Abundance Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of Abundance.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Sena Jeter Naslund has divided her novel into five "acts," like a Shakespearean play. Does Marie Antoinette achieve the stature of a tragic protagonist at the end of the novel? If she is ennobled through suffering by the end of the novel, what has been her tragic flaw? What are her admirable qualities?
   


2. Recount the dramatic evolution of Marie Antoinette's character, from her arrival in France at the age of fourteen to her death just shy of thirty-eight. What prompts Marie Antoinette's transformation from callow moralist and pliant dauphine in early chapters to empathic mother and brave stoic in the novel's culmination at the Conciergerie?
   


3. The specter of imprisonment haunts the entirety of Abundance. From her arrival at Versailles as a girl, when she first perceives the vast chateau "hold[ing] out her arms" as if to embrace and/or seize her, Marie Antoinette exists in a perpetual state of enclosure. Discuss Naslund's extended treatment of this idea, which one could argue is among the novel's overriding themes. Is Marie Antoinette's life in France tantamount to that of the proverbial bird in a gilded cage? Consider, for example, Louis XVI's casual observation that "the whole estate of Versailles is enclosed. The walls are just too far away for you to take much notice of them."
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Harper Perennial. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.