Classics Corner: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Romantic Marquez Novel About Romance, Passion, and Young Love

 Classics Corner: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Romantic Marquez Novel About Romance, Passion, and Young Love

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book with a bird on the cover

Spoilers: I will admit that One Hundred Years of Solitude is not the best book to start with if you are interested in reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's fine works. I learned this the hard way.

 It is a grand wondrous novel that combines Colombian history with magical realism. However, it is also large with an at-times unwieldy plot and multigenerational characters that share the same name and personality traits. It can leave the first-time Marquez Reader feeling enchanted and at the same time discombobulated. 

For the Marquez Virgin, a better book to break in your experience would be the shorter but still compelling Love in the Time of Cholera. It's not as well written as One Hundred Years, but it has a tighter focus and a more straightforward plot and characterization. In fact it is mostly limited to three characters.

The first character that we meet is Dr. Juvenal Urbino as he goes through his daily routine. He teaches a class in general clinical medicine, visits patients especially playing chess with his favorite patient, Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, reads from his vast book collection, visits his favorite cafe, and has frosty conversations with his wife, Fermina Daza. Juvenal's life is so routine that Marquez tells us that if Fermina ever needs him for anything, she knows exactly where to reach him and who he is with.

Juvenal and Fermina have been married for a number of years. They are pillars of the community and are settled into a marriage that is pleasant but complacent. Most would even describe their marriage as idyllic, even perfect, and that they are the greatest loves of each other's life. That is until after Juvenal's death. 

At Juvenal's funeral, the weeping widow encounters a familiar face, Florentino Ariza. The elderly man confesses that he has loved Fermina all along and has never stopped loving her. Fermina brushes him off citing her grief, and you know time and place, but later when she is alone and weeping, she realizes that she is not weeping for Juvenal but Florentino

We then peer into the early lives of Fermina and Florentino and learn that they were once lovers. Florentino was an illegitimate son and worked as a telegraph operator. While delivering a message, he catches sight of a beautiful young girl reading to her aunt and falls in love at first sight. The two engage in a romantic affair in which her father does not approve, even to the point of sending Fermina away to live with her deceased mother's family. However, the two are so heated for each other that they are willing to risk anything to marry. They continue their relationship via telegraph and get engaged

 Unfortunately, just as heated as their relationship begins, it ends just as abruptly when they physically see each other again. Fermina says that their relationship was based on "nothing more than illusion." Fernina breaks things off and settles into marriage with Dr. Juvenal Urbino and Florentino bounces from one love affair to another, never settling into one relationship for very long. 

The magical realism touches that were so prevelant in One Hundred Years are sporadic in Love in the Time of Cholera, replacing one story that was so memorably fantastic with another that is almost disappointingly normal and ordinary. 

However, there are some clever touches. One of them is Juvenal and Fermina's pet parrot. Fermina got it after an argument with Juvenal in which he insisted that she could not get a pet and the only thing that can live in the house is anything that speaks. Clever Fermina took those exact words to heart and brought home the parrot. Juvenal admired his wife's subterfuge and even bonded with the bird himself. Unfortunately, the parrot inadvertently leads to its master's death as when it escapes, Juvenal climbs a ladder to retrieve it only to fall off the ladder and break his neck.

These incidents share One Hundred Years's penchant for making ordinary things extraordinary and finding magic and bizarreness in even the most mundane everyday things.

The love story between Fermina and Florentino seems similar to those found in fairy tales and legends of star crossed lovers. We have the innocent pair who fall in love at first sight. We have the disapproving parental figure who wants to split them up. We even have the Fairy Godmother who tries to help bring them together, in Fermina's Aunt Escolastica, who becomes exiled for her efforts. What we don't get is the happy ever after between the young lovers.

As much as Love in the Time of Cholera is invested in magical realism, it also is set in the real world. A real world that recognizes and acknowledges passion, but knows that passion is not always the best way to live. In fact the book brings new meaning to the term "love sick."

During their courtship, Fermina and Florentino, particularly Florentine, are so besotted with each other that they become physically ill. The illness is even comparable to the symptoms of cholera which Juvenal tries to eradicate. It is almost as though the lovers are romance incarnate, filled with heedless passion, the kind that makes a person feel physical pain when the loved one is far away and that healing when they are nearby. 

Because of the passion of their romance, it makes sense in a strange sad way that their romance would fizzle out just as quickly. No real reason is given, just Fermina says some harsh words that are never taken back and they go onto their separate lives. Passion cannot exist very long and people fall out of love as quickly as they fall in.

It is also no coincidence that Fermima settles into a correct stable marriage with Juvenal. He is a man of routine, devoid of passion. His goal is to eradicate cholera, as if to eradicate passion from his life. Once, he and Fermina marry, there is very little keeping them together beyond their status. He is not an unkind man, just not a very loving one. Everything for him must be measured, correct, and by the book. However, he too succumbs to passion when he admits that he had an affair during his and Fermina's marriage. Fermina also falls into that passionless life and cares for her home, possessions, and the standings of herself and her children.

While Fermina settles into full responsibility, Florentino continues to live on the outsides of society. He never marries, only fulfilling his sexual needs with various women. With each woman, he tries to fill the void left by Fermina but never succeeds. He disregards and treats many of them horribly such as a young woman, who after Florentino rejects her, commits suicide. Fermina became a creature of rationality only to be satisfied with creature comforts and status. Florentino becomes a figure of unbridled romance only to be satisfied with fulfilling his sexual desires. The two need each other to fill those aspects of their lives that are solely missing.

Eventually, the long divergent roads that the two take become intertwined after Juvenal's death. Youthful passion is long gone, but maturity and age set in. They are able to resume their romance and make plans to marry. 

The ending of the book offers the lovers a second chance at a life together as though they weren't ready the first time. They needed to grow up, experience loss, find unhappiness in unfulfilled relationships, and gain a few gray hairs before they are permitted to be together. The lovers were right for each other, but the timing was off.

Once they realize this, they are able to realize that their relationship was one that was not built solely on sexual fulfillment and emotion. It was built on real love, compassion, and tenderness.