SACRIFICIO Y RECOMPENSA

Sacrificio y recompensa is the first Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera work ever published. Entered in the literary contest organized by the Ateneo de Lima in 1886, it earned its author the gold medal. The publication in 1887 meant for Mercedes Cabello her recognition by the Lima society as a writer, and the preliminary hints of a style and attitude vis-a-vis the society that would become exacerbated in her other writings, Los amores de Hortensia (1886), Eleodora (1887), specially in Blanca Sol (Novela social) (1888) and Las consecuencias (1890), and El conspirador (1892). There is a character in Sacrificio y recompensa, Elisa, the beautiful putative daughter of Estelas tutor, that can be regarded as the immediate precedent of Blanca Sol