44 pages • 1 hour read
Tracy ChevalierGirl With a Pearl Earring
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A 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 One: 1664Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part One Summary: 1664
The book opens with Johannes and Catharina Vermeers visiting Griet’s home. They meet Griet chopping vegetables in her mother’s kitchen. At the time, Griet does not know why the Vermeers are there, but she soon learns that she is being hired to work as a maid in their household and, in particular, to clean the painter’s studio.
The next morning Griet arrives at the Vermeer household, which is in the Catholic section of Delft. On the street outside the house she meets the five Vermeer children, Maertge, Lisbeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, and the baby Johannes. When she enters the house, what she is most struck by is the vast number of paintings—particularly the paintings with religious themes that she takes to be Catholic, since Protestants “did not have such pictures in our houses, or our churches, or anywhere” (17). Tanneke, the maid and the household’s cook, shows her around the house and tells her that in addition to cleaning Vermeer’s studio, she’ll be taking up the duties of laundry and shopping and that she will be sleeping in the cellar below one of the storage rooms.
Griet begins her work immediately, going to the canal to get water for her laundry duties, with the Vermeer children tagging along. While Griet’s tendency is to protect the children near the water, as she did with her own brother and sister when they were younger, Cornelia, the six-year-old, is already proving to be a challenge. She follows Griet, coming too close to the water, and then laughs at Griet’s gentle admonishment. Griet slaps her, setting the foundation for Cornelia’s persistent attempts to upset Griet, both emotionally and in terms of her precarious position in the household.
Later, Griet goes with Tanneke to the market and meets Pieter, the butcher, and notes his bloody apron with distaste. Though the butcher’s son, also named Pieter, is not there at the time, he and Griet will meet soon after on one of her regular visits to their stall, and he will become Griet’s suitor and an important link to her family.
The next morning Catharina takes her to Vermeer’s studio, where Griet devises a way of cleaning that allows her to leave the objects in the studio—many of them part of the scenes of Vermeer’s paintings—exactly as she found them. Maria Thins, Vermeer’s mother-in-law, comes in and they share in their admiration for the painting that Vermeer is currently at work on, which will be, when it is finished, Woman with a Pearl Necklace.
Her first week of work passes, and Griet makes her first Sunday visit home, where her younger sister Agnes is waiting to greet her on the bench in front of their house. Once inside, Griet attempts to describe Vermeer’s painting to her blind father, and finds, also, that she has a new perspective on her home, one which does not favor it: “When we ate dinner I tried not to compare it with that in the house at Papists’ Corner, but already I had become accustomed to meat and good rye bread. Although my mother was a better cook than Tanneke, the brown bread was dry, the vegetable stew tasteless with no fat to flavor it. The room, too, was different—no marble tiles, no thick silk curtains, no tooled leather chairs. Everything was simple and clean, without ornamentation. I loved it because I knew it, but I was aware now of its dullness” (48).
Several weeks into Griet’s service in the Vermeer household, Maertge comes with her to the fish stalls, and Griet turns away from her own sister Agnes, not wanting Maertge to meet her.
Later that day, van Leeuwenhoek, a friend of Vermeer’s, arrives with his camera obscura, a “box” that Catharina broke once before and is no longer allowed to go near. Vermeer invites Griet to look into the box and tries to explain to her how it works. Her confusion and curiosity leads to their first real conversation and Vermeer tells her why and how he uses the camera obscura as a “tool” to help him paint: “‘The camera obscura helps me to see in a different way,’ he explained. ‘To see more of what is there’” (60).
Soon after Griet turns away from her sister in the Market Square and her introduction to the camera obscura, she learns from Pieter, the butcher’s son, about the plague quarantine expected to be imposed in her family’s section of the city. She returns to the Vermeer house to ask leave to go home and check on her family but is refused. She talks to Vermeer about the camera obscura again, offering her opinion that the painting is better as a result of the changes he made after looking at the scene through the camera obscura and observes: “I did not think I would have dared to say such a thing at another time, but the danger to my family had made me reckless” (64).
