The Miniaturist

Thirty-nine-year-old Johannes is a wealthy Dutch merchant. When he becomes Nella’s husband, Nella anticipates that Johannes will fulfill the love-interest role. However, as a gay man pressured into marriage by his sister, Johannes cannot meet Nella’s romantic expectations. His dilemma illustrates how women were not the only ones who felt the negative impact of 17th-century gender roles.

Johannes is warm and humorous, with a hedonistic streak displayed in his love of rich food. His rescues of Otto, Cornelia, and Rezeki from their unfortunate circumstances illustrate his compassion. In many ways, Johannes is a dedicated husband. While he cannot offer Nella romantic love, he treats her kindly and respectfully, acknowledging her as an equal, and increasingly trusts her as a confidante. The mutually rewarding platonic relationship that grows between Johannes and Nella illustrates the novel’s exploration of different forms of love.

Despite Johannes’s positive qualities, his actions bring disaster to the Brandt household. His delay in selling the Meermanses’ sugar and his incautious behavior with Jack create a perfect storm, leading to his execution. Johannes’s misguided belief that his wealth will protect him contributes to his fate. However, Burton also illustrates how Johannes’s hatred of hypocrisy becomes a fatal flaw in an intolerant and corrupt society. Ultimately, he is punished for refusing to conceal his true self.

Nella guesses her sister-in-law is 10 years older than her. However, Marin’s assured manner makes her appear more mature than her years. Her character is presented as a foil to her brother, Johannes: cold, humorless, and austere. Tall and upright “like the figurehead on the bow of a ship” (116), Marin’s physical appearance mirrors her imperious, intimidating character traits. Her plain black dresses and white cap, “starched and pressed to white perfection” (9), suggest a rigidity of mind and rejection of luxury. Marin’s attitude toward food is likewise strict, and her preference for herrings and aversion to sugar signal self-denying religious piety. The unwelcoming reception she gives Nella on her arrival initially suggests Marin is the novel's antagonist.

Outwardly, Marin is “the perfect Dutchwoman” (117), reflecting the country’s strict Calvinism. However, she is a character of contradictions, deepening the novel’s exploration of appearances versus reality. Even on first meeting her, Nella detects “the vaguest, strangest scent of nutmeg” emanating from Marin (9). The exotic scent conflicts with Marin’s otherwise severe persona, hinting at hidden depths. The revelation that Marin’s plain black dresses are lined with fur confirms her carefully hidden sensuality. As the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that Marin’s overt outward piety is a façade, carefully constructed to distract from her brother’s sexual orientation. Her actions demonstrate her love for her brother.

Despite appearances, Marin is a subversive character representing the novel’s theme of female autonomy. Preserving her independence by remaining single, she asserts covert control over her brother’s business interests. Her sexual relationship with Black servant Otto is also groundbreaking, resulting in the birth of a biracial child—an unprecedented event in conservative Amsterdam. Over the course of the novel, Marin reveals glimpses of her true self as she softens toward Nella and displays occasional outbursts of intense emotion. Nevertheless, she remains an enigmatic character. Nella’s realization that her cabinet does not include her sister-in-law’s room suggests that Marin is impenetrable, even to the miniaturist. Her unexpected and unwitnessed death implies that she is ultimately unknowable.

Johannes’s former friend, Frans, is an antagonist in the novel. A bitter and resentful man, he envies Johannes, as he has failed to achieve the same level of success. He also incorrectly believes that Johannes prevented him from marrying his first love, Marin. Frans is a social climber who desires to impress others. His penchant for oversized hats illustrates his craving for social status.

Rather than achieving wealth in his own right, Frans secures it through his mercenary marriage to Agnes. While Agnes loves her husband, the dismissive way Frans speaks to his wife indicates her feelings are unreciprocated. Frans’s rise within Amsterdam’s hierarchy demonstrates how money equates to power in the city. His wealth allows him to join the St. George Militia, a group of armed officers who enforce Amsterdam’s laws. Frans abuses this power in his vendetta against Johannes and his unsuccessful attempt to have the miniaturist arrested. His discomfort and unexpected tears at Johannes’s trial suggest his conscience is troubled by his actions, but while Johannes forgives his former friend’s betrayal, Frans remains unflinching in his determination to destroy Johannes.

A former childhood friend of Marin’s, Agnes embodies the hypocrisy of Amsterdam’s society. While her heavily bejeweled fingers show off her ostentatious wealth at the Silversmiths’ feast, the psalter she wears in a pouch for church proclaims her piety. A callous character, Agnes revels in the misfortune of others. She derives pleasure from making insinuations about Johannes and from seeing handless prisoners emerging from the Stadhuis. Despite owning a sugar plantation in Surinam, Agnes has never visited her estate. Her objectifying fascination with Otto, whom she calls “the Negro,” illustrates a disconnect between her wealth and its source; through the character of Agnes, the novel highlights how much of Amsterdam’s wealth was created by the unseen enslavement of other races in far-off lands.

Toward the novel's end, there is a distinct change in Agnes as her air of self-satisfaction is replaced by agitation and vulnerability. As her backstory is revealed, a pattern of victimization by unkind patriarchal figures emerges. Agnes inherits the sugar plantation despite her tyrannical father’s repeated attempts to sire sons. She also becomes the pawn of her husband, who does not return her devotion. Frans’s control over her is highlighted by the way he sits behind her in court, ensuring she corroborates his false testimony. Agnes’s situation illustrates the restrictions Marin sought to escape when she rejected Frans’s proposal. After belonging to her father, Agnes becomes her husband's property, despite the wealth she brings to the marriage. Agnes’s visible distress in the later chapters suggests that the miniaturist has opened Agnes’s eyes to Frans’s true character and motivations.

