The Glassmaker

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 2

Part 1, Chapter 3-Part 2, Chapter 4

Part 2, Chapters 5-6

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Prioritizing Family Loyalty Over Personal Desires

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of racism and enslavement.

The Rosso family is depicted as close-knit and caring despite their struggles to weather the tensions and conflict that ensue over the centuries. They are deeply influenced by their strong emotional bonds, and their economic livelihoods are also enmeshed, for they know that if the business succeeds or fails, all members of the family will be impacted. Both the workshop and the family’s domestic life function via collective labor. For example, long before Orsola becomes a mother herself, she cares for her younger sister, nieces, and nephews as if they are her own children. The enmeshment of the Rosso family often requires individual members to unflinchingly make personal sacrifices for the collective good. For example, when Nicoletta must be isolated with the other plague victims, Laura immediately volunteers to go with her daughter-in-law, exclaiming, “Who will look after her? Who will look after my grandson when he’s born?” (111). Because Nicoletta is heavily pregnant, Laura does not hesitate to risk her own life to protect two generations of the Rosso family, and her courage is the reason for the infant Raffaele’s survival.

Likewise, even though Orsola is deeply in love with Antonio, she is unwilling to leave her family and make a new life with him in Europe. As painful as the loss is, Orsola knows that “if she went with him, they would become unhooked from Murano and Venice and her family and enter a different world with its own pace. It felt impossible to choose that” (168). This is not the only sacrifice that Orsola makes, for in addition to refusing to abandon her family, she also accepts Stefano as her husband, conceding that this marriage supports business and secures stability within the family. Thus, even when facing the most intimate and personal decision of her life, Orsola prioritizes family loyalty over personal desire. This choice to conform contrasts with Orsola’s independence in other areas of her life, such as her determination to learn the trade of bead making and earn her own income. However, Orsola only ever defies convention to support her family, never to undermine it. When she pursues bead making, her actions repeatedly provide financial assistance to her family, and she also takes on a heavy load of domestic duties that leave her with less time for her creative pursuits.

Laura and Orsola represent two generations who choose family loyalty over personal desire, but by the third generation of the Rosso family, others begin to make different choices. Most notably, Raffaele breaks his grandmother’s heart by choosing to move to Venice, marry Luciana, and work on the railway. When Laura pleads with him, he tells her flatly, “That is your life, not mine. This is my life” (294). Stella expresses a similar sentiment when she explains to Orsola that “things are changing […] families don’t always live together” (334). These shifts indicate that the younger members of the family are influenced by the world’s increasingly individualistic modern culture, which prioritizes personal ambition and self-fulfillment over family loyalty. Many of the historical changes that unfold over the centuries set the stage for individuals to break away from tradition and make their own life decisions, and this fundamental shift from family loyalty to individual pursuits can be seen as a function of historical evolution. However, because of the unusual passage of time on Murano, these dynamics unfold over only a few generations of the Rosso family. Ultimately, neither perspective is presented as right or wrong, but the tension between responsibility and autonomy creates conflict and pain within this close-knit and loving family unit.

The Compromising Nature of Business Decisions

For generations, the Rosso family relies on the family trade of glassmaking; no one learns any other skills or considers performing any other kind of work. As a family producing goods to be sold, the Rossos must repeatedly navigate the compromises between their integrity and their aspirations to make the sales that will ensure long-term financial stability. This conflict emerges almost as soon as Marco takes over leadership of the workshop, for he is so pleased with his creation of an impractical ornate that he refuses to acknowledge that “the shallow bowl held scarcely any liquid” (15). When Marco presents his goblet to Klingenberg, the merchant immediately tells him to redesign it because the current iteration will not sell. Marco is angry because he doesn’t want to compromise his aesthetic vision and sense of artistry, but he eventually concedes that the workshop must focus on more commercially viable products. He therefore smashes his beloved goblet, symbolically crushing his dreams of making items that he loves. Orsola, who also enjoys the creativity of designing different items, is saddened “to see his goblet in pieces: his dreams gone, set aside for pragmatic business” (60). However, this transition is seen as an essential step on Marco’s path to greater maturity and wiser leadership, and he realizes that if he wants to remain the head of the family and the business, he must make rational decisions rather than follow his impulses.

Orsola confronts her own conflicts between integrity and financial stability. During the Black Plague, for example, there is virtually no market for glassware, and the family must pay high prices for daily supplies in addition to paying off a debt that Marco incurred by bribing an official to allow the family to isolate at home. Antonio advises Orsola that people are drawn to her beads; he suggests that she could make a profit by designing special beads and marketing them as a talisman against the plague. Orsola immediately objects, saying, “Glass is glass. It’s beautiful, but it’s not a cure” (127), and she rejects the idea of “taking advantage of fear” (127). However, she also desperately wants to help her family, so she resorts to making and selling the plague beads. Later, Orsola’s sense of justice is even further compromised as Klingenberg tells her that when Africans purchase glass beads like the ones she makes, they often pay with “skins of exotic animals. Gold. Slaves” (202). When Orsola reacts with horror, Klingenberg labels her naïve, saying bluntly, “Your beads too are caught up in it. Slavery runs the world” (203). Notably, although Orsola openly expresses her criticism of enslavement, she does not stop selling her beads to Klingenberg, even when she knows that he participates in this system and is himself an enslaver. As a working-class woman who faces considerable barriers to making and selling her own products, Orsola puts her business and aspirations first, but she does have to make concessions and moral compromises to do so.

Building Relationships Despite Barriers and Differences

In the novel, Murano is depicted as an insular community to which access is rigidly policed. However, several characters challenge this status quo and form interpersonal bonds despite their innate differences, revealing that such connections can supersede traditional barriers. Most pointedly, Orsola and Antonio fall in love despite their very different backgrounds; she comes from a glassmaking family in Murano, while he is the son of a Venetian fisherman. Typically, especially during the earlier eras depicted in the novel, individuals typically choose to marry partners from families who work in the same trade, but Antonio leaves his family business to pursue his love of glassmaking and his love for Orsola. Although the two lovers are ultimately forced to separate, their attraction to one another shows that people can find connection even if they have little in common. Other such pairings are more successful; as when Monica leaves behind her family of fishermen and successfully integrates into the Rosso family, serving as a calming influence for Marco and ensuring that the household runs smoothly. A generation later, Luciana likewise steps into the role of Rosso matriarch even though she does not come from Murano. Notably, this particular transition is not smooth; Laura is furious about her grandson’s choice of spouse, raging that “no grandson of mine is going to take up with a rude, foolish girl from Cannaregio” (293). Still, Marco and Raffaele choose women whom they love and desire, defying tradition to enjoy successful marriages.

However, not all the successful interpersonal relationships that bypass barriers are romantic. In fact, platonic relationships are somewhat more successful within the world of the novel, as when Orsola establishes an enduring friendship with Domenego, a Black man who is enslaved and owned by the Klingenberg family. While the two share very different experiences, Orsola holds a great deal of empathy for Domenego, and this friendship significantly shapes her conviction that enslavement is morally wrong. On a different level, Orsola’s relationship with Klingenberg is primarily a business one, but they do develop a measure of affection for one another, and she trusts him to give her honest advice and act in her best interests. Orsola’s relationship with Klara (Klingenberg’s daughter) is even deeper; she trusts Klara to protect her secret connection with Antonio after he leaves Venice, and she and Klara eventually go into business together when Klara invests in Orsola’s new shop. While the two women come from radically different backgrounds, they are able to forge a connection and form an enduring friendship.