An Abundance of Katherines narrates the chronicle of Colin Singleton, a young mathematician, who is dumped by a girl named Katherine just after he finishes high school. He sets off with his best friend, Hassan, to discover a mathematical formula that can foretell where any relationship will head and, hence, elevate him from prodigy to genius. They take a road trip to Gunshot, Tennessee, where they become involved with the locals in ways they could never have imagined.
Male characters in the story are characterized by infidelity. This can be seen where The Other Colin, or TOC, is found to be cheating on his girlfriend, Lindsey Lee Wells. Male characters are also portrayed as treating their girlfriends badly. This is traced through the main character, Colin, who gets dumped by eighteen out of his nineteen girlfriends. All those eighteen girls broke up with him because there was something wrong in the way Colin treated them when they were dating. On the other hand, female characters are portrayed as being victims of mistreatment as well as being vulnerable. From Lindsey to all nineteen Katherines, they were all treated inappropriately by their boyfriends and, thus, they ended up feeling dissatisfied, causing their relationships to end.
Gender influences the choices that are available to the characters and the decisions they make in a few ways. First, being a male enables Colin to date nineteen different girls without society, specifically his friends and family, judging him negatively. Second, being a female enables Hollis to successfully run a local factory that produces tampon strings. Third, being a male allows TOC to be an on-again, off-again boyfriend, as a female would normally not be so irregular in a relationship. And lastly, Colin’s life represents the fact how females can control males, as he needs girlfriends regularly. One can distinctly realize this due to the fact he already dated nineteen various girls. As a result, it may be stated that certain men are afraid to be without a girlfriend.
Gender affects the plot as well as character development in the novel. For instance, being a male and a mathematics prodigy allows Colin to seek the perfect relationships applying mathematical formulas. He needs a female character in this case, Lindsey, to show him that his mathematical formulas cannot predict the future of any relationship; they can be only based on the past experiences. All he needs is love. Therefore, gender enables Colin to understand that mathematics cannot accurately predict something as unpredictable as human relationships. Being a male also enables one to view that Hassan’s character is changing very slowly: from being very lazy to the point of refusing to take certain classes, to finally choosing to take them at the end of the book.
If the genders of the main characters were reversed, the novel would be significantly different. For example, Colin would not have had so many relationships as it is almost unheard of for a girl to have as many as nineteen boyfriends at such an age. Also, if Hassan had been a female, he probably would not have made fun of his being fat, as girls tend to be very sensitive about their weight.
If the events of the novel were to take place today, the novel’s plot would not have changed drastically, as the present society is quite similar to the one depicted in the novel.