Cornelia is the hard-working maid and cook in the Brandt household. Rescued from an orphanage by Johannes at the age of 12, she is fiercely loyal to her employer. Nella initially interprets Cornelia’s curiosity and lack of deference as impudence. As the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that the maid’s manner results from Johannes and Marin treating her as an equal.

Cornelia’s presence brings the pleasure of female friendship into Nella’s life. Her offerings of comfort food and scraps of information about Marin gradually win Nella over. Cornelia and Nella share a love of eavesdropping, and the maid describes herself as the “Queen of Keyholes” (284). Like Nella, Cornelia often fails to accurately perceive things that are right in front of her. She misinterprets the events surrounding Frans’s proposal, fails to guess the nature of Marin and Otto’s relationship, and does not suspect Marin’s pregnancy. Her character reinforces the novel’s motif of observation.

Otto is Johannes’s Black manservant. Approximately 30 years old, he was saved from a slave ship by his employer at the age of 16. Although Otto is a free man, the people of Amsterdam treat him like a zoo exhibit, pointing at him and touching his hair. His character underlines the novel’s exploration of the meaning and limitations of freedom. He is also a physical reminder of the racist exploitation much of Amsterdam’s wealth is based on.

Otto is a composed and enigmatic figure. His air of dignity is reflected in the “unconscious grace” of his movements and his immaculately presented clothes. The novel hints that, like the miniaturist, Otto possesses an uncanny insight into future events. His prediction that “[t]hings will spill over” is substantiated throughout the narrative (37).

Johannes’s lover, Jack, is a young Englishman and former actor who works as a delivery boy. Physically attractive with wild, curly hair, Jack is an antagonist and agent of chaos in the novel. Johannes’s infatuation with Jack brings danger and tragedy into the Brandt household. His role in the narrative illustrates the painful nature of misplaced love.

Jack is callous and lacks any sense of integrity. He betrays Johannes first by killing his beloved dog and then by accepting money from Frans Meermans to falsely claim Johannes attacked him. Jack uses his acting skills to corroborate and embellish Frans’s story in court. His lie that Johannes called him “his little niece” during the attack (337) indicates Jack relishes his performance while condemning his lover to death.

Pastor Pellicorne embodies the untenable clash between spirituality and materialism in Amsterdam. His Calvinist sermons warn his congregation against the sin of greed and attachment to worldly goods, yet his expensive clothes demonstrate that he does not practice what he preaches. The fragility of his faith when faced with temptation is demonstrated when Nella negotiates with him over Marin’s burial. Pellicorne’s insistence that Marin is morally “tainted” is soon undermined when Nella offers him a substantial bribe. Quick to criticize moral failings in others, he overlooks them in himself.

Pastor Pellicorne’s sermons, urging citizens to look for sin in their neighbors, are instrumental in creating Amsterdam's claustrophobic atmosphere of observation. A fire and brimstone preacher, he enjoys evoking the fear of damnation in his flock, conjuring the image of a rising tide that may engulf the city and its inhabitants.

While the novel’s title places the miniaturist at the heart of the narrative, her appearances in the text are brief and elusive. Nella often glimpses the miniaturist’s fair hair among crowds, but she never meets her face-to-face. The miniaturist’s voice in the narrative is limited to the packages and messages she sends.

The miniaturist’s anonymity emphasizes her role as a detached observer of Amsterdam’s society. Her characteristics make her an outsider in almost every sense of the word. While her foreign accent signals her difference, she flouts gender restrictions by living alone and ignoring the Dutch guild system prohibiting women’s involvement in certain trades. Her position on the edge of society means she is “not bounded by its rules” (228) and is “a law unto herself” (130). Only toward the novel’s conclusion does Nella discover the miniaturist is called Petronella. Their shared first name accentuates the link Nella feels between the miniaturist’s identity and her own.

The miniaturist’s eerie omniscience is never explained, although her father reveals that her “gift” caused the rest of the family to reject her. The novel does not clarify whether her miniatures are prophecies or catalysts that bring about the novel’s events. However, as the novel progresses, it emerges that the miniaturist only applies her powers to women. Her insight into the domestic spaces women inhabit is reflected in the miniatures she crafts. The sign of the sun outside her workshop symbolizes how she gives women agency by illuminating their interior lives.

What little readers learn of the miniaturist’s background, they learn from her father, Lucas Windelbreke. A clockmaker, Lucas raised his daughter alone in the Belgian city of Bruges and taught her his trade. However, instead of creating clocks that told the time, she produced devices that reflected the contents of customers’ souls. Lucas is frightened by his daughter’s strange powers. However, he is unable to persuade her to conceal them from society.

Confectioners Arnoud and Hanna Maakvrede play a key role in saving the Brandt household from ruin. Arnoud agrees to buy the Meermanses’ sugar but attempts to take advantage of Nella when negotiating a price. However, Cornelia’s friend, Hanna, intervenes, offering a fair figure. Like Marin, Hanna asserts influence while appearing to conform to the restrictions of a patriarchal society. The confectioner’s wife facilitates her husband’s ambition of becoming a sugar merchant, knowing that it will give her the freedom to run the shop alone.