Daughter Of Fortune

Two years after Jacob’s departure from Chile, Eliza transforms into a slender girl with soft curves and a delicate face. Rose resigns herself to Eliza’s unladylike fascination with cooking. Miss Rose searches for a good husband for Eliza—a man able “to appreciate her protégée’s discernment, her strength of character, and her ability to turn situations in her favor, what Mama Fresia called luck and Rose preferred to call intelligence” (73). Rose needs to find a financially stable suitor for Eliza before she turns 20 years old—one who is willing to overlook the young girl’s murky origins. Rose asks Jeremy to adopt her protegee so that Eliza’s questionable lineage will not hinder her. Even though Rose is a spinster, she also plans to convey to Eliza the skills needed to please a husband.

Rose selects 28-year-old Michael Steward, a handsome naval officer from an old English family, as Eliza’s prospective husband. Captain John warns Rose that Eliza will be bored by Michael, but Rose asserts that sensible women marry to be maintained, not entertained. Rose arranges picnics and parties to get Michael and Eliza together. Rose fails to convince Eliza to allow a man to feel superior by letting him beat her at games. Michael misinterprets the campaign of seduction, proposing instead to a horrified Rose. Rose rejects Michael, who leaves, never to return.

In May 1848, 16-year-old Eliza falls in love with Joaquín when he comes to the Sommerses’ house, overseeing the transport of a load for the British Import and Export Company, Ltd. Eliza feels an uncontrollable urge to smell Joaquín. When Eliza moves close to Joaquín, “[a] river of flowing lava swept through her, melting her bones” (81). The same overwhelming heat washes over Joaquín: “[T]he girl’s face was a pale mirror in which he thought he glimpsed his own image” (81). Eliza realizes she has met her destiny and feels trapped, losing weight. Mama Fresia tries Indian remedies, Catholic prayers, and the spells of a gifted machi, an ancient Mapuche Indian healer, who tells her there is no cure for Eliza’s fixation. Years later, Eliza will stand before a human head preserved in a jar of alcohol and recall her first meeting with Joaquín. In the future, Eliza’s friend Tao Chi’en will introduce her to the possibility of reincarnation and teach her how to free herself from forever repeating the same devastating passion. 

Miss Rose sees Eliza’s symptoms of love. When Rose was 16 years old, she fell in love with a Viennese tenor. Young Rose dreamed of becoming an opera singer, but her family believed that performing in the theater was an unsuitable occupation for a lady. Rose also inherited her father’s passion for reading books. After her father’s death, Jeremy became the head of the family and knew that Rose must marry well. He was supporting his mother and sister on a modest salary.

Instead of searching for a husband, Rose was seeking a singing master. When Karl Bretzner, a talented Viennese tenor, came to London, Rose attended every performance by her idol. The much older tenor, who resembled a butcher, noticed Rose’s beauty and invited her to his dressing room after a performance. Two days later, Karl and Rose met secretly, and she offered her virginity to him. Karl fell in love with Rose, and “what had begun as yet another fleeting conquest had in a few hours been transformed into incandescent passion” (89). Their day of love-making was “the most memorable day of Rose’s life” (90), comparable in intensity only to the day the infant Eliza arrived as a consolation for Rose’s childlessness. Rose quickly surpassed Karl in amorous skills, and they met in hotel rooms during Karl’s London season. Karl began deteriorating in his musical recitals as he focused on his trysts with Rose. After his final performance in London, the pair escaped for a few days to an out-of-the-way hotel in the north, where Jeremy interrupted them at breakfast. Jeremy told Karl he ought to have informed Rose that he was married with children. Jeremy challenged Karl to a duel by slapping his face with a glove. Then Jeremy took a shocked Rose away to stay at her aunt’s home until she could determine that she was not pregnant. Jeremy told her never to speak about her affair to anyone, not even her mother or her brother John.

Although Rose appeared to be the same when she returned to London, she was a changed person. She now spent hours in her room writing in private notebooks. When Jeremy was offered the directorship of the British Import and Export Company in Chile, he and Rose carried the secret of her shameful fling with them. Rose viewed their destination as punishment for her indiscretion. Rose resolved to make the best of her new circumstances but secretly relived her romance with Karl.

Miss Rose recognizes the appeal of Joaquín: He has the aura of a “tragic, damned poet” (100). Rose is torn between trying to thwart the romance of Eliza and Joaquín before it begins and secretly hoping that Eliza will succeed in her passion as compensation for Rose’s own foiled affair 18 years ago. Eliza longs for a confidant. Only Captain John, “that uncle with the heart of a buccaneer who had been the most fascinating character in her childhood” (101), would be capable of understanding Eliza’s plight. Eliza enjoys lifelike dreams of Joaquín, using a skill taught by Mama Fresia of entering and leaving dreams at will.

When Joaquín again arrives at the Sommerses’ house to pick up cargo, Eliza boldly hands him a letter telling him to meet her in three days at nine o’clock at night in a nearby chapel. Surprised, Joaquín assumes that Eliza is Jeremy’s unattainable daughter. Eliza knows that no one will notice her brief absence during Miss Rose’s Wednesday musical evening. Joaquín and Eliza shyly introduce themselves at their first meeting. Each time they have a rendezvous, the pair learn more about each other. The illegitimate Joaquín relievedly learns of Eliza’s equally obscure origins. Cast out by her family, Joaquín’s mother raised her son with a code of honor. Eliza tells Joaquín that his mother’s misfortune was to fall in love with an evil man. Ghostlike, Eliza uses her talent for making herself invisible to avoid being caught in her occasional absences by Miss Rose.

Finally, Eliza arranges for Joaquín to sneak into the Sommerses’ house in the middle of the night. Eliza chooses to sacrifice her virtue, and the pair make love in the storeroom. Eliza clings to the idealized, romantic letters written by Joaquín as proof of their love. When Joaquín is with Eliza, he is like a different person, defensive and hurried, as if he is “succumbing to a vice, tormented by guilt” (114). More committed to his political theories than Eliza’s sensual pleasure, Joaquín leaves her unsatisfied. Eliza, however, devotes herself to nurturing the illusion of Joaquín as the ideal lover.