Character Analysis:Fermina

As the object of love in Love in the Time of Cholera, Fermina Daza is the hub of the story around which the plot turns. A beautiful and haughty woman, she is appealing to both Dr. Urbino and Florentino Ariza because of her exclusivity. Florentino could write sixty to seventy pages of compliments to her. In my opinion, she has many traits that make her appealing to the reader and allow her to be the hypotenuse of such an intense love triangle.
Everyone knows that playing hard-to-get is a surefire way to attract the opposite sex. Apparently, Fermina Daza is no exception. As a young girl, as Florentino rapturously stares at her while she studies, she “did not even respond with a charitable glance” (60). When he offers her a camellia as a gesture of adoration, she refuses, saying that it is a “flower of promises”. Dr. Urbino fares no better in his initial attempts to woo her; for example, she slams a window in his face when he pays a return visit to her. The simple letters that he sends her are never returned, and he must veritably lock her in his coach with him to get her to talk to him. Her tactics bring to mind the familiar expression about the apple: the higher it is (ie. the harder you have to work for it), the better it tastes.
To further add to Fermina’s appeal is the fact that underneath her haughty, sophisticated exterior lies a caring and adoring soul. For example, she is an “irrational idolator of tropical flowers and domestic animals”(21) who circumvents her husband’s seemingly impassable rule and buys a parrot. She is also an amazing wife to Dr. Urbino throughout their long and sometimes rocky marriage. In his old age, she assumes the unenviable role of a devoted mother: “She could not remember when she had also begun to help him dress, and finally to dress him, and she was aware that at first she had done it for love, but for the past five years or so she had been obliged to do it…because he could not dress himself” (26). To me, this devotion, even after many long years, speaks more about their love and about Fermina’s personality than any other aspect of their relationship.
Throughout the story, Fermina Daza captures the attention (and hearts) of two men with her beauty, poise, and nurturing personality. Along the way, the reader begins to understand how she can compel these men to go to such lengths to woo her. Gabriel Garcia Marquez needed to have the love interest of his book lovable enough to justify the plot, and he found such a likeability personality in Fermina Daza. Although the reader cannot see her, through her thoughts and actions we have an understanding as to why she shaped the lives of Dr. Urbino and Florentino Ariza, who are at first smitten merely by her beauty. (505)