Love Theme Analysis

Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera follows the romantic lives of three central characters—Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza, and Dr. Juvenal Urbino—to explore the meaning of true love. The daughter of a Spanish mule trader, Fermina Daza discovers domestic love when she marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino, an intelligent man from a wealthy family. During her marriage, Fermina realizes that her couple is tied together through intense knowledge of the other, tenderness, and habit—but not necessarily through romantic love. By contrast, she discovers passionate love during her adolescent romance with telegraph operator Florentino Ariza. Although Fermina ultimately rejects him, Florentino proves to be a hopeless romantic and devotes his entire life to waiting for her to return to him. By the end of the novel, after the death of Fermina’s husband, the two of them reunite. This happy ending seemingly proves that Florentino’s ardent love has triumphed over Dr. Urbino’s domestic affection. However, through Fermina’s doubts and reflections, the novel shows that true love is not necessarily easy to recognize. Following the various periods of Fermina’s life, Love in the Time of Cholera suggests that there might be different ways to love different people at different times, depending on personality and the various stages of life.

Although Fermina and Dr. Urbino do not marry for love, their relationship evolves over time into a relationship of mutual dependence, suggesting that relationships which lack romance can still serve a practical purpose. Dr. Juvenal Urbino marries Fermina because he admires her qualities, but not because he is madly in love with her. Over the course of their marriage, though, both characters develop tender feelings for each other. Fermina takes care of her aging husband with devotion, treating him like a “senile baby.” The two characters realize that they constantly think about each other and cannot live without each other. However, they take care not to question whether this mutual dependence derives from love or mere habit, preferring not to trouble the stability of their marriage. Dr. Urbino, in fact, believes that stability in marriage is more important than happiness. He understands his relationship with Fermina as a lifelong commitment made of self-sacrifice. This devotion allows him to put an end to his adulterous relationship with Miss Barbara Lynch—a woman for whom, incidentally, he seems to feel the romantic passion that lacks in his marriage.

Ultimately, it remains ambiguous whether true love has ever emerged between Dr. Urbino and Fermina. When Dr. Urbino lies dying after a violent fall, he tells Fermina: “Only God knows how much I loved you.” This romantic statement suggests that he must have felt love for her after so many years of partnership, but it does not keep Fermina from questioning the nature of this love later on. “It is incredible how one can be happy for so many years in the midst of so many squabbles, so many problems, damn it, and not really know if it was love or not,” she says. Although Fermina and her husband shared evident feelings of care and affection, it remains unclear whether sharing domestic life was sufficient to kindle true, unequivocal love.

By contrast, Florentino Ariza loves Fermina with an intensity that he never doubts. However, although his romantic attitude can be seen as an antidote to the routine nature of Fermina and Dr. Urbino’s marriage, the relationship between Florentino and Fermina is also marked by conflict and ambiguity. Florentino Ariza’s love for Fermina is physical and uncontrollable. It manifests itself in visible ways: Florentino loses his appetite, has diarrhea, and vomits, to the point of making it seem as though he is a victim of cholera. Love, in this sense, is associated with illness, an intense physical phenomenon against which Florentino cannot fight. This suggests that Florentino’s love might be unequivocal, but is not necessarily wholly positive, as it has an obsessive tinge to it. In fact, when Fermina and Florentino reunite at the end of the novel, they seem to have different conceptions of love. Fermina is annoyed by Florentino’s excessive romanticism—the very quality that, in Florentino’s eyes, constitutes his love. In the end, it is only by concealing the more obsessive aspects of his character (and highlighting, instead, his capacity for intellectual reflection) that Florentino ultimately seduces Fermina.

Although the novel’s ending suggests that Florentino’s love has finally vanquished all obstacles, it also reveals that Fermina and Florentino’s relationship might be successful primarily because it represents an escape from the responsibilities of life: “It was as if they had leapt over the arduous cavalry of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love.” The characters are both at “the heart of love” and “beyond love”—an ambiguous characterization. Perhaps, the novel suggests, this particular relationship is successful because it does not reflect what is traditionally understood as “love” (the intense passion that Florentino has experienced his whole life) but, rather, camaraderie in the face of death. Their love, then, functions because it is perfectly suited to this particular moment in time: the end of the two characters’ lives, after long years of marriage and youthful passion.

The ending of the novel thus suggests that Florentino’s love for Fermina as an elderly man arrives at the right place and time, but is not capable of replacing or overshadowing Fermina’s marriage to Dr. Urbino—a man she might not have loved, but whom she feels was an adequate husband for her. While for Florentino this ending represents the culmination of his life-long desire, to be united with the woman of his dreams, for Fermina it merely fills a gap at the end of her life. The novel thus shows that love can take on various forms and serve different purposes over the course of one person’s life.