
Most notably, the characterization of Eliza Sommers, whose special talents include exceptional olfactory abilities and an excellent memory, steps only slightly into the magically real.

Magic realism is a mixture of realistic details and magical elements. In particular, the work does not contain as many overt examples of magic realism as The House of the Spirits, although elements of the book may still be categorized under that label. The work stands on its own as the story of a young woman’s difficult rite of passage into finding her own place in the world.ĭaughter of Fortune also marks the development of Allende’s individual style and movement away from the derivative qualities of her early work. Despite similarities in the characters of Eliza Sommers-the central protagonist of Daughter of Fortune-and Alba of The House of the Spirits, Daughter of Fortune is not a simple retelling of Allende’s earlier story. Published in 2000 and the middle book of the trilogy, Portrait in Sepia is the story of Aurora del Valle and her extraordinary, even epic, family struggles. Eliza Sommers, the central heroine in Daughter of Fortune, is the maternal grandmother of Aurora del Valle, the central figure of Portrait in Sepia. The novels were not written in the sequence of their narrative action. In Daughter of Fortune, Allende again creates an engaging female protagonist, Eliza Sommers, who struggles with both emotional attachments and social restrictions in a journey of self-discovery and self-realization.Īllende’s Daughter of Fortune is positioned as the first part of a trilogy of novels that includes Portrait in Sepia and The House of the Spirits as the second and third books, respectively. In some ways, this story represents a return to the motifs and themes of the author’s earlier works, including her first novel, The House of the Spirits(1982).

Like all other novels by Isabel Allende (1942– ), Daughter of Fortune was first written and published in Spanish.

Analysis of Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune
