The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

The book’s dialogue reflects the widely varied dialects and speech patterns of its characters. How do the authors achieve characterization through the manner in which the characters speak? What other purposes do they achieve in this way?  Use specific examples from the text to support your reasoning.

What social values and other aspects of society does the book criticize? What values does it promote? Are the promoted values still relevant? Why or why not?

Why do you think the authors chose to reveal some characters’ inner thoughts, feelings, and motivations, but not others? Which main character’s motivations and intentions are most apparent, and which are least apparent?

For each of the main characters, identify the event in the story that had the greatest impact on their character arc, and explain your reasoning.

Unusually for a literary novel, The Gilded Age has two authors. How does the collaboration between Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner impact the novel’s structure?

The novel employs a third-person omniscient perspective, but the authors occasionally break into the narrative to address the reader directly, using first-person pronouns. How do these interjections change how the story is read?

Compare The Gilded Age to other satiric novels. What do they have in common? How are they different? (Examples to consider include Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, or Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.)

Compare and contrast the roles of Laura’s and Ruth’s characters in developing a thematic message about gender norms and sexism.