Everybody always thinks they alone know what’s best for everyone and how to run an entire nation. As if even the people whose job it is to do those things can actually do it! A lot of hot air in these cafes.

“Political morality is like a cape with so many patches that one no longer knows which was the original fabric.” ha! Also, we’re repeating the image of fabrics here, like at the beginning, this weaving of stories and people.

So should we blame Fortunata? She can’t help that she love Juanito, but at what point does someone have to take responsibility? She didn’t have to marry Maximiliano, she just went along with it, though she did think she could make it work. But she can’t control herself. And should she?

Both of the men in her life are such big children: Maximiliano with his migraines and Juanito with his baby talk (yeth) and inability to get over her.

“She felt that she was a living doll controlled by an invisible, unknown power she could not name.”

Wow, what a chapter! Her hand on the lock trying to decide to open it and let him in, the maid like a devil on her shoulder telling her to give in, her sick husband in am opiate dream in the giant bed. Fever and desire and sickness and anger and temptation. What a novel!!!

Instead of consummation the marriage, he’s sick with a migraine and she has to care for him. And she’s being told what to do about everything – ordering food, and how much to spend, and what Maximiliano should eat. No freedom. She might have been more free in the convent.

Ok, Nicolas (the brother priest) saying he’s been curing his migraine with ham is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. That’s genius.

The entire ceremony happens between two sentences. Her ‘transformation’ to being a lady, the event which makes her respectable happens between punctuation. It means that this ceremony is not what does or doesn’t do the trick.

Everyone in the wedding party is at least a little shabby (dirty collars), old fashioned (out of style top hat or county shawl), ill fitting (Maximiliano’s suit), and even his friends, who look fine, seem to leer around Fortunata. It’s a shoddy attempt at respectability and all led by the Turkey Lady.

Everything is laid out for her, even her future, and all seems content. Yet it’s impossible not to feel that she is being stifled by all this middle class comfort.