We men are the miserable slaves of prejudice

“We men are the miserable slaves of prejudice” is Juvenal Urbino’s remembered verdict on masculine submission to convention, recalled by Fermina Daza as she considers whether to begin again with Florentino Ariza. Its force lies in the contrast between the restraint imposed by social judgment and the decisive freedom Urbino once attributed to women in love.

The Remark and Its Speaker

The sentence comes back to Fermina after Florentino has left her in the darkness. She has refused his attempt to kiss her, saying that she smells like an old woman. Alone, she lights another cigarette and sees Juvenal in memory: immaculate in his linen suit, rigorous in his profession, dazzling in charm, and marked by the official love he had offered her. The recollection places the remark within the long history of their marriage rather than presenting it as an abstract maxim.

Urbino’s wording is deliberately collective. By saying “We men,” he implicates himself in the prejudice he condemns; the statement is not an accusation made from outside masculine convention. The compact phrase names a constraint that continues to matter even after the man who spoke it is gone.

Context and Meaning

The remembered sentence is followed by Urbino’s broader claim that when a woman decides to sleep with a man, no wall, fortress, or moral consideration can ultimately stop her. The two statements work together: men are bound by prejudice, while women, once they choose, can cross the barriers that convention erects. That contrast makes his remark pointedly gendered, describing women’s desire as a force capable of overcoming social and moral restrictions.

The scene does not simply endorse Urbino’s generalization. Fermina has just refused Florentino’s kiss, and her next response is not immediate surrender but an all-night reckoning. She thinks of Florentino not as the youthful, desolate sentinel she no longer feels nostalgic for, but as the old, lame, real man who has remained within reach and whom she could never acknowledge. Her present choice therefore gives the remembered claim a more complicated setting: desire may challenge prejudice, but Fermina’s decision unfolds through memory, age, and hesitation.

Recall and Narrative Consequence

The phrase arrives as part of Fermina’s private vision of Juvenal, a figure from another boat out of the past. Its placement connects her former marriage to the new intimacy being tested on the voyage. The dead husband’s words persist in her thoughts, but they do not dictate her answer; she remains motionless until dawn, thinking about Florentino and hoping he will know how to begin again the next day.

He does. When Fermina wakes, a fresh white rose and a long letter from Florentino await her. She reads the letter with embarrassment at her own racing heart, then gets ready to meet the Captain on the bridge. The remembered remark thus stands at a hinge between refusal and renewed contact: it gives language to the force of convention while the rose, letter, and Fermina’s response show the relationship moving forward through particular choices rather than through a maxim alone.