Life's Not Like a Box of Chocolates
Songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GWQ-oDMG6g (Never Gonna Be Alone), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-3vPxKdj6o (Breakaway)
Left to suffer in silence, the plight of Tita becomes the driving force that removes her from the ranch and more importantly, tradition. However, a brutal gang attack on Chencha and Mama Elena forces Tita to come to grips with her past and share the magic of the Ox Tail Soup which revived her own crushed spirit. However, Mama Elena's stubborn refusal of Tita's remedy ends in her death, where Tita discovers letters detailing repressed memories of a love affair with a mulatto man. Finding similarities between herself and the source of her oppression, Tita pities the societal bonds destroying all love and happiness her mother once knew and is finally able to grieve. Now free to seek love, Tita experiences the rekindling of her moldy matches, only to suffer vicariously with the birth of her niece, Esperanza. Rage boiling in her chest at her plight, Tita becomes weak and finally succumbs to Pedro's advances...
Shattering the codes of decency, Tita's rebellion manifests itself in the form of an "unborn child". Forlorn and left to her own devices, Tita muddles through life, plagued with the heckling of her dead mother's self-righteous attitudes and no one to confide in.
Once reunited with Gertrudis during the Feast of the Three Kings, Tita copes with the loneliness accompanying rebels and rediscovers her fighting spirit. Confronting Pedro, heart on her sleeve, Tita unveils his hesitancy to scoff societal norms in favor of appearance. Disappointed, an emotionally unstable Tita faces her deceased mother, casting off her input and rules once and for all, freeing herself -the ULTIMATE rebellion!
Unable to ever truly escape her destiny, Tita provides Esperanza the methods and life lessons needed to experience a life worth living, hidden within her cookbook. Essentially a guide to rebellion, Tita encourages her niece to shirk the place set at Rosaura's elbow and become a true woman: educated, emotional and beautiful. While Tita discovers freedom through consummation of desire with Pedro at the novel's end (the chains of the past burning around her), Esperanza marries, attends school and nullifies the need for rebellion against society. Tita paved the way.
