“To hell with the Archbishop!”

Fermina Daza’s “To hell with the Archbishop!” is the explosive climax of a domestic quarrel that has grown far beyond its trivial cause. The cry rejects the attempt to submit a dispute about soap to religious judgment; it also makes public the force of a private marital crisis, and precedes a reluctant accommodation rather than a full reconciliation.

The quarrel behind the outburst

The argument begins with a dispute over whether there had been soap in the bathroom. Juvenal Urbino refuses to return to ordinary life until Fermina admits there had been none; she, in turn, will not have him back until he acknowledges that he deliberately lied to torment her. He leaves to live in the interns’ quarters at Misericordia Hospital, returning home only to change clothes before his evening house calls. Fermina avoids him in the kitchen when he comes in and waits until she hears his carriage leave.

For three months, their attempts to settle the matter only intensify their feelings. As the soap dispute draws out older, seemingly minor grievances, the couple recognizes how many earlier dawns of married life have left resentments rather than resolution. The quarrel has become an inventory of accumulated injuries: old scars reopen, each partner is dismayed by the rancor they have nurtured, and the bathroom’s missing soap becomes the unlikely test case for years of conjugal conflict.

The phrase and its public echo

Juvenal proposes that they make an open confession, with the Archbishop present if necessary, and let God decide whether there had been soap in the dish. Fermina loses her temper and answers, “To hell with the Archbishop!” The line is an irreverent refusal of the proposed appeal to ecclesiastical authority, but it is also the instant at which her anger breaks through the couple’s efforts to keep the dispute contained.

The impropriety, as the narrative presents it, shakes the foundations of the city. It gives rise to slanders that are difficult to disprove, and the words pass into popular tradition like a line from an operetta. Their afterlife contrasts with the private domestic scale of their cause: an argument about a bathroom becomes a publicly remembered act of defiance.

Threat, stalemate, and accommodation

Fermina realizes she has gone too far and anticipates Juvenal’s response. She threatens to move to her father’s old house, which remains hers though it has been rented for public offices, and live there alone. The threat is genuine: she wants to leave and is not deterred by the scandal. Juvenal recognizes this in time and yields, unable to overcome his own prejudices enough to challenge her decision.

His capitulation does not settle the original question. He never admits that there had been soap; instead, he continues living in the same house, while he and Fermina sleep in separate rooms and do not speak. At meals, they relay messages through their children, who never realize that their parents are no longer talking to one another. The outcome is neither victory nor restored intimacy, but a truce maintained through silence and domestic routine.

The phrase within the marriage’s longer history

The arrangement eventually changes through small repetitions of shared life rather than through a formal resolution. Because the study has no bathroom, Juvenal comes in to bathe after preparing his class and tries not to wake Fermina. They sometimes arrive at the bathroom at the same time and take turns brushing their teeth before bed. Four months after the separation began, Juvenal falls asleep reading on their double bed; Fermina lies down beside him intending to make him wake and leave. He stirs, but turns out the light and settles back onto the pillow. The cry that once turned a domestic grievance into city gossip thus belongs to a conflict whose consequences persist in silence, while the couple’s eventual closeness returns through an unspoken gesture rather than an admission about the soap.