Girl with a Pearl Earring
   Tracy Chevalier
  2001 Plume/Penguin Putnam Inc.
    ISBN: 0452282152
  Hardcover Link


History & fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision & sensual awakening. Through the eyes of sixteen-year-old Griet, the world of 1660s Holland comes dazzlingly alive in this richly imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer’s most celebrated paintings.

Guest Reviewer Sandi von Pier writes:

With a cover summary like that I never would never have purchased this book. My thanks goes to my reading group because I would have missed one of the best books I've ever read.

Tracy Chevalier creates the story behind the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. Griet is that girl. She is from a simple Protestant upbringing & after her father's accident on the job, he painted tiles & the kiln exploded, he is blinded & unable to work. It is Griet who must now earn the family's money.

Johannes Vermeer accompanies his wife, Catharina, on a visit to Griet’s home to see if she will be suitable as her maid. Griet is in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner & is grouping them according to color. It is Griet’s sense of color & organization that captures the painter's eye. Even though his wife notices his interest she hires the young woman.

The Vermeer house is in the Catholic section of Protestant Delft, only a few minutes from Griet's home & belongs to Maria Thins, Vermeer’s mother-in-law. After 5 children & another on the way, Catharina has become so clumsy & exhausted she has been banished from her husband's studio. Even with Griet helping her run their crowded home - Catharina cannot hide her jealousy of the young woman's abilities & careful nature. So tension builds.

Griet is quiet & strong - a hard worker. Her major task is the entire family's laundry - all done with boiling tubs of water, blocks of soap & hours of scrubbing & ironing. She ventures out to the markets for fresh groceries & must dust & clean the art studio on the second floor. On Sundays she returns home to give her earnings to her mother & spend the day at church & with her family. During the week she sleeps on a bed in the cellar at the Vermeer home.

It is at the market that Griet meets the butcher’s son, Pieter, who takes a liking to her. He tries to gain her attentions by going to her church on Sundays & is soon invited to Griet’s home. If Griet were to marry Pieter, the family would no longer lack for meat. With this in mind she allows his advances.

Griet is uncomfortable in the Catholic Vermeer home - it is filled with artists' paintings, many of them with Catholic themes & very large - Vermeer is also an art dealer. He paints slowly as everything must be precisely correct & he rarely keeps any of his own paintings.

As Griet's employ continues she feels drawn to the artist & I think she is falling in love with him. When he sees she can clean his studio without knocking things over & without moving things, Vermeer teaches her to grind the colors for his paints.

As the paintings progress from sitting to sitting Griet notices things that need to be changed, added to or taken away. She impatiently waits for him to notice what she sees - one time she even changed the way a piece of material fell off the table – Vermeer said nothing & when she cleaned the studio the next day she saw he had indeed kept the change.

One of Vermeer's paying customers, van Ruijven, ogles Griet & flirts with her, wanting to “get into her skirts.” He even wants a painting of himself with “the wide-eyed maid” but Vermeer keeps him at bay, finally giving in but only agreeing to paint Griet alone.

I also believe that Vermeer grew to respect & love Griet as much as a self-absorbed person can love. He showed his respect by allowing her into his studio & ultimately, to sit for a portrait. He allowed her into his world – the place that meant everything to him. But he didn’t have enough love or respect for her to stand up to his wife. He didn’t tell Catharina that Griet was grinding colors for him, nor would he ask her for the loan of her pearl earrings for the portrait. He asked his mother-in-law to get the earrings & while Maria Thins knew what was going on, she kept quiet, hoping it would make the artist paint faster. Faster meant more paintings, which in turn meant more money.

Because Vermeer was older & a Catholic, the hidden love Griet felt could never be fulfilled & besides, he couldn’t leave his growing family. In the end the author suggests that Vermeer, in his own way, tries to apologize for his family's behavior. To find out how he goes about this you will have to read the book.

Girl with a Pearl Earring was a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Tracy Chevalier’s writing is fluent & captures the look & feel of what I imagine life in Delft of 1600s Holland would have been like. This is Tracy Chevalier's first book & I will be sure to keep a watch for more from this skilled author.
(06/17/01)

Sandi von Pier
A RebeccasReads.com Guest Reviewer