The Queen's Dollmaker (36 page)

A READING GROUP GUIDE

THE QUEEN’S DOLLMAKER

Christine Trent

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Christine Trent’s
The Queen’s Dollmaker
.

1. What were your assumptions about the use and manufacture of dolls during the book’s time period? What surprised you about dollmaking in the eighteenth century?
   
2. Do you think Claudette made a bad decision to go back to Paris for a second time to visit Marie Antoinette? What positive outcomes were there as a result of this visit?
   
3. Why was Jean-Philippe willing to imprison—and even approve of a death sentence for—his long-lost love, Claudette? Were his motives pure? In other words, did he believe in what he was doing, or was he merely angry at Claudette for rejecting him? Did you feel sympathy for Jean-Philippe? Would he have been less inclined to join the revolutionaries had Claudette returned to Paris and married him?
   
4. What factors in England and France during the time period of the novel made it difficult for women to learn a trade and become successful entrepreneurs? Where did tradesmen fit into the social hierarchy of English society? How did those social factors affect Claudette’s ability to start, maintain, and grow her business?
   
5. For centuries the English appear to have had a love-hate relationship with the French, mistrusting them on the one hand, and following their fashions and their trends on the other. This was apparently at play when Mrs. Ashby wanted to impress her guests with a French maid. What skills (besides dollmaking) and personality traits did Claudette possess that helped her maintain her “elevated” position while in the employ of the Ashby family? How did those skills and traits help her in the growth of her doll business, and then through her ordeal in a French prison?
   
6. Was Count Fersen acting maliciously toward Claudette when he concocted the idea to use her dolls to smuggle valuables to the king and queen of France? Why did he think this was a good plan for helping the monarchs?
   
7. How do you think Marie Grosholtz’s experiences in the days leading up to the Revolution affected her future plans for a wax museum?
   
8. Compare and contrast William and Jean-Philippe. In what ways did they make poor decisions regarding Claudette? What was each man’s greatest show of love for her?
   
9. Did William’s position as someone favored by the king—but not yet made part of the peerage—make it more socially acceptable for him to fall in love with a tradeswoman? Would Claudette’s trade itself, dollmaking, have been more acceptable to the upper ranks than, say, that of household servant, actress, or dressmaker?
   
10. What were Lizbit’s real motives for everything she did to Claudette? Do you think her suffering at the end of the novel provided redemption for her activities?
    
11. What was the socioeconomic environment in France that caused the French Revolution? Could a convergence of such circumstances cause a similar political reaction in today’s world, or does the election system of a democratic society such as that of the U.S.’s give the populace enough voice to preclude such an upheaval?
    
12. Why do you think the revolutionaries were determined to execute their king and queen? Was it a personal vendetta against them, or did they represent something undesirable? Or was there another reason?