57 pages • 1 hour read

Daughter Of Fortune

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-14

Part 3, Chapters 15-18

Part 3, Chapters 19-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Scents

Allende repeatedly refers to Eliza’s extraordinary sense of smell as an entryway into passion and a tool for detecting truth. When Eliza first falls in love with Joaquín, she feels “an overpowering urge to be close enough to smell him” (79). Moving as near to him as she can, Eliza “inhaled the aroma of damp clothing, common soap, and fresh sweat” (81), launching her overwhelming attraction. To feel close to Tao again, Eliza asks to sniff him, “at last recognizing the faint sea scent, the old, comforting odor” (335). By using the motif of scents, Allende allows Eliza to uncover secrets. Miss Rose invents the story that Eliza arrived as a baby in a mink coverlet, but Eliza knows that is a false narrative because she recalls the smells of “wool, male sweat, and tobacco” (6). Eliza’s amazing memory is linked with her capacity to smell. When Eliza visits Jacob Freemont, she recognizes him by his scent, “despite the years, the eyeglasses, the sideburns, and the American garb” (371). When a half-frozen unidentified man arrives on the doorstep of Joe Bonecrusher’s house, Eliza immediately knows that he is a fugitive from the law because “he smelled of evil” (306).

Eliza’s sensitivity to scents also enables her to detect the ingredients in a dish and prepare excellent meals. Eliza’s cooking talent is one way she earns money to survive in California.

Hair and Clothing

Allende uses alterations in hair and clothing to symbolize characters’ ability to create their own destinies, overcoming predetermined roles and patriarchal constraints. When Eliza wears men’s clothing to leave the ship undetected upon her arrival in San Francisco, she feels “an unfamiliar freedom” (222). As a proper lady in Chile, Eliza never felt free to leave the cloistered domestic setting, “shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes” (275). Rendered “invisible” dressed as a male, Eliza can ride anywhere in California, becoming bold as she confronts danger, having shed the person she used to be along with her female attire. Buying miner’s clothing, Eliza cut her long black braid off, thickened her eyebrows with charcoal, and flattened her breasts with a sash to make her disguise complete. Even after Eliza decides that it is time to embrace her female identity again, dressing in petticoats and a gown, she refuses to ever wear a corset in the future. The corset is a symbol of all that bound her under patriarchal rule, like the wife of Agustín del Valle who was “squeezed breathless by the pressure of her corset, her religion, and the husband fate had dealt her” (41).

When the Tao’s queue (a long braided hairstyle worn by Chinese men) is cut off by American bullies, the enforced haircut symbolizes a decision that he will not return to China. Tao chooses instead to keep his hair short and dress like an American man in a dark suit. He wears “a frock coat, a three-button vest, and flared trousers” (334). Tao’s clothing inspires awe in Chinatown, for it indicates that “he had access to the world of Americans” (334), and, outside of Chinatown, “doors opened that had been closed to him before” (334).

Writings

Miss Rose’s books and Joaquín’s love letters represent the idealization of passion or love that conceals the shortcomings of the real lovers. When Miss Rose’s affair with Karl Bretzner is brutally ended by her brother Jeremy, she appears outwardly tranquil. The only observable change in Rose’s behavior is her new habit of “spending hours closed in her room, writing” (97). Rose fills notebook after notebook, having “discovered an extraordinary formula for never emerging from her idyllic romance with Karl Bretzner, reliving each and every moment of their incendiary passion, along with fantasies she invented in the silence of her spinster nights” (99). The only thing Rose deletes is “the disenchantment of having been deceived” (98). Rose’s shock at discovering that her lover had a wife and children is resolved by her pretending that Karl’s family had never existed. Throughout her youth, Eliza observed Rose writing but sensed that no one was supposed to ask about it because “this was one of the fundamental secrets upon which the family’s equilibrium depended” (136). Captain John takes his sister’s erotic manuscripts to a London publisher and deposits Rose’s profits in a bank account for her as gratitude for Rose’s preservation of his secret—an illegitimate daughter.

Joaquín Andieta’s letters also contain amorous expressions that he dares not utter in person. Defensive and haughty, Joaquín quickly pushes Eliza away after embracing, but in writing, he “opened the floodgates of his soul and described his emotions like a poet” (108). Despite the lack of fulfillment that Eliza feels in Joaquín’s presence, she “invented a perfect lover, and she obstinately nurtured that illusion” by reading his letters over and over again (115). Eliza carefully packs her precious love letters from Joaquín in her suitcase when she sails for California because “those pages, reread a thousand times in stolen moments, were the principal sustenance of her passion” (107).