Gertie ends up quitting a plan that she maintained the whole novel through. She has been working on a sculpture through the novel, hoping to sell it to help her family, but after daughter dies and her boy has run away, there is no pretending that she could help her family again. She realizes that she is doomed, and she stops trying to manufacture something new. The sculpture is a symbol for her constant consideration and strategic action, trying to manufacture something beautiful in the midst of her suffering.
The novel is somewhat dark in its artistic choices. Instead of being a "good god," who will author a pleasant fate for Gertie, Harriette Arnow, the novelist, writes Gertie a painful story and makes her a martyr of it. Instead of filling Gertie with hope, Arnow takes a measure of Gertie's hope and patience by slowly draining her of good news and hope until finally, Gertie loses the very family she fought so valiantly to protect. Since the author and Gertie are both familiar with the Bible, we can take this as a Job story.
In addition to regular human suffering, Gertie has another important role that should be mentioned. She is not only a sufferer. She is a loving sufferer and a mother. In fact, the title Dollmaker hints at this. A doll is a toy, an object of play. By establishing some version of reality that is fun and pleasant, a mother gives hope to her daughter, but life is not hopeful in this novel. The sureness of death and war are on full volume, so that the mother's attempt to give her children hope is strained. The suffering she feels is compounded by guilt about being a bad mother, but the reader knows the secret truth; she is truly a masterful mother and a good person who is unable to succeed because of fate.