During the quarantine, Griet has trouble caring about her work, with the exception of her devotion to cleaning the studio. Shortly thereafter, she learns from Pieter the son that her sister Agnes has fallen ill with the plague, and the following Sunday Griet goes to visit her brother Frans at the tile factory where he is an apprentice to give him the news. The siblings are not comforted by each other or the church service they attend. Some days later, Griet’s world is further upset by the completion of the painting Vermeer has been working on; she is unsettled by having to undo the scene she has worked so hard to maintain for him. The completion of the painting also provides the occasion for Griet’s first encounter with van Ruijven, Vermeer’s patron, and the beginning of his lascivious attentions toward her.
The next morning Griet learns at the market that the quarantine has been lifted. Anxious to go home and see her family, she is briefly delayed by Pieter, who slips her an extra package of meat for her family, free of charge. When she arrives at her home, she can see from her parents’ demeanor that her sister has died.
Months pass, and “everything was dull. The things that had meant something—the cleanness of the laundry, the daily walk on errands, the quiet studio—lost importance, though they were still there, like bruises on the body that fade to hard lumps under the skin” (74). Griet also notes that “[i]t was not easy visiting home. I found that after staying away those few Sundays during the quarantine, home had come to feel like a strange place. I was beginning to forget where my mother kept things, what kind of tiles lined the fireplace, how the sun shone in the rooms at different times of the day. […] Frans especially found it hard to visit. After long days and nights at the factory he wanted to smile and laugh and tease, or at least to sleep. I suppose I coaxed him there hoping to knit our family together again. It was impossible, though” (76).
Vermeer has not begun a new painting, either, since finishing Woman with a Pearl Necklace. One bright spot during these dull and difficult months is that Catharina gives birth to their sixth child and second son, Franciscus. At the birth feast, Griet is cornered by van Ruijven but manages to escape with the help of Pieter the butcher, who strategically asks her to fetch him more wine. After the birth feast, as “winter descended […] the house became cold and flat” (84). Griet believes that Vermeer is angry with her because of the sexual attentions of van Ruijven and Pieter the son, so she looks for something that will appease him. She settles on cleaning the windows of his studio. Vermeer walks in during the cleaning and commands her to stop so he can look at her in the “cleaner” light (86). The section ends with him having finally begun a new painting, inspired by seeing Griet bathed in the winter light streaming in through the newly washed windows.
Part One Analysis
Part One establishes the major themes of the novel, the most central one being Griet’s coming of age. Though she doesn’t know it, from the moment the Vermeers enter her mother’s kitchen, Griet’s life is irrevocably altered. One of the most drastic changes is that her close bond with her family is undermined. This is evident when, in the market one day, Griet chooses not to acknowledge her sister Agnes in the presence of Maertge Vermeer, who is Agnes’ age, friendly with Griet, and thus a kind of stand-in for Agnes when Griet is at work. Griet observes, ruefully, that her “new life was taking over the old,” and that she has “two families now, and they must not mix” (53). She goes on to acknowledge that she “was always ashamed afterwards that [she] had turned [her] back on [her] own sister” (53), especially because Agnes dies of the plague soon after.
The slow undermining of Griet’s close bond with her parents is hastened by her growing attachment to Vermeer. Where Griet is tasked with being her own father’s eyes, repeatedly describing to him things he will never be able to see on his own, Vermeer opens up new visual worlds for Griet. The most important scene in Part One, then, is Griet’s introduction to the camera obscura, which Vermeer invites her to look into and which confuses her; at first she believes that there is a tiny painting inside the box that mirrors the scene of the painting. When Vermeer tries to explain it in terms of lenses and the projection of images, Griet “star[es] at him so hard, trying to understand, that [her] eyes began to water” (58). She does not know the word, “image” and when she admits as much to him, Griet observes:
Something changed in his face, as if he had been looking over my shoulder but now was looking at me. “It is a picture, like a painting.”
