Abundance
Sena Jeter Naslund, 2006
HarperCollins
560 pp.
ISBN-13 9780061208300
Summary
Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother, the Empress of Austria, arranged for her to leave her family and her country to become the wife of the fifteen-year-old Dauphin, the future King of France.
Coming of age in the most public of arenas—eager to be a good wife and strong queen—she warmly embraces her adopted nation and its citizens. She shows her new husband nothing but love and encouragement, though he repeatedly fails to consummate their marriage and in so doing is unable to give what she and the people of France desire most: a child and an heir to the throne.
Deeply disappointed and isolated in her own intimate circle, and apart from the social life of the court, she allows herself to remain ignorant of the country's growing economic and political crises, even as poor harvests, bitter winters, war debts, and poverty precipitate rebellion and revenge. The young queen, once beloved by the common folk, becomes a target of scorn, cruelty, and hatred as she, the court's nobles, and the rest of the royal family are caught up in the nightmarish violence of a murderous time called "the Terror."
With penetrating insight and with wondrous narrative skill, Sena Jeter Naslund offers an intimate, fresh, heartbreaking, and dramatic reimagining of this truly compelling woman that goes far beyond popular myth—and she makes a bygone time of tumultuous change as real to us as the one we are living in now. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.A., Birmingham-Souther College; Ph.D.
University of Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—Harper Lee Award; Alabama Writer of the Year
• Currently—Louisville, Kentucky, USA
Sena Jeter Naslund grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, where she attended public schools and received a B.A. from Birmingham-Southern College. She has also lived in Louisiana, West Virginia, and California. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. In addition to two other novels and two collections of short stories, her short fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and many others.
For 12 years she directed the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisville, where she teaches and holds the title Distinguished Teaching Professor. Concurrently, she is a member of the M.F.A. in Writing faculty of Vermont College. She is cofounder and editor of the literary magazine the Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-lis Press, housed at Spaulding University, and has taught at the University of Montana and Indiana University. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation.
In 1999, Naslund published Ahab's Wife, which rose quickly on the best seller lists. Abundance followed in 2006.
Extras
• Naslund is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council.
• She has taught literature since 1972, directing the creative writing program at University of Louisville, where she was awarded its first-ever Distinguished Teaching Professor honor. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Fictionalizing a life that is already so surreal is usually a vain endeavor (Shakespeare is one of the few who regularly pulled it off); so it's best in reading Naslund's romance to think of it as a kind of Forever Amber punted across the channel from Restoration England to Versailles.
Liesl Schillinger - The New York Times
Naslund broke on to the bestseller list in 1999 with Ahab's Wife, a spectacular novel spun from a single reference in Moby-Dick . Marie Antoinette would seem to offer Naslund the same rich material for historical reenactment and feminist revision, but it turns out there's a limit to how much you can defend a sweet, spoiled, sheltered woman—even an exquisitely dressed one. Naslund adds to this difficulty by using Marie to narrate this very long novel in the first person—a choice that leaves us trapped, literally and figuratively, in the Hall of Mirrors.
Ron Charles - The Washington Post
Appropriately, Burney begins her performance in the adorable upper registers of the 14-year-old Marie Antoinette, shipped to France by her mother, the Empress of Austria, to marry the 15-year-old Dauphin and peacefully conjoin France and Austria. Unfortunately, Burney continues in this insipid tone throughout her reading, which is understandable as Naslund (Ahab's Wife) portrays Marie as Little Mary Sunshine until the moment of her death by guillotine at age 38. Her love affair with a Swedish diplomat is strictly platonic and her inability to empathize with the French people is laid to her paternalistic advisers. All this may or may not be historically true, but it leaves listeners with Marie's diary-style descriptions of her personal and court life: the Dauphin's sexual limitations, the birth of her children, her clothes and hairstyles, girlish friendships and expensive banquets. The abridgment reinforces this focus by cutting little early on, then skipping quickly from one incident to another as the revolution evolves. Naslund's writing is clear and vivid, but offers little for those seeking a deeper understanding of the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Publishers Weekly
Lush with description and deep with historical detail, Naslund's (Ahab's Wife) latest novel weaves the epic of Marie Antoinette in all her misunderstood glory. Beginning with the ceremony that transforms the Hapsburg archduchess into the dauphine, the story captures a young girl's becoming the product of her circumstances. From her struggles to be diplomatic with her new family and subjects, to her marriage left unconsummated for years, Marie recalls her life in intelligent and mature observations. And when the first tremors of the French Revolution are felt, we see her struggle with her wishes to keep her children and husband safe. Immersing us in the life of the French court at its most vulnerable and decadent time, Naslund's marvelous work is more detailed and has more depth than Carolly Erickson's The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. Highly recommended for all public libraries. —Anna M. Nelson, Collier Cty. P.L., Naples, FL.
