menstruation as a curse, and discussions about emotions are forbidden. Just as Eliza's body is confined in rigid undergarments reinforced from time to time with unyielding metal rods, so are her heart and soul contained. The material restrictions on her body are symbolic of the encumbrances of fear and guilt placed on her emotions and on her spirit.

Fortunately for Eliza, she has Mama Fresia, who has her own limitations but who at least provides Eliza with another interpretation of reality. Mama Fresia is an earthy woman who encourages Eliza to play in the dirt, to learn the language of plants and animals, and to understand the power of her dreams. In other words, she is almost the exact opposite of Rose. She is, however, a little too concerned with superstitions and has a fear of poverty and rejection. Although she tells Eliza to trust the messages that she receives in her dreams (an outlet for the emotions), she does not approve of Eliza's fixation on the young suitor Joaquín. However, when Eliza tells her that she is pregnant, Mama Fresia attempts to help her with an abortion. Mama Fresia is not a totally independent woman, but she is an alternative to Rose, feeding Eliza's imagination with the possibility that there may be other feminine definitions to discover.

Some of these feminine definitions are also brought out through Joaquín, who arouses Eliza's sexuality. Although she has rebelled against some of the restraints placed on her by Rose and Jeremy, it is not until she meets Joaquín that she totally defies them. She sneaks out of the house and then lies to cover her tracks. She is driven with the need to explore something about herself that no one had previously ever spoken of: passion. Joaquín epitomizes passion. He is a driven man, determined to change the world; and Eliza is infected with his zeal. The two young people mate, but not for purposes of conception. The birth that will proceed from their union is not a combination of their genes but rather a symbolic rebirth of Eliza herself.

She begins her trip tenuously as she is sneaked aboard and then taken down into the bowels of the vessel: "There, in the darkest, deepest pit of the ship, in a two-by-two meter hole, went Eliza.. .. She could... cry and scream as much as she wished, because the sloshing of the waves against the ship swallowed her voice." It is here that Eliza plays out the story of Jonah and the whale. She, too, has been symbolically swallowed. It is here that she will spend the next several weeks, where she will have nothing but herself to confront. She will suffer the loss of the small fetus that resides in her womb and then will fall into a semiconscious state. She will be kept alive on a sparse diet, spiked with a hint of morphine to ease her pain. During her time in the darkness of the ship, she is stripped of her past identity, as symbolized by her miscarriage: the loss of an undeveloped self. The unconscious state of her mind, enhanced with drugs and hallucinations, represents a trip into the depths of her soul. When she recovers, she finds that one journey has ended, but, like Jonah who was finally spit out by the whale, yet another adventure is about to begin. Upon her arrival on the shores of North America, she arises, weakened not only physically but also in orientation. She is in a new land with new definitions still waiting to be tried on. She will don the clothes and identity of a man to protect herself; and it will take time before she understands in which new direction she must go.

In her male disguise, Eliza symbolically puts on the mantle of masculine traits, although this happens gradually. At first, she is too frail to fend for herself and must rely upon Tao, who continues to reinforce her health, which he does naturally through medicinal herbs and good nutrition. He also encourages her to be aggressive in her pursuit of who she is and what she wants. Eliza tries to figure it all out, but she has not fully arrived in the present. Parts of her past still haunt her; and before coming to any specific conclusions, she falls back on the training she received from Mama Fresia, who taught her everything she knows about the culinary arts. In this capacity, she serves meals to the miners around her, taking up the feminine position of nurturer. However, she soon tires of this role; and although her courage has blossomed and she is able to bid farewell (at least temporarily) to Tao, she is still influenced by her immature passions. Since she has no clear definition yet of who she will become, she again fixes her drive on Joaquín, who represents the stimulus that began her transformation. She falsely believes, though, that it is through Joaquín that she will be able to find herself.

