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50 pages 1 hour read

Tracy Chevalier

The Glassmaker

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Goblets, Beads and Dolphins”

Prologue Summary: “A Brief Explanation of Time Alla Veneziana”

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of pregnancy loss, racism, and enslavement.

The prologue introduces Venice and the neighboring island of Murano, an important center for glassmaking. The narrative hints that time functions differently in these places, and it is revealed that “the artisans of the City of Water and the Island of Glass seem to be aging more slowly than the world beyond” (viii).

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

The story begins in Murano in 1486. Orsola Rosso is nine years old and lives with her family, which consists of her mother Laura, her father Lorenzo (a well-known glassmaker), and her two brothers, Marco and Giacomo. One day, Orsola falls into the canal, and Laura suggests that she warm up at the workshop of a rival glassmaking family, the Baroviers. Orsola goes alone to the Barovier workshop, where she is surprised to see Maria Barovier engaging in glassmaking, which is traditionally a male occupation. When she is spotted, Orsola flees and makes her way home, where Laura questions her. Orsola reports that she saw Maria making glass beads, and Laura suggests to her husband that the Rosso workshop should expand into bead making. However, Lorenzo is not interested since this would involve different techniques and equipment.

Eventually, Maria begins to sell a unique new form of glass bead, and “the Doge of Venice even granted [her] permission to set up her own small furnace” (12). Meanwhile, the Rosso family workshop is quietly successful; Marco and Giacomo are both training to succeed their father, but they have varying levels of skill. When Orsola is 17, her father dies unexpectedly when a piece of glass shatters in the workshop and a shard fatally cuts his throat. Lorenzo’s death puts the workshop in a precarious situation since Marco is still young and inexperienced. Laura is also pregnant when her husband dies, so there is additional pressure on the family. Shortly after Lorenzo’s death, Maria expresses a kind interest in Orsola, and Laura urges Orsola to seek advice from the successful female glassmaker.

Orsola meets with Maria Barovier, and they discuss Gottfried Klingenberg, a German merchant in Venice who is the primary buyer for Rosso glassware. Maria explains that Klingenberg has seemed reluctant to purchase items since Lorenzo’s death; she infers that Klingenberg believes the glassware is declining in quality. Maria suggests that the Rossos make different types of items and focus on pieces that Marco and Giacomo can execute successfully. She also suggests that Orsola begin making beads and tells her that Elena Barovier—Maria’s cousin—will teach her. Orsola begins learning how to make beads, finding it more difficult than expected. During this time, she accompanies Giacomo to Venice after Marco fails to return from a meeting with Klingenberg. Orsola is both entranced and uneasy with the bustling world of Venice.

When Orsola and Giacomo meet with Klingenberg, Orsola mentions her bead making to the merchant; since he respects Maria Barovier, Klingenberg agrees to look at Orsola’s beads once she has the skills to produce something saleable. Orsola and Giacomo track down Marco, who became petulant and went on a drinking spree after receiving criticism from Klingenberg. Marco is accompanied by a young fisherman named Antonio, who expresses interest in learning about glass. Although glassmaking is rigidly controlled and limited to individuals who are born into the trade, Marco offers to take Antonio on as an apprentice.

After Marco recovers from his embarrassment, he “throws himself […] vigorously into saving the Rosso workshop” (60). A few months later, Laura gives birth to a baby girl named Stella, and Marco marries a woman named Nicoletta. These changes mean more work for Orsola, who now has less time to perfect her bead making. Antonio begins an apprenticeship with the Rossos to learn glassmaking. Secretly, Orsola is pleased because she is attracted to Antonio.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Because time in Venice moves more slowly than the world outside, the setting jumps ahead to 1574, but Orsola and her close friends and family have not aged much. Orsola is now 18 years old. Despite her interest in Antonio, he keeps her at a distance, so Orsola channels her frustration into working on her beads. She is also kept very busy with domestic work in the household. When she sends some of her beads to Klingenberg, he visits the Rosso workshop, where he praises Antonio’s emerging skill and expresses his satisfaction with the beads. He also agrees to place a standing order. Orsola asks to be paid secretly and separately from the payments to Marco; Klingenberg agrees, although he points out that Marco is likely to discover this arrangement. Meanwhile, Nicoletta gives birth to Orsola’s nephew, who is nicknamed Marcolin.

