos
"Cooking Lesson" by Rosario Castellanos explores the challenges faced by a newly married Mexican woman struggling with societal expectations around domesticity and cooking. The narrative centers on her reliance on a cookbook, highlighting her frustrations with recipes that seem daunting for a novice. As she attempts to prepare a roast, her thoughts drift to the broader changes in her life since her marriage, drawing parallels between the cooking process and her personal transformations. The story delves into her feelings of inadequacy and resentment towards the domestic roles traditionally assigned to women.
The protagonist grapples with the pressures to present a perfect image as a wife, leading to a pivotal moment when a cooking mishap results in a burned roast. This incident forces her to confront two contrasting choices: to conceal her failure and maintain her husband's idealized perception of her or to embrace her authentic self, accepting the consequences that may follow. Castellanos' work poignantly captures the tensions between personal identity and societal expectations, inviting readers to reflect on the complexities of gender roles within the context of domestic life.
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Cooking Lesson by Rosario Castellanos
First published: "Lección de cocina," 1971 (English translation, 1988)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of work: The 1960's
Locale: Mexico
Principal Character:
The narrator , a young Mexican housewife
The Story
A recently married Mexican woman explains that because she does not know how to cook, she must resort to a cookbook for guidance. Her frustration grows as she skims through recipes too difficult for novices to follow. Feeling dishonest in wearing an apron that suggests an expertise that is generally assumed to be second nature to women, the narrator finally decides to defrost and prepare a roast. While thus occupied, her mind wanders back and forth between her culinary task and the changes that have occurred in her life since she met her husband. Remarks that she makes, such as, "The meat hasn't stopped existing. It has undergone a series of metamorphoses," apply to both her cooking and her life—both of which have undergone major transformations. Meanwhile, her resentment toward other household matters surfaces.
Despite her supervision, the roast eventually burns, leaving her to contemplate two possible ways in which to deal with the problem. As a woman who has been socialized to be a wife who embodies perfection, she can air out the kitchen, toss out the burned roast to hide the evidence of her failure, and await her husband coquettishly dressed to go out for dinner. Her other option is to accept responsibility for the fiasco and risk shattering her husband's image of her. The story ends with her weighing the satisfaction of showing her true self against the ensuing consequences of not using traditional feminine wiles.