An Act of Vengeance

Isabel Allende-Llona is a Chilean-American author, writer, journalist, teacher and feminist. As described by FamouAauthors.org, Allende’s works mainly focuses on myth and realism; which is presented from a point of view of a feminist with full of romance, drama and struggle (2012). She has obtained immense international recognitions for her works over the years. These works vary from novels, plays, children’s stories, and short stories. Though most of her prestigious awards were for her novels and plays, one of her outstanding well-known short stories include “An Act of Vengeance”. The story, “An Act of Vengeance”, circulates around how Dulce Rosa plots her vengeance to her rapist and father’s killer, Tadeo Céspedes for thirty years, that she ended up unexpectedly falling in love with the man. The short story demonstrates how the author promotes female empowerment on the protagonist, Dulce Rosa, and how the fiction illustrates magical realism.

In the start of the short story, Dulce Rosa was descibed as a woman with many feelings and emotions, comparable to Allende’s Latin-American woman qualities. Early in the story, the narrator states how she is not seen as the most beautiful girl in their town, but she stands out from the others, having translucent skin, her diaphanous eyes, and a face no one has ever seen before.

In the short story, magic realism plays with how the author ended it. The main intention of Dulce Rosa not allowing her father to kill her (for her not to suffer in the arms of the killer) is to avenge for both her and her father, and over the years, Dulce Rosa realized that

***However, the short story does not only focus on magic realism, but also on female empowerment. Magic realism is when the common and everyday situation is combined either with supernatural or a sudden change in the rational view of reality (making it seem unreal).