62 pages • 2 hours read
Jessie BurtonThe Miniaturist
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapter 45-Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “January, 1687”-Part 5: “The Same Evening, Sunday, 12th January 1687”
Part 4, Chapter 45 Summary: “Daughters”
Nella runs to the Kalverstraat, looking for the miniaturist. She sees the sign has been removed at her premises, and the door stands open. Inside the workshop, Nella finds miniature furniture and hundreds of dolls representing the citizens of Amsterdam. One looks like Arnoud Maakvrede, and another is of a tiny baby. Nella takes the two dolls and a miniature version of her house. Among a stack of letters from women asking for clarification from the miniaturist, Nella finds her own, including the one she never sent requesting the verkeerspel board. All the letters are annotated with details of the senders’ lives.
Nella hides under the bed when a man enters the building and calls up the stairs. Seeing Nella’s feet, the old man urges her to come out, calling her Petronella. It is Lucas Windelbreke, and he explains he is looking for another Petronella—his daughter. He says Petronella lived with him in Bruges, as her mother’s family refused to have her. Although he has not seen Petronella for years, he recently received letters from her customers. The old man reveals that his daughter was always different. During her apprenticeship with him, she made clocks that reflected her customers’ souls instead of telling the time. She would not listen to his warnings to stop. Nella goes home to find Cornelia waiting for her at the door.
Part 4, Chapter 46 Summary: “A Closing Door”
Cornelia breaks the news that Marin is dead. Lysbeth Timmers, an unqualified wet nurse, has been hired to help with the baby. When Lysbeth unswaddles Thea and takes her cap off, Nella realizes the baby is dark-skinned. Lysbeth negotiates over her pay, assuring Nella she can be trusted not to go to the burgomasters. In Marin’s bed, Nella finds the miniaturist’s doll of Otto. She wonders if the servant knew Marin was carrying his child.
Part 4, Chapter 47 Summary: “Empty Rooms”
Lysbeth helps Nella and Cornelia prepare Marin’s body for burial. Finding one of Otto’s axes, Nella destroys the cabinet. She then pulls apart the dolls with her hands. Marin and Otto are the only dolls she saves, as she realizes Thea will want a likeness of the parents she never knew. Nella also keeps the figure of Arnoud in her pocket as she reflects that she still needs to sell him the rest of the sugar. Finally, she collapses and cries.
Part 4, Chapter 48 Summary: “The Canker in the Orchard”
Cornelia plans to visit Johannes in prison and bakes him many treats. Nella warns Cornelia not to tell Johannes about Marin’s death or the baby’s birth. She instructs Lysbeth to use the smashed cabinet as firewood to keep the baby warm.
Cornelia insists Marin would want to be buried in the Old Church. Nella visits Pastor Pellicorne and tells him that Marin died of a fever. Pellicorne is adamant Marin cannot be buried in the church. He states they do not have the room, and Marin is also “tainted” by Johannes’s crime. When Nella offers the pastor 400 guilders, he demurs, admitting there is room for a small gravestone in the corner of the church. Nella says she wants “T’can vekeeren” (“Things can change”) inscribed on the gravestone (402).
Part 4, Chapter 49 Summary: “Degrees of Being Alive”
Nella visits the Maakvredes to discuss the sale of more sugar. Arnoud implies he is only prepared to buy at a bargain price. However, Hanna privately reveals she has her own money and agrees on a figure with Nella. Hanna says trading in sugar has elevated her husband’s social status. He wants to expand to other parts of Holland, leaving her free to run the confectionary shop alone.
At the prison, Nella bribes the guard for extra time with Johannes, who looks thin and ill. Johannes admits he held back on selling the Meermanses’ sugar because he disliked their greed. He advises Nella not to waste her energy hating the Meermanses and says he is proud of her for selling the sugar. In their last moments together, they hold hands.
Part 4, Chapter 50 Summary: “Millstone”
On Sunday afternoon, crowds gather to see Johannes’s execution. After leaving Cornelia in Lysbeth’s care, Nella stands in the waiting crowd. Johannes is dressed in a silver satin suit and a feathered hat and has a millstone attached to his neck by a chain. He speaks, but his words are inaudible. Nella feels urine running down her legs as the millstone is pushed over the jetty. She cannot watch as Johannes drowns. Opening her eyes, Nella senses someone watching her. She turns to see Otto in the crowd.
