By Paul Carrier
Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist turned up on some critics’ lists of the best fiction published in 2014. Now that I’ve read it, it’s easy to see why.
Written with fluid grace and filled with a sense of foreboding, the novel is set in 1686, when 18-year-old Petronella (Nella) Oortman, a country girl newly wed to successful merchant Johannes Brandt, arrives at Brandt’s home in Amsterdam to begin her married life.
Accompanied by her pet parakeet Peebo, Nella quickly finds herself feeling isolated and largely abandoned in a confusing, sometimes hostile, environment. Her husband does not sleep with her and studiously avoids intimacy. The two household servants are cryptic. And Johannes’ unmarried sister Marin, who lives with her brother, is sharp-tongued and disapproving.
That inauspicious start takes a preternatural turn when Johannes gives his wife a costly and ostentatious wedding gift: a seemingly exact replica of their home in a nine-room tortoiseshell cabinet with pewter inlays. Equipping this large, exquisite dollhouse becomes Nella’s hobby of sorts when she hires a local "miniaturist" to craft tiny furnishings and decorative items.
The miniaturist, whom Nella only deals with through notes and messengers, turns out to be a mysterious woman who not only fills Nella’s order but also provides additional, unsolicited gifts. They bear an uncanny and baffling resemblance to actual items and creatures — chairs, paintings, dogs, etc. — in the Brandt home.
Nella initially tries to put a stop to these extras. But they continue to arrive, and she discovers that the miniaturist is a strange woman who has been periodically staring at her from a distance in public places while refusing to communicate face-to-face. Intrigued, Nella begins to welcome the mystifying, finely detailed models with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.
Over time, the miniaturist’s offerings suggest that she is a witch — or a prophet. When studied closely, her figurines, including small dolls depicting members of Johannes’ household and their pets, seem to foretell the future. As one crisis after another befalls the household, Nella learns that the miniaturist somehow anticipated almost every one, and included warnings or predictions in her designs.
Amsterdam itself is a compelling character in The Miniaturist. The largest, richest city in the Dutch Republic during its golden age in the 17th century, it was a mecca of capitalism. Powerful merchant traders, such as Johannes, set the tone for the community at large, which seems preoccupied with obsessive conformity, the appearance of propriety, public displays of wealth and a fire-and-brimstone piety.
Beneath the city’s lush and plush surface, there is much to dislike: hypocrisy, bigotry, a repressive spirit and an all-consuming greed that places "the guilder over godliness," as one character puts it. Looming over all is the seeming powerlessness of women in that place and time, yet it is women who prove to be the strongest characters in the novel.
The eponymous miniaturist remains elusive throughout, which may leave some readers wishing for greater clarity about her motives, powers and fate. But Burton defended her open-ended treatment of this mysterious presence in an interview with bookpage.com.
"For some people her actions are benign and progressive, for others, they are malicious. This is because there is no objective reality. I felt no desire to over-explain," Burton said. "Life is strange, threads are left hanging. Bella wants to know more about her just as much as many readers might like to, but that is the point; sometimes things are elusive, and I encourage the reader, should they so wish, to make up the ground."
Burton’s novel was inspired by an actual dollhouse from the period that belonged to a real-life Petronella Oortman, a wealthy Dutch woman who was married to an Amsterdam merchant named Johannes Brandt. This "cabinet house" is on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and The Miniaturist features a black-and-white photo of it. A color photograph of the cabinet house, which displays this remarkable creation in much greater size and detail, can be seen at https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/BK-NM-1010.