Critics have commented that this is how most of Allende's previous novels have ended. The female protagonist rebels against the patriarchy that dominates her life only to turn to a man in order to define herself. Not so in Daughter of Fortune, although at this point in the story it looks as if that is exactly what Eliza is about to do. For a large portion of the remaining story, Eliza is involved in the pursuit of Joaquín, yet he is always elusive. He is represented in a rumor here, a confabulated tale somewhere else, but he never appears in the flesh. This is because Eliza's real quest is not based on finding Joaquín but in finding herself, which she does obliquely through her supposed need of him.

She makes her way through the man's world of the Wild West, where the few women that she encounters are either prostitutes, women whom the narrator describes as being men born in women's bodies, or effeminate men whom Eliza suspects are women, like herself, in male disguise. At one point in her journey, Babalu the Bad, a man who befriends her, tells Eliza that she is too weak and that he is going to make a man out of her. Shortly after this, the narrator states that Eliza "had no idea what trail to follow." The narrator is referring to Eliza's pursuit of Joaquín, but the statement also serves as commentary on the status of Eliza's thoughts. She has grown tired of searching for the elusive Joaquín. "Joaquín Andieta had evaporated in the confusion of the times," the narrator relates. He had turned into someone with whom Eliza could no longer identify, and without him Eliza feels suddenly lost. However, it does not take long for her to realize that the consequences of her quest have taught her quite a lot. She begins to realize how little she really knows about Joaquín and questions why she is looking for him. Everything about him has become confused in her mind to the point that their brief shared history appears as a fantasy. It is at this juncture that Eliza fully faces reality, one that she has conceived on her own. It is also at this point that Tao finds her and invites her to return with him to San Francisco. Eliza tells him that she is tired of dressing like a man. "It's very boring to be your stupid little brother, Tao," she says. He responds: "You won't have to dress as a man; there are women everywhere now." These statements are loaded with allusions to a change not only in Eliza but also in the relationship between Eliza and Tao. Tao wants Eliza to return with him, as if he understands that her solo journey is completed. He also implies that their relationship can now go beyond the platonic. The feminine is blossoming everywhere!

Eliza returns with Tao and discovers that she enjoys working with him, helping other pubescent girls disentangle themselves from oppression. She does not need to be with him. Rather, she has chosen to share a relationship with him. She has graduated into a much more fully developed woman. She feels so confident about her new position that she allows her more feminine traits to once again rise to the surface. She discards, at least momentarily, her masculine props and puts on one of her old dresses. When she does so, however, she refuses to constrain herself in the tight corset that she used to wear. The days of confinement are over. She neither has to enhance the physical aspects of her femininity through unnatural means nor bolster her confidence by adapting a masculine stance. She now understands what it means to be an independent woman, a definition that she has created for herself.

Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on Daughter of Fortune, in Novels for Students, Gale, 2003.
Hart has degrees in English literature and creative writing and writes primarily on literary themes.

The title of Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune is Hija de Fortuna in the original Spanish, and while the popular English translation of the title is in no way incorrect, another translation is possible. In Spanish, a common way of expressing possession is to use the preposition de—or in English, "of." The phrase "David's friend" would be expressed amigo de David, which, when translated back into English word-for-word, is "friend of David." Along the same lines, Hija de Fortuna can be translated as "Fortune's Daughter." This alternative translation brings out an interesting interpretation of the title that implies the offspring, product, or results of fortune rather than the meaning that comes to mind at first glance: the female progeny of a wealthy family. Both meanings are valid in the context of the novel. Eliza, the heroine, is the daughter of a relatively well-to-do family. She also, by the end of the book, has become a new, more fully developed person, which could not have happened without the occurrence of certain unlikely events. In other words, luck was key to her growth as an individual. This is not to say, however, that she did not possess any characteristics that contributed to her maturation. She is clearly a determined and adventuresome person with an obvious free spirit that would be difficult to completely suppress in any circumstances. The course of Daughter of Fortune takes Eliza on a journey that leads to her becoming a developed and liberated individual, a journey that is the result of a combination of fortune as well as Eliza's strength and tenacity as she strives to realize her desires. This allows the author to present a criticism of the oppressive, and generally male-dominated, situations that Eliza is subject to while at the same time offering hope to readers who may be suffering under similar limitations.

