Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

We are also witnesses to Griet’s attempts to wrest what little control she can for herself and watch her consider and reject or accept the paths open to her, ultimately choosing the most respectable path, one that secures her place in the community and provides for her parents in their old age. Throughout the years Griet is employed in the Vermeer household, readers are witness to the painful but also stimulating education Griet receives about her own social position as a maid and the limited choices she can make. The pearl earrings she wears for the painting belong to Vermeer’s wife and when she finds out about her maid wearing her earrings, she explodes in a rage that sends Griet out of the household for good. Part Three, “1666,” focuses on the first few months of the year, ending on Griet’s eighteenth birthday in March, which is also the day of her last sitting for Girl with the Pearl Earring. As her relationship with Pieter develops, so does her devotion to Vermeer, and this section of the novel is marked by the conflict she feels between Pieter’s desire and Vermeer’s allure. As his assistant she learns about grinding the colors for his paints as well as some of the technical and visual skills necessary to paint well. Part Two, “1665,” chronicles the year Griet turns seventeen and is structured by the episodes of her artistic education with Vermeer.

As a maid for the Vermeers, she meets the young man, Pieter, who will eventually become her husband and endures the death of her younger sister, which serves to further test the close family bonds that marked Griet’s early years. She leaves home with little knowledge of the ways of the outside world, but on the cusp of her sexual maturity, and negotiating the uncertainty of being a Protestant thrust into a Catholic household with little previous exposure to anyone who does not share her religious upbringing. In Part One, “1664,” Griet is a naive sixteen-year-old, forced to take a job as a maid because her father has lost his job as a tile painter, having been blinded in a kiln explosion. The novel is divided into four parts, with each of the first three chronicling a year in Griet’s life, from when she is sixteen to eighteen years old, while the last section focuses on the period ten years later, after Vermeer has died.

In addition to telling the fictionalized story of how Girl with a Pearl Earring came to be painted, the novel is also Griet’s bildungsroman.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier