Dora is the protagonist of the novel and the book has been titled after her. Dora and her twin sister were living the life of orphans because their mother died while giving birth to them. Their father never recognized them as his daughters until the end of the novel, but the sisters knew that Melchior was their father.
Melchior remained in the illusion that he had two other sisters, but on his 100th birthday party, he gets to know that they are not his daughters. The book revolves around the illegitimate children and incestuous relationships where no one is certain of their actual parentage. Furthermore, Dora and Nora both fell in love with their uncle and Tristram calls her sisters as her aunts. Most of the characters have reached the age of seventy five or more or almost hundred but still they consider themselves as young. Dora considers herself as a child and she realizes that her uncle whom she loves doesn't appear as an old man of hundred years old.
Dora and Nora have been named as chance sisters in the novel owing to their birth by chance, and they call their step mother a wheelchair because of her ailment. The names in the book are ironical along with the relationships. The author has shown the lack of sincerity in the world through her characters and the novel is replete with allusions to Shakespeare. Melchior's obsession with Shakespeare's plays is an evidence of the author's adoration of the plays. The structure of the novel is also like a play and the reader feels that there is a connection between the novel and Shakespeare's plays.
