Celebrating or Mourning Patriarchal Love: The Case of Curious Courtships in Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera

Abstract

The present study on the novel Love in the Time of Cholera is a critique of idealized patriarchal concept of love divided into higher and debased love by Freud. Love in the novel is predominantly physical and sexual in nature that involves the politics of body and eroticism by creating what Freidan calls feminine mystique. Love, omnipotent in the novel, is choleric in nature showing multi-facets of structured sexuality ranging from extramarital violations to child abuse. The novel projects intensive display of genderism and patriarchal sexual fetishes that gratify whatever masculinity can possibly imagine. There is noticeable narrative indifference towards the women presented as weaklings fallible to commercialized sex, pretty fit in their gender role exhibiting internalized sexual oppression and violence. Florentino has been promoted as an indefatigable stud and celebrated macho with magically exaggerated virility and inexhaustible libido. He has deconstructed the concept of virginity where one may have many partners but still is a virgin as one could not conquer the desired womb. The multifarious sexual violations of women, celebrated as debased love in the text, is to be mourned in the world where textualization of amour is all about sexualisation and sensationalization of female bodies resulting into exclusion of authentic female images except the character of Leona Cassiani who resists patriarchal assumptions.