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.Is Marie Antoinette, in fact, a victima 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.The walls are just too far away for you to take much notice of them.' 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. Discuss Naslund's extended treatment of this idea, which one could argue is among the novel's overriding themes. From her arrival at Versailles as a girl, when she first perceives the vast chateau 'hold out her arms' as if to embrace and/or seize her, Marie Antoinette exists in a perpetual state of enclosure. The specter of imprisonment haunts the entirety of Abundance.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?

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.

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?

Sena Jeter Naslund has divided her novel into five 'acts,' like a Shakespearean play.

Abundance book marie antoinette