Eventually, Orsola takes her first order of beads to Klingenberg; she delivers them alone, navigating Venice by herself. She is comforted to run into a gondolier named Domenego, a Black man who rows for the Klingenberg family. Domenego is friends with Antonio and is familiar with the Rosso family due to their business relationship with the Klingenbergs. Orsola asks Domenego about his past, and he explains that he was forcibly taken from Africa and enslaved.

Later in 1574, Orsola and her family hear rumors of plague in some neighborhoods, but it does not impact their area. Orsola continues to sell beads to Klingenberg, earning enough money to hire a woman to help with domestic tasks. One day, she and Antonio talk about terraferma (the mainland beyond the Venetian lagoon), and she can tell that Antonio is interested in seeing the wider world, even though she warns him that “Murano glassmakers have to stay here, to guard our ways of working. They send people after you if you try” (100). 

In the spring of 1575, the death toll from the plague rises quickly, leading the city government to impose quarantines. Individuals found to be suffering from the plague are sent to an island called Lazzaretto Vecchio. Eventually, people on Murano also begin to fall sick.

Nicoletta, who is pregnant with her second child, contracts the plague, and Orsola’s mother, Laura, decides to try to conceal Nicoletta’s illness to avoid the quarantine. Marcolin and Stella, the two young children, are sent to stay with Orsola’s aunt and grandmother. Eventually, Nicoletta’s illness is reported, and local authorities insist that she go to the quarantine island; Laura goes with her. Marco negotiates for the rest of the Rosso family to stay quarantined in their home rather than go to Lazzaretto Vecchio. The Rosso house is locked up, and no one is allowed to enter or leave the house for 40 days.

Orsola endures the quarantine along with her brothers and their apprentice, and because the workshop cannot produce, the Rosso family quickly encounters financial problems. Orsola begins passing beads along to Antonio to sell and makes many more, finally admitting to Marco that she has been selling beads for a while. People are drawn to the beads as talismans of protection and symbols of hope, and Orsola begins producing specific “plague beads.” As the quarantine continues, Orsola’s grandmother dies, although her aunt and the young children remain healthy. After the quarantine ends, Orsola’s mother returns to the house with a young baby, reporting that Nicoletta died during childbirth.

Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 2 Analysis

The Glassmaker departs from the conventions of historical fiction by drawing upon elements of magical realism, most notably in the vastly different rates of the passage of time between Venice and the mainland. This aspect of the novel allows Chevalier to create evocative depictions of the gradual evolution of Venetian life and culture across the centuries. She pays particular attention to the details of daily life in Venice and Murano, and she also includes references to notable historical events such as the plague and the collapse of the Venetian Republic. As the drama unfolds,  historical figures such as Napoleon and Casanova will also make their appearance. The conceit of time “alla Veneziana”—in which time for Orsola and her immediate circle draws out their natural lifetimes over centuries— grants the author access to many different historical eras, and this unusual narrative device plays upon Venice’s frequent depictions in literature and art as a unique and almost otherworldly place. As a city built on water, Venice has long been praised for its striking visual appeal, which has inspired many writers, artists, and visitors. However, the city’s ability to preserve its history amidst great change simultaneously fuels Venice’s allure and threatens it with stagnation. As Chevalier notes in the Prologue, “Venice and its neighboring islands have always felt frozen in time” (vii). By depicting the region as a place in which time literally passes at a different rate, Chevalier symbolically comments on Venice’s complex relationship to technological, philosophical, and historical change.