Library Journal
The French queen traditionally portrayed as a vain, heartless epicurean tells her own story in the industrious and versatile Kentucky author's fourth novel. Scrupulously researched and vividly presented, it's the highborn beauty's account of her journey from Austria in 1770 (regretfully leaving her indulgent mother, Archduchess Maria Teresa), at age 14, to wed Louis Auguste, the 15-year-old Dauphin who, a few years hence, will ascend to the throne of France as Louis XVI. Determined to avoid "mistakes" in her unfamiliar surroundings and new role, Marie maintains correspondence with her mother, seeks friends and mentors among various ladies of the court and men of the world-and patiently endures prolonged virginity, as her husband, more interested in hunting than in his beautiful consort, waits years to consummate their marriage. Marie's ingenuous sweetness is charming, but Naslund perhaps tips the scales unduly in portraying her as a woman of pure benevolence who never foresees the march of world-changing events, as revolutions break out in America and elsewhere, and "bread riots" trouble the peace of Paris while she and Louis enjoy their coronation. Still, it's an irresistible story, and Naslund handles its big moments-indulgent spectacles at the palace of Versailles, the notorious Affair of the Diamond Necklace (in which Marie is falsely accused of adultery with a dissolute cardinal) and the beginning of the end as the royal family's flight to Varennes ends in their capture by Revolutionary forces-with impressive assurance. The last 125 pages pass with blinding speed—exactly as events must have been experienced by victims of "the Terror"—and the numerous foreshadowings sprinkled throughout the text are cruelly fulfilled. Naslund has done her homework, and imagined her complex, bewitching protagonist in persuasive depth and detail. The result is an exemplary historical novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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."
4. Is Marie Antoinette, in fact, a victim—a virtual prisoner from the moment she surrenders her clothing and jewels (not to mention her dog) in the middle of the Rhine in the first chapter? Why or why not? What is it about the author's writing technique that discourages us from providing simple, pat answers to this kind of question? Explore, for instance, Marie Antoinette's nuanced and gradually maturing narrative voice, as well as Naslund's employment of such literary devices as foreshadowing, irony, symbolic imagery, and paradox.
5. Revisit the pivotal last chapter of "Act Four," which renders the eruption of revolution in stark counterpoint to the queen's blissful, penultimate encounter with Fersen. In particular, consider Marie Antoinette's poignant musings on the revolutionaries' freshly coined slogan, "liberté, equalité, fraternité." What do these words mean to Marie Antoinette? What is Naslund up to here? And what does Marie Antoinette's tidy, almost petulant dismissal of the Third Estate's grandly ideological, tri-colored rhetoric reveal about her own ideology?
6. Discuss the interconnectedness of female identity and performance in Abundance. What does it mean, for instance, that Marie Antoinette feels most engaged and alive when she is playing a role on the stage—Rosine in The Barber of Seville? Consider also the idea that Marie Antoinette's entire life is tantamount to a single, elaborately sustained performance, one sparked by her mother's exhortation to play the role of "an angel," blessing the people of France with peace.
7. How does the texture of this identity/performance theme shift once Marie Antoinette is faced with the prospect of fleeing? To flee, in Marie Antoinette's estimation, is to abandon her "role." Explore also the implications of Marie Antoinette's reaction to the disguises her friends wear in order to hide their wealth: "How can I play my role—that is to say—how can one maintain her identity, without the proper costume?"
8. Throughout Abundance, Naslund saturates Marie Antoinette's first-person narrative with a rich palette of bold colors, from the brilliant "blue silk of Austria" and the bountiful "red velvet" of France to the ominous black of the raven's wings and the ever-shifting, silver-and-gold gleamings of refracted light, both natural and artificial. Discuss the ways in which Naslund employs color to signify mood, underscore theme, and intimate character at different points in the novel.