The importance of Eliza's faculties are established immediately when the very first line of the novel reads, "Everyone is born with some special talent, and Eliza Sommers discovered early on that she had two: a good sense of smell and a good memory." Both are invaluable to her throughout the book. Her ability to detect exactly what is in a dish by smell allows her, on several occasions, to earn a living by cooking when she has no other financial means. Her memory allows her access to her past. Whether recalling the teachings of Mama Fresia, stoking her desire by thinking of Joaquín's touch, or maintaining connection with Tao Chi'en through a cognitive recreation of his scent, her memory serves on a number of occasions. Other, likely more significant virtues, contribute to her survival as well as her growth. Her obstinacy allows her to persevere in the face of many obstacles:

"Give me your blessing, Mamita," she asked. "I have to go to California to look for Joaquín."

"How can you do that, alone and pregnant!" Mama Fresia exclaimed with horror.

"If you don't help me, I'll do it alone." "I am going to tell Miss Rose everything!"

"If you do, I'll kill myself. And then I will come and haunt you for the rest of your days. I swear I will," the girl returned with fierce determination.

This determination serves her on many occasions. It carries her into and through her love affair with Joaquín Andieta. It leads her to make a deal with Tao Chi'en, a near stranger at the time, that will allow her to follow her lover to California. It gives her strength when she is shut up in the hull of a ship, suffering from sickness and a dangerous miscarriage. She is able to give up rules and conventions, instilled in her from a very early age, to the point that she lives and dresses as a hardworking, lower-class man in order to survive and continue the pursuit of her lover. At one point, she writes to Tao Chi'en, saying "I am finding new strength in myself; I may always have had it and just didn't know because I'd never had to call on it. I don't know at what turn in the road I shed the person I used to be, Tao."

A gift she does not posses, however, is foresight:

She had left Chile with the purpose of finding her lover and becoming his slave forever, believing that was the way to extinguish her thirst to submit and her hidden wish for possession, but now she doubted that she could give up those new wings beginning to sprout on her shoulders.

Without her intending it, "[Eliza] fell in love with freedom." Once she has it, she does not let it go, and in fact continues to push the envelope. She finds a way to have all she desires without sacrificing her freedom. Miss Rose, her adoptive mother, had found "independence she would never have with a husband." However, it came at a great cost. Rose had to give up the love of her life as well as any possibility of having a lover in the future. She has given up the chance of ever having a child of her own, and, possibly the most painful of all, she is condemned to living her life under the rule of a strict brother who cringes at the idea of showing any sort of physical affection towards his sister. Eliza, on the other hand, has a romantic relationship with Tao Chi'en, a man whom she at one point looks at and "realized that she had never been so close to anyone." Eliza lives freely with Tao Chi'en, and as his equal. It is foreshadowed throughout the book that she has a long relationship with him, which, of course, allows for the possibility of her having her own children. Though initially Eliza is limited in that she must live as a man, she eventually finds the will and courage to live openly as a free woman. She is so confident of her freedom that she even tells Tao Chi'en, "I am going to write Miss Rose." Her determination in going after what she wants in combination with her love of freedom allows her to reestablish a connection to a family that she loves, despite the possibility of their making an attempt to control her again.

However, even in view of these displays of character, it is still undeniable that Eliza's journey toward freedom could not have happened without certain fortunate happenings. To begin with, Eliza would never have had the same chances at freedom that she did if she hadn't been placed on the doorstep of the Sommerses' home. To be a member of the lower class in Valparaíso, Chile, could have been too much to overcome, even for the obstinate Eliza. The example we have from Daughter of Fortune of a peasant-class citizen attempting to achieve liberation, Joaquín Andieta, ends up dying for his cause. Who knows how much more difficult it would have been for a woman in such a situation. It is also fortunate that it was Joaquín Andieta she fell hopelessly in love with:

She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given her pride in making decisions and paying the consequences for them.

