Epiphany to Late-Flowering Love: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera
Date
2008
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Central Department of English Kirtipur, Kathmandu
Abstract
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera primarily deals with the
anatomy of illusory and immature love, and its psychological impact on the characters in
a physical world or society where rules, norms, systems, etc. are of crucial significance.
Since it deals with the psychological and biological aspect of the characters, its prime
emphasis is on the explication of the individual characters and their formation of identity
or subjectivity in a restrictive society. In other words, love is treated psychoanalytically
in the novel, for it delineates how the protagonists or main characters named Dr. Juvenal
Urbino, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza have spent the life of illusion and hence
suffer from neurosis as one would suffer from Cholera.
Florentino's unrequited love for the haughty, stubborn Fermina brings
psychological upheavals in him when she goes and marries another man, Dr. Urbino.
Florentino suffers from this as he might suffer from any fatal disease and conflates his
physical agony with amorous agony. He spends whole life vowing eternal fidelity and
everlasting love for Fermina Daza though he makes hundreds of sexual encounters with
other women in pursuit of solace. Ultimately his suffering ends to some extent after the
union with the lady of his heart after Fermina's husband Dr. Juvenal Urbino's accidental
death. They come to the epiphany or realization of the significance of mutual love for
jubilant and stable life. Their love blooms late in their old age, however, they have not
utterly deserved their solid identity because they have started the journey without
destination in a sea. So they are still in the process of 'enunciation'.
Description
Keywords
Novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez'