This is in an interesting question, for the text both challenges and mirrors a male-dominated view of reality, though in the end it arguably more challenges than mirrors it through its use of magic realism.

The text challenges a male-dominated view of reality by being told from a woman's point-of-view. Tita's perspective shapes the story and what she describes is almost entirely a woman's world of life in the home. Hers is the view from the kitchen, a woman's space, where for much of her life she is consigned. Although she loves Pedro, most of her companionship comes from other woman. She lives in matriarchy, dominated by Mama Elena. Men are peripheral and are seen in terms of women's needs and desires.

The text, however, also mirrors a male-dominated view of reality. Tita lives in a world shaped by patriarchy. It is male society that has decided woman's place is in the home. It is men who have defined a woman's traditional role as one of nurturer through cooking and caring for children, a role Tita constantly fulfills in the novel. Women in the novel are mothers, homemakers, or whores—spaces that patriarchy has decided is appropriate for females. Women primarily give up their lives to serve others, whether they like it or not. Having the love of a man is also a primary goal of the women in the book. Tita, playing out a very traditional woman's role as cook, nurturer (despite her fierce nature), and sex object, gains value because two men vie for her.

Mama Elena might run a matriarchal household and deflect all challenges to her authority, but she rules as a male patriarch would. She uses violence and coercion to hold onto power and expects her authority to be absolute. Like a stereotypical patriarchal, she believe in absolute authoritarianism with no room for a consensus decision making. She is ruthless is bending the people under her control, like Tita, to her will, and like a stereotypical male patriarch, she uses tradition (the way things have always been done) as a weapon.

Despite so much mirroring of the structures of patriarchy, the book nevertheless subverts the patriarchal with its magic realism. The rationality and logic that is associated with male and often used to justify repression is overpowered in this novel by the anarchic force of fairytale forms of power—especially the magical power assigned food to reflect emotion—to allow women like Tita an agency they otherwise would not have.