This passion had clearly been important for her, and it also led her to California, where, as Eliza writes, men "bow to no one because they are inventing equality."

Eliza's miscarriage, though sad and nearly fatal, drastically increases her chances of independence and survival, judging by the examples of Joaquín's mother and the singsong girls. Joaquín's mother is driven into poverty by her family after bearing an illegitimate son; the singsong girls are left to die when they can no longer perform their services as a result of pregnancy. There is clearly no reverence for a woman pregnant with an illegitimate child in these settings.

Several instances of small, unlikely events drastically change the course of the story. Purely by coincidence, Tao Chi'en arrives at the bar in Valparaíso at the same time as Eliza and Mama Fresia and subsequently saves them from two sailors who are "clearly drunk and looking for trouble." Then there is the second chance meeting with Tao Chi'en a short time later that leads Eliza to California. Of course, neither would have happened without John Sommers' deciding to kidnap him in the first place.

By contrast, luck is not on the side of the singsong girls, the young women who are captured or sold into slavery, only a fraction of whom Tao Chi'en is able to save. More often than not, they are forced into prostitution, their pimps caring nothing for them and depositing them in empty rooms, absurdly termed "hospitals," to die when they are pregnant or too sick to serve. Sometimes even poison is used so the pimps can be rid of the bodies more quickly. Those Tao Chi'en is able to give a better life are forever scarred:

The less fortunate, who were freed at almost their last breaths from the "hospital," never lost the fear that like a disease in the blood would consume them for the rest of their days. Tao Chi'en hoped that with time they would at least learn to smile occasionally.

Though these girls, and they are only girls, do have the chance at a better life through the generosity of Tao Chi'en, they will never be completely liberated from the trauma of their experiences. There are also the countless others that Tao Chi'en never has the chance to help.

I do not think Allende intends her readers to think that the singsong girls, if as talented or capable as Eliza, could escape their fates. Allende's harsh depictions of cruelty and injustice in Daughter of Fortune demonstrate that she means to criticize the occurrence of such atrocities as well as the societies that allow them to happen. She wants her audience to see that even her heroine could not contend with such adversity, that Eliza is indeed fortune's daughter. At the same time, the fact that Eliza would not have been able to complete her journey of growth through luck alone makes her a recommendation for those who are similarly oppressed, as many of her readers would be. Allende was born in Peru and raised in Chile, and according to Patricia Hart in Narrative Magic in the Fiction of Isabel Allende, "Practically speaking, feminism in many Latin American countries is in its infancy."

As Nora Erro-Peralta says in her essay on Allende in Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Despite this incredibly painful, difficult material, her works are not filled with a sense of pessimism or despair." Daughter of Fortune focuses on Eliza and not the singsong girls, therefore leaving the readers with a sense of hope. Eliza still overcomes incredible adversity to achieve as much freedom as any male of her society at the time, and she does so while still embracing life and her femininity. According to Hart, Allende's writing satisfies the lament of Erica Jong's character Isadora, concerning the lack of feminine role models in literature:

. . . Flannery O'Connor raising peacocks and living with her mother. Sylvia Plath sticking her head into an oven of myth. Georgia O'Keeffe alone in the desert, apparently a survivor. What a group! Severe, suicidal, strange. Where was the female Chaucer? One lusty lady who had juice and joy and love and talent too?

In Isabel Allende: A Critical Study of Her Work, Esperanza Granados states "... Allende's female point of view is oriented towards offering poetic solutions to many of the crises faced by Chileans and by other Latin Americans as well." The thesis was published before Daughter of Fortune was written, but the sentiments still clearly apply. I do not think Allende would question that all deserve freedom. When freedom is not a given, however, Allende provides us with Eliza to lead the way, on the chance that it can still be earned.

Source: Daniel Toronto, Critical Essay on Daughter of Fortune, in Novels for Students, Gale, 2003.
Toronto is an editor at the Pennsylvania State University Press.

Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende's ninth book, defies classification into a single type, or genre, of literature. Critical reviews of the novel, which was published originally in Barcelona, Spain, in 1998, offer up interpretations of Allende's work that focus on her apparent political views, the elements of magical realism in her work, and the aspects of her work that seem overtly feminist. None of these interpretations do justice to the story or to the complexity of the finished novel, which blends many elements together seamlessly to form a satisfying and complete whole.

The novel starts out by focusing on the early life and development of the female protagonist, Eliza Sommers. Eliza is a foundling who is left, shortly after her birth, in the garden of the house inhabited by Rose Sommers, an Englishwoman living with her brother, Jeremy Sommers, an executive of the British Import and Export Company, Ltd., in Valparaíso, Chile, in the 1830s. Miss Rose has no prospects of or interest in marriage herself but is thrilled at the chance to be a mother to this needy infant. Against her brother Jeremy's objections, she takes the baby in, naming her Eliza after their mother. It is revealed much later in the novel that Eliza is, in fact, the love child of their brother John. Rose knows this, though she keeps it secret, and this influences her firm stance on the treatment of Eliza throughout the novel. As Eliza is completely unaware of the family connection, she does not feel bound to the family, except emotionally. When the time comes for her to choose between facing an uncertain future in Chile and following her lover to California, she follows her lover without a tremendous sense of guilt.

Eliza's early childhood is shaped by the influence of the housekeeper, Mama Fresia, Rose and Jeremy Sommers, their brother John Sommers, and the frequent visitors to the Sommerses' house. Eliza is taught English standards of behavior when Miss Rose has the time and inclination to pay attention to her. When Miss Rose is busy, Eliza's care falls to Mama Fresia, the Sommerses' housekeeper and a native Chilean.

Eliza grows up with a blend of two distinctly different cultures, both of which mold the person she becomes. The first is the more repressed English society, represented by Jeremy and Rose Sommers. When Eliza is an adolescent, Rose tells her,

I would happily give my life to have the freedom a man has, Eliza. But we are women, and that is our cross. All we can do is try to get the best from the little we have.

Rose then launches a campaign to educate Eliza in all the social niceties she will need to make a good marriage, including piano lessons. When Eliza eventually travels to California, she spends months playing the piano for a traveling brothel— hardly what Miss Rose had intended. It is a wonderful bit of irony that the one skill Eliza hated and Miss Rose insisted would be necessary does, in fact, enable Eliza to pay her way when her life takes her on a very different path than the one Rose Som-mers had planned for her.

This part of the novel lends itself to feminist interpretation because of the character of Miss Rose, as it is slowly divulged. She is at first shown as a prim and proper English spinster—a rather flat character. It is revealed later that Miss Rose lives with her brother partly to escape the social ruin she faced in England after a disastrous affair with a traveling tenor who was, unfortunately, married. Towards the end of the novel, Eliza remembers Miss Rose saying to her, "A woman can do anything she wants, Eliza, as long as she does it discreetly." In her spare time and without the knowledge of her brother Jeremy, Miss Rose writes risqué novels which her brother John brings to her publisher in London. John uses some of the proceeds to buy Eliza presents and jewelry for her dowry.

Likewise, Eliza also uses the jewelry her un-beknownst-to-either-of-them father, John Som-mers, has been collecting for her dowry on his voyages around the globe. Eliza bribes Tao Chi'en to smuggle her onto a ship bound for California with a pearl necklace from her dowry. When Eliza miscarries and falls sick mid-voyage, Tao bribes Azucena Placeres, another passenger, with a turquoise-studded brooch to help care for Eliza. It is this brooch that John Sommers eventually sees Azucena wearing in California, though she lies and tells him Eliza died on the voyage.

While Eliza is still in Chile, Miss Rose's interest in Eliza waxes and wanes, depending on the other projects she is working on. This inconstant attention serves Eliza well in the future by making her self-sufficient and self-reliant. It also allows Eliza to spend more time with Mama Fresia, the Sommerses' housekeeper, who teaches Eliza the things that she values:

That was how Eliza learned Indian legends and myths, how to read signs of the animals and the sea, how to recognize the habits of the spirits, and the messages in dreams, and also how to cook.

These skills also serve Eliza well when she journeys to California. She earns money reading letters to the illiterate miners and writing letters back to their families. She earns money to buy a horse and other supplies for her search for Joaquín Andieta by cooking and selling her excellent food; she also cooks for the traveling brothel. Eliza's imaginative meals earn her the friendship of the group's bouncer, Babalu the Bad; later, her skills at healing earn her his respect. Because of her knowledge of herbs, both for cooking and for healing, she earns the respect of Tao Chi'en. Unlike many of the other women in the novel, Eliza has been strangely well-equipped by Miss Rose and Mama Fresia for the unusual path her life has taken. As heroines go, Eliza Sommers is not run-of-the-mill. This is one of the most refreshing things about the novel. The story Allende weaves is so dense with themes that it is nearly impossible to predict the next plot twist.

In a 1991 interview with Jacqueline Cruz, Jacqueline Mitchell, Silvia Pellarolo and Javier Rangel, in response to a question about "women's" literature, Allende said:

... when we speak of women's literature you need the adjective because otherwise you don't know what you are referring to, as though it were a lesser genre. It was assumed for a long time that women's literature touched only on certain themes, and women could not write about history, politics, philosophy, or economy.

Daughter of Fortune touches on all these subjects as it follows the story of Eliza Sommers in Chile, then shifts to China to begin the story of Tao Chi'en, back to Chile where Eliza and Tao meet, and finally concludes in California. In all three locations, the subject of how women earn their keep comes up. It first appears when Miss Rose worries about how Eliza will support herself. The only obvious choice open to a young bourgeois Englishwoman at the time is to make a good marriage.

The specter of dire economic consequences looms large. Eliza's love interest, Joaquín Andieta, and his mother live in abject poverty because his mother made the mistake of succumbing to the passion Mama Fresia warns Eliza about. Miss Rose has escaped this fate by the simple fact that she did not become pregnant by her lover. Miss Rose is also lucky because her brother was willing to take her away to Chile, though her life in Chile is more of a life in a gilded cage than a free life. Provided she follows the social norms of the age, Miss Rose can be a society matron, despite her single status. She hides her solitary pursuit of writing and carefully keeps her past buried. She manipulates her brother to get her way when the question of Eliza's education and dowry comes up but has little real power over the direction her own life takes. Miss Rose is also savvy enough to realize that, should she marry Jacob Todd, she would lose what little autonomy she does have.

Eliza is vaguely aware of Miss Rose's circumstances while she is growing up. Eliza does not know all her secrets, but she sees Miss Rose's unhappy spells and learns from them. Unlike Miss Rose, Eliza does not feel bound by obligation to follow the societal norms. She is a product of two cultures and can pick and choose what she wants from each. Eliza risks all for love—first in sending notes to Joaquín Andieta, later in meeting him in the room with the armoires, and still later, in following him to California.

It is during the ship voyage to California that the groundwork for a different life is laid down; while Eliza does not at that time see herself staying with Tao Chi'en, she knows no one else in California and relies on him when they first arrive. For his part, Tao feels very protective of her, despite his belief that she is unfeminine and beneath him in station. They both have started to change their feelings about the other, though neither is as yet very aware of it. Eliza's masquerade as Tao's mute brother leads them both down an unseen path; it allows Eliza the freedom to act like a man and not be bound by the conventions of a woman. And it allows Tao to overlook her gender and treat her as more of an equal.

The odd arrangement allows each to grow more comfortable with the other until they are good friends who rely on each other. Eliza, though, still feels bound to her quest to find Joaquín; it is in pursuit of this that she and Tao part ways and later come to realize how much the other meant to them. Still, Eliza pursues her quest until the bitter end. When she sees the preserved head of the bandit Joaquín Murieta, she says, "I am free." At last, she can follow a different path; her choices are wide open and not limited like those of the women around her.

The prostitutes in Chile, China, and California are presented as women with few choices. Azucena Placeres, who tends Eliza in the hold of the ship, is stuck in a dead-end line of work because she has no other marketable skills. Though, according to what she's leaving behind in Chile, Azucena's prospects in California are quite good. When John Sommers later encounters her in California, she is doing as well as can be expected, given her employment. She is not impoverished, but neither is she as well off as she had hoped to be.

In comparison to the prostitutes in China, where Tao Chi'en grows up, Azucena is doing very well indeed. In Tao's country, the prostitutes are little more than slaves. Tao, as a young man, is not disturbed by this; it is simply the way of things and he does not question this. The class system is highly structured. Tao himself is only the fourth son, less important in the family hierarchy than his three older brothers. In the confines of nineteenth-century China, women are second-class citizens at best; sons are far preferred over daughters. Allende does not shy away from presenting these facts, but they are not the main point. They are merely stepping stones readers encounter. To put extra emphasis on Allende's treatment of this part of the storyline is to miss the point. Tao as a character is immature in China. It is his exposure to other countries and other ways of living, as well as his association with Eliza, that opens his eyes to the fact that it is unfair to treat other human beings as less than human.

In California, Tao Chi'en confronts the ugliest side of the world's oldest profession when he is called on as zhong yi (an expert in Chinese medicine) to minister to the dying prostitutes in the house of Ah Toy. Ah Toy runs her house of prostitution in the traditional Chinese way; the singsong girls (as they are called by Eliza and Tao Chi'en) are little better than caged animals, imported for one purpose and casually discarded when they are used up. Tao Chi'en is shaken by his experience the first time he goes to treat one of Ah Toy's singsong girls; the girl is little more than a bag of bones and already dead.

When Tao returns to his home, he meditates all night, calling on the spirit of his dead wife to help him. It is his dead wife who challenges him to help the singsong girls. It is because of Tao's exposure to other cultures and to Eliza Sommers herself that he is able to consider helping them. When he was in China, Tao passed by them, even used them, without a thought. Now that he is more enlightened, he realizes that he must do something to counteract the suffering he has seen. Critic Patricia Hart, in her article "Magic Feminism in Isabel Allende's The Stories of Eva Luna," writes "Once more, the literally impossible event . . . brings us to a profound psychological truth: the burden to the souls of honorable men that the existence of prostitution imposes." In the case of Daughter of Fortune, the literally impossible event is the conversation Tao Chi'en holds with the spirit of his dead wife, Lin. There is no other character with whom Tao can have the discussion that brings him to his enlightened choice; he asks Ah Toy to give him the near-dead singsong girls for medical experiments. He nurses them back to health and then helps them find a new life. He finds he needs Eliza's help in this endeavor. It is this work of great compassion that brings Eliza back to him and, finally, sets Eliza herself free.

The economics of sustenance for nineteenth-century women is a running theme in this novel, as are other highly-charged political and social issues such as racism and sexism. While they are not the focus of the novel, Allende calmly uses the backdrop of these issues to provide the characters the means to grow, change, and, finally, to create a new path for themselves. Daughter of Fortune is, above all, a novel about two unlikely protagonists who come together by happenstance, eventually learning from each other as they seek their fortunes in a new land.

In a 1992 interview with Alberto Manguel, Allende said, "A novel is like a tapestry; the design reveals itself as it progresses, but you have to keep at it or the design vanishes, the coherence is gone." Like a tapestry, Daughter of Fortune works because threads of all colors blend together to form one large design. If one removed the colors one by one, what would be left would be a jumble of threads on the floor instead of a coherent work. Each thread, each piece, is necessary to create the whole tapestry, as each plot thread is necessary to render the whole story in clear, brilliant color.

Source: Charlotte Mayhew, Critical Essay on Daughter of Fortune, in Novels for Students, Gale, 2003.
Mayhew is a freelance writer.