The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [229]
TAIL-PIECE
Hebrew: “The end of a thing is better than the beginning.” Eccles. vii. 8.
READING GROUP GUIDE
Readers routinely regard The Gilded Age as a fierce satire of post–Civil War America. What is the portrait of American society that emerges from Twain and Warner’s 1873 novel that gave its name to the era it describes?
Despite its attack on the corruption and values of the period, can it be said that The Gilded Age actually celebrates certain virtues of the late 1800s? In other words, are there characters or features of the novel portrayed sympathetically by Twain and Warner?
The chapter-head mottoes in The Gilded Age are a source of much critical debate. Some consider them simply a parody on the epigraph tradition. Others view them as much more thematically significant to the action of each chapter. What do you believe was Twain and Warner’s intent? Do you see connections between the mottoes and the plot? Why do you suppose they were presented in a variety of foreign languages?
In addition to attacking the social values of post–Civil War America, The Gilded Age is said to parody the then-popular sentimental novel. What aspects of The Gilded Age (characters, scenes, and plot lines) seem deliberately overly melodramatic?
Many of the characters and incidents depicted in The Gilded Age are based on actual people and events readers of the 1870s would have recognized. What aspects of the novel seem based on historical elements?
While co-writing The Gilded Age, Twain and Warner divided the workload by each taking responsibility for developing one of the two principal plot lines in the novel. Twain handled the story of the Hawkins family, while Warner managed the account of Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly. Are there noticeable differences in the overall quality of these two plot lines? Do Twain and Warner ever really synthesize them adequately? What about the novel indicates most noticeably that The Gilded Age is written by two authors?
Colonel Sellers is one of Mark Twain’s most memorable creations. Modeled after several individuals in Twain’s own family, Sellers seems to embody a complicated assortment of endearing and uninviting traits. In the end, how should the reader regard Sellers?
Laura Hawkins is often considered a central character in the novel. At what point in the story does it become evident that The Gilded Age is primarily focused on her? Is Laura Hawkins ultimately a sympathetic character?
To what degree do the illustrations throughout The Gilded Age contribute to the reader’s understanding of the text? Do they interfere in any way?
Twain is probably best remembered for boyhood idylls set in the Mississippi River Valley, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Are there similarities, thematic or otherwise, between those works and The Gilded Age?
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
Maya Angelou
A. S. Byatt
Caleb Carr
Christopher Cerf
Charles Frazier
Vartan Gregorian
Richard Howard
Charles Johnson
Jon Krakauer
Edmund Morris
Azar Nafisi
Joyce Carol Oates
Elaine Pagels
John Richardson
Salman Rushdie
Oliver Sacks
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Carolyn See
William Styron
Gore Vidal
1 The incidents of the explosion are not invented. They happened just as they are told.— THE AUTHORS.
2 In those old days the average man called his children after his most revered literary and historical idols; consequently there was hardly a family, at least in the West, but had a Washington in it—and also a Lafayette, a Franklin, and six or eight sounding names from Byron, Scott, and the Bible, if the offspring held out. To visit such a family, was to find one’s self confronted by a congress made up of representatives of the imperial myths and the majestic dead of all the ages. There was something thrilling about it, to a stranger, not to say awe inspiring.
3 As impossible and exasperating as this conversation may sound