The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist is a historical novel disguised as a mystery one: its real aim is not to explore the enigma that the title character represents, but to investigate and criticize the Dutch society of the early 17th century.

The protagonist is Petronella Oortman, or Nella, a young woman who marries a successful merchant she doesn’t know, Johannes Brandt, and goes on to live with him in Amsterdam. Her new life, however, is not as she had envisioned. Being constantly ignored by her husband and finding in her sister-in-law a hostile figure, Nella only feels comfortable around her wedding gift: a detailed dollhouse that faithfully represents the rooms where she now lives. However, she soon begins to receive strange gifts from the miniaturist hired to furnish the house, and suspects that she may be being watched.

The first act is loaded with suspense, with a suffocating atmosphere that suggests danger lurking in every corner, especially in Nella’s first scene in her new home: she walks through a thick patch of darkness as she enters the house, where she encounters her husband’s sister, Marin, immersed in shadows, dressed in black and with a rigid posture, manifesting her disapproval with just a few words. As she takes Nella to her new bedroom, Marin takes the opportunity to point to the house’s various paintings that portray animals hunting, which hints at her own predatory nature.

The Crimson Peak vibes are simply immaculate here. Strange sounds in the house disturb the protagonist during the night; characters whisper when she is not around and shut up when they spot her coming. Nella immediately feels threatened, believing that she is far from welcome in that house and that her sister-in-law may very well pose a serious threat to her well-being.

The relationship between the two characters is the highlight of the book. If, at first, Marin assumes the clear role of antagonist, she gradually begins to show traces of compassion and loyalty, sometimes even coming close to becoming the moral center of the story. If Nella, at the beginning, sees her sister-in-law as a clear enemy, at the end, the feeling she has for Marin has completely transformed.

Marin’s development actually far outstrips that of the protagonist herself, being the culmination of the book’s main themes. The Miniaturist deals with prejudice – racism, homophobia, and misogyny – and presents characters that fit into each minority. Marin and Nella are women, and so are unable to take care of business, argue with their husbands about economic matters (about any matter, really), and be free. As Marin explains: “some of us can work, […] back-breaking work, for which they won’t even pay us half of what a man could earn. But we can’t own property, we can’t take a case to court. The only thing they think we can do is produce children who then become the property of our husbands.”

It’s completely understandable, then, why Marin sees marriage as prison, as the precise moment a wife must submit herself to a man’s authority until the end of her life.  Marin’s biggest fight is against her society, whether it’s by constantly sending suitors away, running her brother’s business in secret, taking care of finances, or taking on typically male household chores, such as reading sermons. We gradually realize that Marin’s general hostility is not the sign of a villain, but actually a defense mechanism of someone who is constantly being watched and frowned upon – her room is even described as a cell during a certain scene

Nella, on the other hand, is submissive to the values she learned as a child. At one point, for example, her mother teaches her about the meaning behind that horrible Brazilian expression “bad with him, worse without him,” arguing that married life means financial security even if it’s not… comfortable in a lot of ways: “Her mother has told her what wives can hope for – a rising rod of pain, the chance it won’t go on too long, the wet clam dribble between your legs.”

So, what Nella sees in her new home surprises her. She sees a woman handling her brother’s business skillfully; an employee who is treated with respect and still works hard; a man with dark skin who is trustworthy, and a homosexual who is honest and kind. Her character arc involves the demolition of prejudices acquired in her childhood: she is part of those recurring cases where a family education doesn’t reflect the reality of the world, but only the frustrations, vices, and bigotry of the parents.

Nella, however, takes a long time to understand this. She passes almost the entirety of the book repeating the same ideas of female submission, severity in the treatment of the employees, distrust toward people of color, and hatred against homosexuals – the last one, not by chance, is even reinforced during a visit to the church. If Marin is a tragic figure for trying to fight her society without success, Nella can be an especially annoying one, for going along with it for too long.

Her relationship with Johannes is not very well developed either. At first, Nella resents her husband’s disregard for her, then she gets angry at him, and by the end, she’s… desperately in love. This evolution makes no sense, as there are very few scenes of the two together that could suggest this change of heart. Johannes remains cold with her for much of the story, with his displays of affection always being followed by a calculated detachment, as if he feared that she would begin to nurture something for him otherwise. Therefore, the melodramatic climax that relies too much on Nella’s desperation ends up feeling artificial.

Another point where Nella is problematic is in her delay in taking action regarding absolutely everything. Her relationship with the miniaturist is the most revealing in this regard: Nella starts to receive gifts that she did not order, gifts that expose elements of her family life that only someone present in that house could know, and she acts as if this didn’t pose an immediate threat to her in any way. She delays her visits to the miniaturist more than once, being constantly distracted by various random events. Then, she simply sends letters asking this mysterious individual who’s spying and harassing her to stop: her reaction to the events lacks urgency, which sabotages the tension of the miniaturist’s plotline.

From a certain point on, Nella even begins to see the gifts not as a threat, but as a helping hand. She looks at the dolls she receives and tries to interpret them, imagining what the miniaturist meant with those images. There is no reason for her not to call the police, but Nella still assures people that the miniaturist just wants her well-being.

This plotline also ends up being completely irrelevant to the main story. The book is structured around the discoveries made about the Brandts: Johannes and Marin keep countless secrets that are gradually revealed, connecting them with the prejudices of their society. The main antagonists are a Dutch couple who envy Johannes’ success, but still give him kilos of sugar to sell. Johannes, however, never seems to commit himself to the enterprise, generating the conflict in the climax.

Meanwhile, Nella receives lots of miniatures and has epiphanies that don’t even serve to make her act. In one scene, she reflects that the miniaturist is suggesting that she should press her husband to sell the sugar, and yet she still doesn’t. Just the fact that she needs an encrypted message made with dolls to reach an obvious conclusion is already problematic, but even knowing what should be done, Nella remains inert because of her ideas about what a woman in a marriage should and should not do. As a result, if this strange and mysterious figure didn’t exist, none of the main events would have occurred differently in the story – which is a pity, since the narrative is competent in building suspense and putting some good foreshadowing early on.

The scene in which the dollhouse is presented serves as a good example. It employs the cliché of “the house seemed to observe the character”, but makes up for it with the macabre touch regarding the material used in its construction “‘Made of oak and elm. Elm is strong,’ Johannes says, as if this is the explanation his new wife has been waiting for. He looks at Marin. ‘It’s used for coffins.’” Likewise, the following passage at the beginning of the book builds tension for a birthing scene that happens just at the end:

“The first time Nella bled, aged twelve, her mother told her that the purpose of that blood was ‘the security of children’. Nella never thought there was much to feel secure about, hearing the cries through the village of women in their labour pains, the coffins sometimes marched to church soon after.”

The Miniaturist may be well-written in some regards, but it suffers from serious structural problems and an infuriating protagonist. The miniaturist is an underdeveloped, completely dispensable figure, and the protagonist herself pales before her supporting characters.

June 10, 2025.

Review originally published in Portuguese on March 07, 2016.