9. In what specific ways has Naslund's rendering of late-eighteenth-century France come to inform, challenge, or even contradict altogether your previous understandings of the particular causes of the French Reign of Terror?
10. What did you know about Marie Antoinette before reading Naslund's novel? About the Reign of Terror? What surprised you most as you read?
11. How do Naslund's references to and subtle demonstrations of the prevailing philosophies of the day—including the outmoded optimism of Gottfried Leibniz ("This is the best of all possible worlds"); the measured, conservative skepticism of David Hume; the proto-civil libertarianism of the secular Voltaire; and the radical and prescient revolutionary ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau—color and shape the novel's inexorable march toward the Reign of Terror? To which philosopher would you align Marie Antoinette's world-view? What about her husband?
12. What kind of a man does Louis Auguste become? And what kind of king? Describe his politics and character, as far as they can be gleaned through Marie Antoinette's narration. Compare this portrait of Louis XVI's reign to other histories and accounts you've read about the period.
13. Imagine a companion volume to Abundance: this one recounts essentially the same events as the original, but it is told in Louis XVI's voice instead of Marie Antoinette's. How would this alternate novel be different in terms of perspective, language, and overall tone? How does he feel about himself? How does he experience the pleasures of hunting, working at his smithy or with locks, reading, eating? What situations are difficult for him? How does he understand his relationships to his parents, his grandfather, his brothers, his wife?
14. Discuss the nature of Marie Antoinette's relationship with her mother. Revisit their correspondence through the first three acts of the novel. To what degree is the dauphine a mere pawn to her mother's political machinations (by way of the hemorrhoidal Count Mercy d'Argenteau)? At what point does Marie Antoinette begin to recognize her own agency and seize her own autonomy?
15. The Empress of Austria has been called one of the shrewdest, most influential politicians in the history of Europe. How does this political acumen manifest itself in Abundance?
16. What does it mean to have power in the world of this novel? How is power variously seized, employed, abused, and/or deflected at different points in Abundance—whether by Louis XV, his three sisters, Louis XVI, the Empress of Austria, the Third Estate, or Marie Antoinette herself? Who ultimately wields his or her power most successfully?
17. What is your interpretation of the precise nature of the love that blooms between Marie Antoinette and Axel von Fersen? "We are the perfect friends," Marie Antoinette tells us, though her rapturous description of Fersen as "the most handsome, the most kind and good and loving—ah, yes, above all, loving—man in the world" all but demands us to wonder whether there is more to their bond than an ideal, platonic bond sealed by a bittersweet "transcendence of separation"—or, conversely, whether it is the very chasteness of their relationship that allows it to maintain such perfection. What is the effect here of Naslund's enigmatic prose?
18. What role do pamphleteers play in the years of Louis XVI's reign? Consider the potency of rumor and hearsay in the world of Naslund's narrative, from the notorious "sunrise orgy" to the legendary affair of the necklace.
19. What role does religion play in the life of Marie Antoinette? How do the Roman Catholic Church and the idea of the "divine right" of kings to rule interface with the French Revolution?
20. How has the press—or the Fourth Estate, as dubbed by Thomas Carlyle in his 1837 account of the French Revolution—evolved over the last two centuries, from anonymous pamphleteers to 24-hour news channels and tabloid journalism? What parallels might be drawn? Is it useful and valuable to underscore such connections and portents—or simply reductive? If possible, fashion arguments for both sides of this question.
21. Consider other historical novels you've read recently (e.g.: E. L. Doctorow's The March). How does Naslund's work—as simultaneously sweeping and intimate as it is—complement, complicate, and/or depart from the standard trappings and concerns of the historical fiction genre? In recommending this book to a friend, how would you describe it? How would you compare this novel and its protagonist to the main characters in Naslund's Ahab's Wife and Four Spirits?
22. Abundance features an epigraph from Germaine de Staël's Reflections on the Trial of the Queen that exhorts "women of all countries, of all classes of society" to recognize the fundamental universality of "the Fate of Marie Antoinette." How does Naslund's choice of epigraph presage and/or belie the tone and texture of her portrait of the queen? And how does it speak to the social conditions endured by women of the age?
23. What is the significance of the title of this novel? Why do you suppose Naslund chose it? Discuss the various meanings of abundance—moral, material, biological, political, and otherwise.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)