Though Celia pines for Gustavo, her complicated feelings toward him suggest that romantic passion waxes and wanes. Celia’s love for Gustavo is the driving passion of her life: “For twenty-five years, Celia wrote her Spanish lover a letter on the eleventh day of each month, then stored it in a satin-covered chest beneath her bed. Celia has removed her drop pearl earrings only nine times, to clean them. No one ever remembers her without them.” Writing to Gustavo is an ingrained ritual, and the earrings which Gustavo gave Celia are her trademark, even long after her marriage to Jorge. Yet she never actually mails the letters to Gustavo—suggesting that even though she loves him in a way she doesn’t love Jorge, Celia views Gustavo as a theoretical lover, a safely abstract figure in whom she can confide her deepest feelings. Eventually, Celia acknowledges to herself that even her passion for Gustavo isn’t what it once was, writing, “I still love you, Gustavo, but it's a habitual love, a wound in the knee that predicts rain. Memory is a skilled seducer. I write to you because I must. I don't even know if you're alive and whom you love now.” In other words, Gustavo is a deeply entrenched memory and a cherished habit for Celia, but Celia acknowledges that her feelings for him are illusory on a certain level, a “seduction” of memory that doesn’t correspond to reality. She doesn’t know the real him at all, nor does she maintain a genuine relationship with him. Meanwhile, this has lasting consequences for her actual marriage.
Celia and Jorge’s marital struggles further show that passion, if clung onto long after it has spent itself, is not harmless—it can damage potentially healthy relationships. When Jorge is injured in a car crash, Celia realizes that she does have feelings for him, writing to Gustavo: “Jorge is a good man, Gustavo. It surprised me how my heart jumped when I heard he'd been hurt. I cried when I saw him bandaged in white […] His eyes apologized for having disturbed me. Can you imagine? I discovered I loved him at that moment. Not a passion like ours, Gustavo, but love just the same. I think he understands this and is at peace.” Celia, in other words, realizes that there are different intensities of love, and she concludes that these can exist simultaneously. However, she draws the wrong conclusion about Jorge’s feelings. Pilar, granddaughter of Jorge and Celia, recalls that, while her grandfather lived in New York City and her grandmother in Cuba, “[My grandfather] used to write her letters every day, when he still had the strength, long letters in an old-fashioned script with flourishes and curlicues. […] They were romantic letters, too. […] He called Abuela Celia his ‘dove in the desert.’ […] Abuela Celia writes back to him every once in a while, but her letters are full of facts, about this meeting or that, nothing more. They make my grandfather sad.” In other words, it’s transparently obvious, even to Pilar, that her grandmother doesn’t share her grandfather’s romantic feelings. Yet even Celia’s coldness doesn’t stop Jorge from expressing his love for her on a daily basis, suggesting that a happy marriage could have been possible. Near the end of the book, Jorge’s ghost visits his eldest daughter, Lourdes, and confesses to her that he’s responsible for Celia’s unhappiness during their marriage and the suffering this subsequently caused the family: "After we were married, I left her with my mother and my sister. I knew what it would do to her. A part of me wanted to punish her. For the Spaniard. I tried to kill her, Lourdes. I wanted to kill her. I left on a long trip after you were born. I wanted to break her, may God forgive me. When I returned, it was done.” Despite Celia’s assumptions, in other words, Jorge has never been oblivious to the truth about Celia’s feelings for Gustavo, and that’s why he abandoned her to mistreatment at the hands of his jealous mother and sister. Celia’s and Jorge’s relationship, haunted by the lingering ghost of Gustavo, became a spiral of mutual harm and regret.
None of the major characters’ marriages are happy ones. Lourdes uses her husband for sex, objectifying him until her passion is briefly satisfied, but she doesn’t respect him as a man; more dramatically, Felicia serially marries men who ignite her passion, but she ends up maiming or killing them all. There isn’t an ideal marriage in the book—rather, there’s only the ghost of healthy marriages that might have been.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Passion, Romance, and Marriage ThemeTracker
Passion, Romance, and Marriage Quotes in Dreaming in Cuban
He used to write her letters every day, when he still had the strength, long letters in an old-fashioned script with flourishes and curlicues. You wouldn't expect him to have such fine handwriting. They were romantic letters, too. He read one out loud to me. He called Abuela Celia his "dove in the desert." Now he can't write to her much. And he's too proud to ask any of us to do it for him. Abuela Celia writes back to him every once in a while, but her letters are full of facts, about this meeting or thar, nothing more. They make my grandfather sad.
Celia hitchhikes to the Plaza de la Revolución, where El Líder, wearing his customary fatigues, is making a speech. Workers pack the square, cheering his words that echo and collide in midair. Celia makes a decision. Ten years or twenty, whatever she has left, she will devote to El Líder, give herself to his revolution. Now that Jorge is dead, she will volunteer for every project—vaccination campaigns, tutoring, the microbrigades.
Jorge is a good man, Gustavo. It surprised me how my heart jumped when I heard he'd been hurt. I cried when I saw him bandaged in white, his arms taut in midair like a sea gull. His eyes apologized for having disturbed me. Can you imagine? I discovered I loved him at that moment. Not a passion like ours, Gustavo, but love just the same. I think he understands this and is at peace.
I still love you, Gustavo, but it's a habitual love, a wound in the knee that predicts rain. Memory is a skilled seducer. I write to you because I must. I don't even know if you're alive and whom you love now.
I asked myself once, "What is the nature of obsession?" But I no longer question it. I accept it the way I accept my husband and my daughters and my life on the wicker swing, my life of ordinary seductions.
Felicia learned her florid language on those nights. She would borrow freely from the poems she'd heard, stringing words together like laundry on a line, connecting ideas and descriptions she couldn't have planned. The words sounded precisely right when she said them, though often people told her she didn’t make any sense at all. Felicia misses those peaceful nights with her mother […] Now they fight constantly, especially about El Líder. How her mother worships him! She keeps a framed photograph of him by her bed where her husband's picture used to be. But to Felicia, El Líder is just a common tyrant. No better, no worse than any other in the world.
Celia del Pino settles on a folding chair behind a card table facing the audience. It is her third year as a civilian judge. Celia is pleased. What she decides makes a difference in others' lives, and she feels part of a great historical unfolding. What would have been expected of her twenty years ago? To sway endlessly on her wicker swing, old before her time? To baby-sit her grandchildren and wait for death? She remembers the gloomy letters she used to write to Gustavo before the revolution, and thinks of how different the letters would be if she were writing today. Since her husband's death, Celia has devoted herself completely to the revolution.
Could her son, Celia wonders, have inherited her habit of ruinous passion? Or is passion indiscriminate, incubating haphazardly like a cancer?
Celia hopes that the sea, with its sustaining rhythms and breezes from distant lands, will ease her son's heart as it once did hers. Late at night, she rocks on her wicker swing as Javier sleeps, and wonders why it is so difficult to be happy.
Of her three children, Celia sympathizes most with her son.
After we were married, I left her with my mother and my sister. I knew what it would do to her. A part of me wanted to punish her. For the Spaniard. I tried to kill her, Lourdes. I wanted to kill her. I left on a long trip after you were born. I wanted to break her, may God forgive me. When I returned, it was done. She held you out to me by one leg and told me she would not remember your name.
I envy this woman's passion, her determination to get what she knows is hers. I felt that way once, when I ran away to Miami. But I never made it to Cuba to see Abuela Celia. After that, I felt like my destiny was not my own, that men who had nothing to do with me had the power to rupture my dreams, to separate me from my grandmother.