By depicting the passage of time in this way, Chevalier also examines the progression of history amidst the inexorable forces of change and innovation. While many significant European cities steadily grow in size, power, and wealth over the period covered in the book (from the 15th to the 21st centuries), Chevalier acknowledges the fact that Venice truly reached its peak of wealth and influence during the Renaissance. Since the 17th century, it has generally seen its economy and population decline, and in modern times, it now relies heavily on tourism—which in turn relies on individuals who are seeking to experience the past in some form. Within this context, the glassmaking practice of the Rosso family is celebrated as an ancient art that had already been largely perfected by the 15th century, when the narrative officially begins. 

Thus, while the plot of the novel moves forward through time, matters do not automatically improve for the family. Because Orsola and her close circle age much more slowly than those in the world beyond, the novel draws attention to their insular and traditional way of life, demonstrating that the glassmakers are barely impacted by the progression of history. While massive systemic changes rage around them, their lives continue in much the same way for centuries. Orsola remains constricted by the societal limitations on female glassmakers, and the Rosso family as a whole continues as skilled but still working-class individuals; their situation remains largely static, and the impact of large-scale historical changes can often barely be felt.

When the novel begins in 1486, Venice is enjoying the peak of its wealth and influence, and many believe that “the City of Water will always be rich and powerful” (3). Likewise, the Rosso workshop is thriving as a small but stable family business, and it is characterized as a “conservative workshop that would always have orders and never grow rich” (12). Throughout the novel, the economic fates of the Rosso business and Venice itself often mirror one another. At this time, Venice is a successful maritime empire with a famous naval fleet, significant political influence within Europe, and one of the largest populations of any European city. Because of its geographic position on the Adriatic Sea, the city stands as a key trading center during this time as goods move from Asia and the Middle East into Europe. These fortuitous circumstances render 15th-century Venice a fairly cosmopolitan city that hosts individuals from different regions, cultures, ethnicities, and religions. By including characters such as Klingenberg (the German merchant) and Domenego (the Black man whom Klingenberg enslaves), Chevalier portrays the cosmopolitan nature of the city and its ties to trade but also makes it abundantly clear that Venice’s diversity does not necessarily guarantee equality. 

This section of the novel also introduces Chevalier’s thematic focus on The Compromising Nature of Business Decisions, and many of these implicit observations are centered on the figure of Klingenberg. The German merchant’s participation in global trade makes him very wealthy and allows for the growth of several new business prospects, most notably his interest in buying Orsola’s beads. This initially secretive arrangement permits Orsola to gain greater autonomy and financial self-reliance despite her limited social status as a woman. However, those same networks of trade and money also condemn Domenego to a life of being treated as a commodity rather than as a human being. Throughout the novel, money, business, and the sale of goods are presented as morally ambiguous at best; they may create opportunities, but those who engage in these practices also risk losing aspects of their integrity and even their humanity. 

The Rosso family also feels this invisible pressure, for they must repeatedly compromise their traditions, creative vision, and artistic integrity in the struggle to remain financially relevant through the centuries. One of the first examples of this pattern occurs when Marco is forced to give up his dream of making beautiful but impractical goblets so that he can craft more lucrative goods. As Klingenberg points out, “One must be able to drink from a goblet, at the very least” (42). Because glass is both ornamental and functional, it can be fashioned into purely decorative objects or useful and pragmatic tools. This tension renders glassware a useful symbol for exploring the compromises and concessions between capitalism and artistry as artisans struggle to balance market demands with their creative visions.