Part 5, Chapter 51 Summary: “Nova Hollandia”
Otto is in shock after witnessing Johannes’s execution. He says he believed that going away would protect the household. Nella takes him back to the house but does not tell him about Marin’s death or the baby. Otto instinctively knows that Marin is not there. When he sees Lysbeth with Thea, he holds out his arms for the child. Otto says Marin was determined to bring their baby into the world and believed she was carrying a boy.
Otto and Cornelia are reunited, and Nella goes to stand outside. She feels the miniatures of the baby and Arnoud in her pocket but realizes she has lost the house. Nella looks up at the sky before going back inside.
Part 4, Chapter 45-Part 5 Analysis
In the novel’s concluding chapters, the narrative’s momentum climaxes again with the deaths of Johannes and Marin. Johannes’s brutal execution highlights the motif of observation as crowds gather to witness his death. The event’s theatrical atmosphere is emphasized in the foppish silk suit Johannes is forced to wear: a symbol of his wealth that also mocks his sexual orientation. The use of a millstone as a method of drowning echoes the miniaturist’s doll of Johannes, weighed down by a bag of money. While Nella stands among the crowd, she cannot bear to watch her husband’s final moments. She also cannot hear his final words—a last indignity emphasizing Johannes’s powerlessness against the fate the city has decided for him.
By contrast, no one witnesses Marin’s death, and the narrative does not even depict it. Nella notes the aptness of her sister-in-law’s private passing, reflecting, “Even in her final breath has she evaded, keeping for herself the moment of her death” (380). Marin’s character retains her enigmatic essence until the end.
The ongoing motif of rot and decay highlights the prevalence of death in these chapters. Before the execution, Nella notes that Johannes looks “cadaverous, as if his skull is making its way inside out” (406), suggesting that the foreknowledge of his death eats away at him. When Nella inquires about Marin’s burial, Pastor Pellicorne vividly describes the Old Church as “overflowing” with dead bodies. His description of the stench from decaying corpses when the church’s flagstones are lifted symbolizes the rot at the heart of Amsterdam’s society. The pastor embodies the hypocrisy of the city’s authority figures when he is willing to be bribed by “the wife of a sodomite” (400).
Marin’s death necessitates the entry of Lysbeth Timmers into the Brandt household. Although an outsider, the illegal wet nurse is a kindred spirit as she operates outside the city’s rules. By purposefully ignoring the legal requirement of recording the father’s name, Lysbeth flouts patriarchal authority. Although she’s introduced late in the narrative, the novel hints that the wet nurse will play a crucial role in navigating the challenges of raising a biracial child in a society where “people keep to their own” (388).
In this final section, more information is revealed about the identity of the miniaturist, although many questions remain unanswered. Nella’s visit to the workshop—where she finds numerous letters from numerous senders—clarifies that the protagonist is just one of many women in Amsterdam who view the miniaturist as a mentor and guide. Her conversation with Lucas Windelbreke verifies the miniaturist’s eerie ability to see into women’s lives and souls. However, no explanation is offered regarding the source of this power. Lucas’s description of his daughter’s apprenticeship also supports the idea that the miniaturist’s motive is to encourage women’s autonomy. Nella’s discovery that she and the miniaturist share the same name reinforces the protagonist’s feeling that their identities are intertwined.
Nella’s destruction of the cabinet is a release for her sorrow over the deaths of Marin and Johannes. However, the act also symbolizes the protagonist’s newfound strength and agency. Having absorbed the miniaturist’s lessons, Nella no longer needs the cabinet to “educate” her. Focusing on taking charge of the real household, she puts the smashed cabinet to practical use as firewood.
In the final chapter, Nella’s realization that she has lost the miniature house recalls the Prologue when the miniaturist places the house on Marin’s grave. Thus, the structure of the narrative comes full circle. Despite the preceding tragic events, the novel ends on a hopeful note. With Thea’s birth, Lysbeth’s arrival, and Otto’s return, the surviving characters form a family unit bound by their unconventionality. In the final paragraphs, Nella’s surveyal of the sky, “too large for the naked eye” (424), suggests life's infinite possibilities. This concept of new horizons is echoed in the final chapter’s title, “Nova Hollandia”—the name the Dutch gave to Australia when they first traveled there.
