Fermina Daza’s acceptance of Florentino Ariza’s marriage proposal

Fermina Daza’s acceptance of Florentino Ariza’s marriage proposal transforms their almost two-year correspondence into an engagement, but it does not arrive as a simple declaration of certainty. Florentino makes a formal proposal; Fermina postpones her answer, then agrees in a terse, unexpectedly playful note. The camellia that had served as a sign of continued correspondence becomes the instrument of a final decision.

The proposal and the camellias

Florentino’s proposal came in a one-paragraph letter after almost two years of what the narrative calls their frenetic correspondence. For the preceding six months, he had sent Fermina a white camellia on several occasions. She returned it with her next letter, making clear that she wished to keep writing but did not regard the exchange as a promise of marriage. To Florentino, the proposal formalized a relationship he was prepared to make binding; to Fermina, the flowers had remained part of a lovers’ game, not a crossroads in her life.

Fear and delay

The proposal unsettled Fermina in a way the earlier letters and flowers had not. For the first time, she felt wounded by what the narrative describes as the clawings of death, and she turned in panic to her Aunt Escolástica. Her aunt urged her to say yes despite the fear or the possibility of later regret, reasoning that refusing would leave its own lifelong regret. The advice gives Fermina a clear course, but does not resolve her uncertainty: she asks for time, first a month, then two, then three, and still has not answered after four months.

A conditional acceptance

After the delay, Florentino sends another white camellia, this time accompanied by notice that it is the last: the decision must be made now. That afternoon Fermina sends her answer on a strip torn from the margin of a school notebook, written in pencil and reduced to one line: “Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eat eggplant.” The acceptance is unequivocal, but its condition gives the moment a domestic and lightly comic note rather than the solemnity Florentino might have expected. The narrative says that he was unprepared for the answer, while his mother, Tránsito Ariza, was not.

Consequences and significance

Fermina’s reply settles the immediate question of whether she will marry Florentino, but the circumstances resist a simple reading of the decision as effortless romantic certainty. Her months of postponement contrast with his formal proposal and his final, deadline-marked flower; her aunt’s counsel frames the choice through the competing possibilities of regret. The returned camellias had kept their correspondence open while refusing the meaning Florentino wanted them to bear. With the last flower, and Fermina’s conditional yes, that recurring exchange finally changes from a game into an engagement.