Fermina: There's a Bit of her Youth in There

Love in the Time of Cholera may focus around Florentino's many affairs, but its underlying theme is the relationship between Florentino and Fermina. Fermina, despite really not physically appearing in the book as often as Florentino (though she appears quite often), has the largest impact on the novel.
Fermina Daza is very aware of her actions. She knows she is headstrong, unfaltering, and proud, perhaps a bit conceited. She knows what she wants and will stop at nothing until she successfully gets it. For example, the reader learns in section one that when Dr. Juvenal Urbino does not let her own a pet that cannot speak, she finds one that can—a parrot. Also, she refuses to accept the blame for any wrong she indeed committ. She makes Dr. Urbino surrender to her conditions. She does this because she hates feeling guilt.
She may be tough on the exterior, but beneath this facade is a caring, nurturing woman. She takes care of her old, aging husband like she would a baby. She loves animals and flowers, a trait of her underlying tenderness. The girl who Florentino fell in love with, the girl who left the City of the Viceroys and never seemed to really return, is still within Fermina. She just exposes herself in very subtle ways.
Fermina becomes a woman when she leaves the City of the Viceroys and returns a few years later. Her desires for her first suitor, her thrills of forbidden romance are lost when she becomes a woman, because it has lost its scandalous and dangerous qualities. As she matures, she realizes (or convinces herself?) that her love for Florentino was foolish, and solely her expression of wanting to rebel from her dominating father. She does not linger on the whims of her youth for long, and certainly her marriage to Dr. Urbino seals those days as a past she forgets.
As an adult, Fermina holds herself, and conveys herself as, a highly esteemed person commanding respect. When she marries Dr. Urbino, she is shifting from the upper ranks of the peasantry to the upper ranks of the elite. This change affects Fermina by how she now upholds herself. Instead of fantasizing about idealism like she did in her youth, Fermina now upholds herself with the utmost proficiency for her position as a lady of society.
However, the stubbornness of her youth never leaves her. She dislikes religion and the Catholic Church after being expelled from an all girls Catholic school. She feels that the Church lack the virtue it preaches to its followers. Whenever the Doctor suggests that they involve the Archbishop in their faltering marraige, she refuses, almost proudly, because of her dislike of the Catholic Church.
Fermina's stubbornness and haughtiness makes me believe she doesn't really love Florentino at the end. More on that later.

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