Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

After the funeral Florentino proclaims his love for Fermina once again and tells her he has stayed faithful to her all these years.

Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino's love for Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino's was, it also complicates Florentino's devotion by cataloging his many trysts as well as a few potentially genuine loves.Īs an elderly man, Urbino attempts to get his pet parrot out of his mango tree, only to fall off the ladder he was standing on and die. Urbino proves in the end not to have been an entirely faithful husband, confessing one affair to Fermina many years into their marriage.

Meanwhile, Fermina and Urbino grow old together, going through happy years and unhappy ones and experiencing all the reality of marriage. Even with all the women he is with, he makes sure that Fermina will never find out. Įven after Fermina's engagement and marriage, Florentino swore to stay faithful and wait for her but his promiscuity gets the better of him and he has hundreds of affairs. He is a herald of progress and modernization. He is a rational man whose life is organized precisely and who greatly values his importance and reputation in society. He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public works.

Urbino is a physician devoted to science, modernity, and 'order and progress'. Despite her initial dislike of Urbino, Fermina gives in to her father's persuasion and the security and wealth Urbino offers, and they wed. Juvenal Urbino, meets Fermina and begins to court her. Upon her return, Fermina realizes that her relationship with Florentino was nothing but a dream since they are practically strangers she breaks off her engagement to Florentino and returns all his letters.Ī young and accomplished national hero, Dr. Regardless of the distance, Fermina and Florentino continue to communicate via telegraph. When she refuses, he and his daughter move in with his deceased wife's family in another city. But once Fermina's father, Lorenzo Daza, finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Florentino immediately. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's Aunt Escolástica. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Edith Grossman's English translation was published by Alfred A. Love in the Time of Cholera ( Spanish: El amor en los tiempos del cólera) is a novel written in Spanish by Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez and published in 1985.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez