The basic plot could hardly be more familiar. A woman needs to decide between the dashing and exciting ‘bad boy’ or settle for the safe but unexciting ‘nice guy’. Novelists have exhausted almost every twist in this scenario, and adapted the story line over the decades in response to changing tastes and values of their readers. Sometimes the alluring cad turns out to have a heart of gold ( Pride and Prejudice ) or the respectable, safe husband possesses an ugly dark side ( Middlemarch ). Sometimes the young lady stumbles into the right choice ( Emma ) or boldly rushes into the wrong one ( The Portrait of a Lady ). Or learns, to her dismay, that the choice is no longer hers to make ( Gone with the Wind ).
But just when you thought that no further variations could be made on this theme, Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado offers a new take on the bride’s dilemma. As one might guess from the title of his novel, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands , Amado’s protagonist doesn’t need to choose between these two options—she can have both at the same time.
There is a slight complication, however. One of her two husbands—the most lively and passionate one—happens to be dead.
Vadinho, the ghost husband explains the ground rules: “I came back from the beyond and here you have me. To bring you joy, suffering and pleasure…to stir up your longing and provoke your desire, hidden in the depths of your being, your modesty. He [the other spouse Teodoro] is the husband of Madame Dona Flor, who protects your virtue, your honor, your respect among people….To be happy you need both of us.”
The novel opens with the sudden death of Vadinho, who collapses in the midst of Carnival celebrations. He is dressed as a Bahian woman and dancing a samba in the streets when his heart gives out—a surprise to his friends, who never detected the slightest signs of frailty or illness in their fun-loving companion. This scamp had spent his entire life as if every day were Mardi Gras. His gambling carousing and drinking were legendary, and in the aftermath of Vadinho’s death, an anonymous poem circulates among the literati of Bahia praising the Rabelaisian excesses of this indefatigable man about town.
The women of the neighborhood have a different view of matters. They roundly criticized Vadinho during his life for his lowlife ways, and believe that his widow Dona Flor has the right to celebrate the departure of her two-timing spouse, who had constantly sponged money off his wife, the owner of a successful school of Bahian cooking, to support his late night antics.
Dona Flora certainly suffered at her husband’s hands. His gambling, his infidelities, his spendthrift ways and incessant demands for money had been a constant cause of anxiety and sleepless nights throughout their married life. Yet even after Vadinho's death, he remains the passionate love of her life, and she can’t help recalling his charm and seductiveness. Even at his worst, Vadinho was irresistible, and his now permanent absence is far more painful than those late nights when she waited for the sound of footsteps that indicated her husband’s return home from his various indiscretions.
Vadinho has some of the same appeal for readers as he does for Dona Flor. He is the vibrant centerpiece of Amado's novel, and the book’s most compelling interludes capture the extravagance of his exploits and bravado, both during his life and after his untimely death. Although we live in an age of antiheroes, few stories have done a better job of capturing the type of the lovable villain, the charismatic scoundrel.
After a year of mourning, Dona Flor finds that she has attracted another suitor, the successful local pharmacist Teodoro, a pillar of respectability and virtuous behavior. The widow, urged by her friends not to let such a choice catch get away, accepts his proposal. If her new husband lacks the animal magnetism of her previous spouse, he makes up for it by providing an orderly, stable and worry-free life for his wife. What more could Dona Flor ask for?
Yet on the first anniversary of Dona Flor’s marriage to her second husband, Vadinho returns. He’s now a ghost, but has lost none of his charm—nor his wily ways. His antics create commotion all over town, from Dona Flor’s conjugal bed to the local gambling spots. She is torn between her attraction to the lusty poltergeist and her desire to continue as the upright, faithful wife of the pharmacist—who hasn't figured out that he has a phantom rival under his own roof.
Amado is equally indecisive, for much of this book. On several occasions our novelist seems poised on the brink of turning Teodoro into a comic figure. The pharmacist's methodical lifestyle borders on obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his favorite hobby, playing the bassoon, is clearly meant to strike readers as a wee bit ridiculous. But Amado again and again holds back, and finally lets our deceived second husband retain a small dose of dignity.
But will Dona Flor do the same? In the closing pages of this novel a veritable war breaks out, both in the innermost reaches of her heart, but also in the mythological world of candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian belief system akin to Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santería. Throughout this novel, Amado has drawn on local rituals and folklore, bringing them into play as dramatic undercurrents to his tale. But in the final section of Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands , the whole panoply of local spirits and deities get into the act, as well as most of the soothsayers and mystics of Bahia. You couldn't ask for a grander conclusion to this tale.
The religious syncretism of modern Brazil, a key theme in Amado's work, is matched here by a bold literary syncretism, in which different genres and writing styles blend together in pleasing new hybrids. You may have come to expect elements of magical realism in modern South American novels, but note that Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands was published a year before Gabriel García Márquez released his influential One Hundred Years of Solitude . And Amado's novel could just as easily be classified as a romance, or ghost story, or comedy of manners. Others will be drawn to this book because of its local color, with recipes, folklore, and other bits of Bahian culture—indeed, some well known Brazilian musicians (João Gilberto, Amado’s real life friend Dorival Caymmi) make cameo appearances in our story. But these different elements never clash, and the wonder of Amado's novel is the ease with which he blends the various ingredients, adding in his dark magic and light humor with the same ease that Dona Flor prepares her spicy Bahian cuisine. It’s a formidable concoction, and a good place to start for readers wondering why Latin American fiction gained such widespread popularity around the world in the years following this novel’s publication.