This book club guide is designed to help spark thoughtful, lively conversation around Who Would Have Thought It? We collaborated on the discussion questions below with Dr. Jesse Alemán, who wrote the prologue to our Quite Literally Books edition. We hope they invite you to explore the book’s tone, characters, and historical context, while also considering why this radical novel has so often been left out of the canon and what it reveals about who gets to claim virtue, power, and Americanness.
Who Would Have Thought It? was published in 1872, but it reads like it was written for this exact moment. María Amparo Ruiz de Burton uses satire, exaggeration, and a deceptively simple domestic plot to take apart American hypocrisy around race, morality, religion, and who gets to belong.
The novel centers on Lola, a young girl raised by a white New England family that prides itself on its righteousness—while repeatedly failing her in ways both overt and subtle.
We hope you use the following to guide a full discussion or just to spark a few conversations.
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How would you describe the novel’s tone? Did it feel comic, cruel, moralizing—or all three?
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Were there moments where the satire felt surprisingly modern?
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How is Lola perceived by others versus how does she understand herself?
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How is Christianity used to justify cruelty or exclusion?
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What are the various “civil wars” in the novel? Discuss the different wars (domestic, class, racial, regional) that are taking place in this ostensible Civil War novel.
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Let’s talk about sex. It’s surprising to encounter an openly sexual character like Mrs. Norval in a novel from this time period. What are your takes on sex and sexuality, perhaps thinking of Mrs. Norval as a sexual character and Lola as a sexualized one.
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How are women expected to behave in the novel, and who benefits from those expectations?
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In what ways does the book critique white womanhood specifically?
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Speculate on why the novel is not widely known.
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How does the novel reflect U.S. attitudes toward Mexico and Mexican identity after the Mexican-American War?
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What felt most dated about the novel? What felt most current?
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What does “Americanness” seem to mean in this book, and who is allowed to claim it?
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Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Herland, Ruiz de Burton writes with razor-sharp clarity about injustice, hypocrisy, and entrenched “isms”—yet there are moments in Who Would Have Thought It? where she seems to fall into the very frameworks she is critiquing. Where do you see the novel revealing Ruiz de Burton’s own blind spots or limitations? How does recognizing those moments affect the way you read her as a narrator, and as an author?