Love in the Time of Cholera
I’m behind already in writing about what I have been reading. And sadly Vonnegut’s Timequake and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead are going to have to wait for tomorrow or the weekend.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I really enjoyed this novel more thoroughly than I did One Hundred Years of Solitude. The ultimate strength is the story telling, the details and following of lives that almost succeeds in making you feel that you’ve lived along with these people. It also sort of captures a huge span of years in what I’m guessing is a smaller Colombian town from the time when the telegraph is really taking off and is seens as the definite symbol of the future to when airplanes are becoming increasingly common. It’s definitely more than just a love story and I’d say it also goes beyond what life decisions are made and why people make them.
I felt as if it also explored the nature of love and how that is sometimes strange and different for different people. In the beginning chronologically, Fermina Daza is confronted with an option to marry Florentino Ariza but then decides soon after (we know that in the very beginning she is married to Dr. Urbino so I am not giving too much away here) to reject the offer and marry Dr. Urbino. In fact, I’m not entirely sure why Fermina Daza decides to marry Dr. Urbino. I realize the sense of class rigidness was huge and it was a way to escape possible family ruin. But, at the same time, I thought perhaps she did love Florentino Ariza. Then, I thought his passion scared her at her young age. She didn’t know how to handle it. I felt in a way Fermina was no man’s woman who was trying desperately to be some man’s woman her whole life. In fact, I don’t think she’s completely sure whether she loves her husband at times. There are definitely statements made to suggest neither of them love eachother although I’m not entirely sure why a man of his position would then marry her unless it really was just pure phsyical attraction. I think she wants to look back and think that she loved him and I think the nature of love is precarious like this for some. In other words, she loves some things perhaps. You grow accostomed to things in people that you’d miss terribly. But I think she’s searching to love all things.
On the other hand, Florentino convinces himself that he loves Fermina soon without really knowing her. It does seem hasty and strange. It’s almost as if it’s a sort of overzealous Romeo and Juliet type of impassioned, although in this case unrequited, love (it is my opinion that Juliet could have done better (j/k)) When they meet again after he waits for her, he proclaims himself a virgin, which is obviously meant to be of the heart only. In fact, while Fermina lives a life trying to figure out her exact role and relation to Dr. Urbino, Florentino is basically sleeping with every woman in their town. So then there’s this idea of love as a separation…love as a soul felt experience and love as a physical endeavor only. It’s obvious that they don’t always co-occur. Yet, I would guess that there are things, from what the storytelling reveals, that Florentino loves about the women he pursues.
So why does he keep his heart for another for so long (or atleast believe that he is?) He is a romantic who writes love letters for others for a period…and, I almost feel as if he wants to believe in a love…a literary notion of love that isn’t real. He’s believing in an opposite of the very love of growing accostomed to someone’s little intricacies. He’s believing in a love of first sight passion. In a way, to me this is incredibly absurd. When does mere lust end and love begin? Well, to me it’s precicely when you know someone better and learn the details about them…it can even be simple things, the way the person holds her or his body when sighing…the way the person craves Indian food…anything. But without these small things, it’s not a person you are loving but more like an object or I should say, a being objectified.
There is an excellent symbol that may explain this sort of thing better although I am not sure whether Marquez meant it to intentionally. It is the symbol of the eggplant. Initially, Fermina says she will marry Florentino as long as he never makes her eat eggplant, which she detests. She asserts an anti eggplant stance with Dr. Urbino as well. But then, there comes a point when the eggplant is prepared slightly differently in a way in which she does not realize it is, in fact, eggplant. Without this awareness, she proclaims how much she loves the dish only to find, to her chagrin, that it was eggplant. After this, she eats eggplant often. I think the eggplant in some ways symbolizes love for Fermina…she’s somewhat resistant to it. Love has to be innovative and exciting for her. At the same time, love can’t be all passion as in the case of Florentino. But if it doesn’t seem to fit perfectly, I think she realizes there are some things she can love about Dr. Urbino who she may not be “in love” with. The nature of love evolves as well. And sometimes it is possible, I think, to learn to love someone by growing old together as they did. I’m sure there’s been a few arranged marriages throughout history where this, in fact, did occur. (not that I’m a proponent for arranged marriages, mind you. I’m not at all)
Who I feel sorry for most is not Florentino. No, what is he waiting for really? He’s galavanting around sometimes with girls (not just women but also girls) 60 yrs younger. He’s willing to abandon his lovers at the drop of the hat for a notion. It’s not a woman he knows. It’s an object he’s observed from afar slowly growing older. Perhaps the sense of romantic notions are heightened in this time period by the cholera. I’m guessing that’s part of it. But, she’s spent an entire lifetime not fully coming to terms with her own marriage in terms of love. Florentino at least has had what it seems both more physical and some additional emotional passion with the women he has kept ongoing affairs with.
I won’t give away the ending here in case others haven’t read it. Again, I did thoroughly enjoy the book in the sense of the rich storytelling. It definitely raised some questions as well about the nature of love. Perhaps it is in the way I view love…but, in the end, I felt that Florentino is no more a virgin than I am an antelope.