Throughout the novel, Chevalier makes it a point to incorporate a wealth of valid historical details into her narrative. Most notably, she emphasizes the fact that the glass of the 15th century was a coveted and valuable commodity, and the narrative also reflects the historical reality that Venice was known worldwide as a center of production for high-quality glass during this period. Like many other trades in the early modern era, glassmaking was largely passed down through family lineages from father to son, and boys learned the trade through a period of apprenticeship. This process is vividly depicted in the novel, which also emphasizes the fact that glassmaking itself was a particularly regulated and guarded profession. Even the glassmakers’ isolation on the island of Murano is based in fact, for in the late 13th century, well before the start of Chevalier’s narrative, the Venetian government did indeed require all glassmakers to move to the island of Murano. While this legislation was introduced as a safety measure due to fire hazards posed by the glassblowing workshops, the decree also ensured that the glassmakers would form an insular and tightly contained community, thereby ensuring Venice’s ascendancy in the trade.

Historically, these restrictions on glassmakers were intensified by laws forbidding anyone with knowledge of Venetian glassmaking techniques from leaving the city on pain of death. By the time the novel begins in the late 15th century, Orsola’s family has been structured around strict traditions and a small sphere of influence for generations. Notably, Murano is repeatedly contrasted with the larger, more varied, and more chaotic world of Venice proper, although the two islands are only about two miles apart. The Rosso family’s relative isolation is further emphasized when Orsola finds herself intrigued by Venice but ill at ease during her time there. This tension also reflects Orsola’s major source of internal conflict: She is curious enough to crave new experiences, but she is also deeply loyal to her family and their traditions. Although she wants “to be […] in the center of it all,” she also prefers to return home and remain “safe from all this strangeness” (87), and her internal struggle in this regard sets the stage for future conflict around the issue of Prioritizing Family Loyalty Over Personal Desires.

Orsola’s decision to defy tradition and begin making glass beads is a major inciting action that foreshadows much of the conflict and character development to come. Because she is a woman, her ambition to participate in the glassmaking trade is depicted as unusual; however, the narrative indicates that it is far from impossible. Significantly, Orsola is only able to develop the skill of bead making because this knowledge has been passed down through a lineage of women: a feminized form of the apprenticeship model. (Later, Orsola will also convey her knowledge to younger generations of women.) By focusing on Orsola as a skilled female artisan, Chevalier uses the vehicle of historical fiction to convey marginalized aspects of the past that are often missing from historical records. In many European trades and professions during the medieval and Renaissance eras, women played significant roles that remained poorly documented; more broadly, small-scale family businesses were also less likely to achieve recognition.

Through her fictional characters, Chevalier imaginatively recreates key experiences that are largely absent from historical records, and her narrative also delivers a more vivid experience of history by texturing raw facts with a subjective yet realistic overlay of emotions, interpersonal struggles, and secret ambitions. While Orsola develops a particularly active role as a woman who makes glass products, the more traditional roles of the female members of glassmaking families are also depicted as essential to the trade; for example, the Rosso family depends upon the domestic labor and shrewd insights of women like Laura Rosso, even though Laura herself does not directly make glass. Most notably, Laura manipulates her eldest son by lying and saying that she is thinking of remarrying; she has no intention of doing so, but she knows that her comment will make Marco “go back to the studio with a little more sense between his ears” (60). Rather than depicting women as remaining powerless and oppressed by patriarchy, Chevalier depicts female characters who navigate patriarchal structures in a subtle and subversive fashion.

Within this context, Orsola faces a particularly intense range of challenges, for although she gains a level of financial autonomy by earning and saving her own money, she must also contend with the fact that she is a woman who is stepping beyond social norms. Orsola initially hides her glassmaking from Marco because she knows that he will interpret her actions as a threat to his authority. Even the nature of Orsola’s particular skill is defined by patriarchal limitations, and she can only access this type of glassmaking because, as Maria explains to her, beads “are inconsequential, and women can make them because of that” (27). Thus, the glass beads symbolize traits that were traditionally associated with women; because beads are small, decorative, and primarily associated with luxury consumption, they are therefore viewed as nonthreatening. However, Orsola’s bead making business becomes a subversive way for her to gain agency, and as her success grows, so does her power to make decisions about her future and for the greater good of the Rosso family.

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