Over comming life

            
             Life is a continual struggle to roll with the punches; people throughout the world have to deal with many hardships throughout their day. The key to being able to empower ones self is to be able to turn hardships into opportunities and take advantage of them. Chilean writer Isabel Allende shows how her female characters are able to do this in her short stories. In the short story And of Clay are we Created Azucena becomes trapped in a mud pit, disempowering her, and is empowered by the love that is expressed for her. Dulce Rosa from Revenge is disempowered when she is raped but overcomes it through her desire for revenge. Casilda, the female character of The Judge's Wife, is also raped but allows her self to look at it positively through the love she has for her children. It is clear that Allende puts outside interferences in her characters way and then makes her characters overcome those interferences with strong emotions like love and friendship.
             Azucena from Allende's And of Clay are we Created is disempowered by a physical constraint, she is trapped in the mud pit, as well as empowered by love, she is able to make Rolf express his love for her. Expressing the disempowerment of Azucena Allende writes, "In that vast cemetery where the odor of death was already attracting vultures from far away, and where the weeping of orphans and wails of the injured filed the air, the little girl obstinately clinging to life became the symbol of the tragedy."(Allende 353) Disempowering Azucena, Allende places her in a horrible place against her will the words that stick out in you mind causing you to think of Azucena's disempowerment is Allende's description of her as the "symbol of the tragedy."(Allende 353) However Azucena is empowered when Allende writes, "Rolf assured her that he loved her more than he could ever love anyone, more than his mother, more than his sister, more than all the women who had slept in his arms.