Female Perspective on Sexual Acts Term Paper

The culminating act of the novel also clearly illustrates this principle. During the second time Tita and Pedro make love -- and the only time they do so with complete abandonment, without fear of getting caught, the world reacts in a manner typical of magical realism, with the massive fluttering sound of a thousand doves wings: "Tita was aware of none of this, she was experiencing a climax so intense that her closed eyes glowed, and a brilliant tunnel appeared before her" (Esquivel, 220). This tunnel leads to the afterlife, and means death. Tita is able to keep herself back from this light, resisting the temptation in order to enjoy her newfound world of pleasure with Pedro. Pedro, however, crosses over into the light; the act of uninhibited sexual intercourse is too powerful for him, and he is consumed by it. Though the book's central conflict is the denial of Tita's right to determine and assert her own feminine sexual identity, in reality it proves stronger than Pedro's masculine energy.Woman at Point Zero and Like Water for Chocolate show instances of sexuality and the sex act in very different cultures. Both novels explore the relationship of the feminine to the act of sexual intercourse with conclusions that are perhaps surprising, and in many ways strikingly similar. These very modern stories illustrate the impossibility of truly suppressing female sexual desire, or even of mis-categorizing it as subservient to dominant male forces. Attempts to do so, as these novels show, are not only futile but highly destructive.

Works Cited

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. New York: Anchor, 1995.

Saadawi, Nawal El. Woman….....