The Glassmaker

Because of the unusual structure of Chevalier’s novel, she can describe contemporary problems such as COVID and climate change alongside historic events such as the Black Plague and the Napoleonic Wars. By unsettling the dichotomy between the past and the present, the author suggests that the events of everyday life are history in the making. Conversely, Chevalier also delivers the lesson that historical events that now seem distant once had deeply personal consequences for the individuals who lived through them. Most notably, the narrative structure allows for an implicit comparison between the Black Plague of the 16th century and the modern-day COVID-19 pandemic. During the Plague era, the limited scientific and medical knowledge led to mass fear, superstition, and conflict. Much later, when Orsola first hears rumors of the imminent COVID-19 pandemic, she thinks, “We have modern medicine, we’re clean, we don’t get such things. Not us, not now” (365), but her assumptions are soon proven wrong when she and her friends and family are forced to isolate, and Stefano still succumbs to the virus despite these efforts. Additionally, like the era of the Plague, the novel portrays the confusion, fear, and misinformation that ran rampant in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. By juxtaposing these two eras of mass disease, Chevalier implicitly questions how much humanity has truly advanced in the intervening centuries.

In addition to addressing culturally relevant issues such as COVID-19, Chevalier also uses the later portions of the novel to highlight other new challenges facing the world, and Venice in particular. Because the city is built on a lagoon, Venice has always faced threats from flooding, but the devastating flooding of 2019 has different nuances, and the narrative reflects this intensified foreboding by baldly stating, “[T]he planet is heating up. The sea is rising, Venice is sinking” (348). With Orsola’s centuries-long perspective, she can perceive the irony in the fact that the impacts of climate change have created a paradox: As concerns rise that Venice may eventually become impossible to visit, more and more tourists rush to see it, causing greater strain on the city. 

However, although the arc of Venetian history over more than 500 years is presented as a downward trajectory, the narrative also injects a sense of hope. While Orsola mourns for what Venice has become, she also reflects that “Venice was nimble, it adapted, it relied on its uniqueness” (376). Within this context, the imagery and symbolism of dolphins reflect her fragile hope for the future: While the first images of dolphins returning to the canals of Venice are shown to be a hoax, eventually “dolphins really did return to Venice” (379). The return of the dolphins also foreshadows Orsola’s meeting with Alessandro at the end of the novel. Because glass dolphins symbolize the ongoing bond between Antonio and Orsola, the appearance of real dolphins evokes the hope that anything is possible. As Orsola thinks when she first sees Alessandro approaching, “Real dolphins have come back to Venice, why not him, come back to me?” (380).

In light of Orsola’s unexpressed hopes, the meeting between her and Alessandro proves bittersweet, for Orsola is finally forced to confront the reality that “she has lived her life without [Antonio]” (381). At the same time, the meeting confirms that Antonio never stopped loving her; he ensured that traditions would be passed down through his family to honor the memory of their long-ago romance, even if his ancestors do eventually forget the origin and purpose of these practices. These echoes of centuries-old connections are designed to reflect the rhythm and form of history itself, particularly in the realm of interpersonal relationships. The man who personally knew and loved Orsola only lived for a short time, and personal memories and human connections are fleeting things in the grand sweep of history. However, traditions and stories can help to keep such memories alive, even if some aspects of the story are lost. Ultimately, the account of the Rosso family is fictional, but Chevalier uses this tale as a vehicle to shed light on the types of ordinary and largely undocumented lives that rarely become a part of formal histories. By commemorating people through art, the author finds a unique way to ensure that such mundane yet instrumental lives can endure far longer than the human lifespan.