I nodded. More than anything I wanted him to think I could follow what he said.
“Your eyes are very wide,” he said then.
I blushed. “So I have been told, sir.”
“Do you want to look again?”
I did not, but I knew I could not say so. I thought for a moment. “I will look again, sir, but only if I am left alone.’ He looked surprised, then amused. “All right,” he said. He handed me his robe. “I’ll return in a few minutes, and tap on the door before I enter.”
He left, closing the door behind him. I grasped his robe, my hands shaking.
For a moment I thought of simply pretending to look, and saying that I had. But he would know I was lying.
And I was curious. It became easier to consider it without him watching me. I took a deep breath and grazed down into the box. I could see on the glass a faint trace of the scene in the corner. As I brought the robe over my head the image, as he called it, became clearer and clearer—the table, the chairs, the yellow curtain in the corner, the back wall with the map hanging on it, the ceramic pot gleaming on the table, the pewter basin, the powder-brush, the letter. They were all there, assembled before my eyes on a flat surface, a painting that was not a painting. I cautiously touched the glass—it was smooth and cold, with no traces of paint on it. I removed the robe and the image went faint again, though it was still there. I put the robe over me once more, closing out the light, and watched the jeweled colors appear again. They seemed to be even brighter and more colorful on the glass than they were in the corner.
It became as hard to stop looking into the box as it had been to take my eyes from the painting of the woman with the pearl necklace the first time I’d seen it. When I heard the tap on the door I just had time to straighten up and let the robe drop to my shoulders before he walked in.
“Have you looked again, Griet? Have you looked properly?”
“I have looked, sir, but I am not at all sure of what I have seen.” I smoothed my cap.
“It is surprising, isn’t it?’ I was as amazed as you the first time my friend showed it to me.”
“But why do you look at it, sir, when you can look at your own painting?”
“You do not understand.’ He tapped the box. ‘This is a tool. I use it to help me see, so that I am able to make the painting.”
“But—you use your eyes to see.”
“True, but my eyes do not always see everything.”
[…]
“The camera obscura helps me see in a different way,” he explained. “To see more of what is there.” (58–60)
This passage is lengthy but important for several reasons. First, it is “the first time [Vermeer has] spoken directly to [Griet] since he asked about the vegetables” in her mother’s kitchen, “many weeks before” (55), and thus it is one of the first instances in Griet’s “education” by Vermeer on ways of seeing things “as they are.”
The passage also illustrates the tension between being seen and being looked past. When Griet admits that she does not know what the word “image” means, Vermeer seems to be startled into seeing her more clearly—an uneducated girl from a poor family who may also have an natural eye for color and artistic composition. The tension between being seen (as a person) and being looked past (as a thing) is illustrated by Griet’s observation that it was “as if he had been looking over my shoulder but now was looking at” her when Vermeer is reminded of Griet’s vulnerability. Vermeer’s subsequent comment —“Your eyes are very wide”—comes on the heels of his sudden clarity and though it has an edge of sexual attraction, it is also a reminder of why she was picked to clean his studio in the first place –her natural tendency to notice details and see things clearly.
The passage also illustrates one of Griet’s many attempts to assert herself and to retain some sense of control over how she is seen. When Vermeer asks her if she wants to look into the camera obscura again, Griet, realizes that she cannot say no to him, but demands to be left alone to look, because it is “easier to consider it without him watching” her (59). Griet’s obligation to do as her master wants is overshadowed by her bid to grasp some sense of agency in the situation, enabling her to then admit to her own curiosity and revel in what she is able to see through the camera’s lens. Being left alone also minimizes the (sexual) threat she feels in Vermeer’s presence, when she is “unable to see” him but he is “looking at [her] all the while” (57).
Once she has looked into the camera obscura on her own terms, Griet and Vermeer are able to interact on intellectual terms, rather than within the sexualized power dynamic that hovers around the edges of their encounters. He admits to being just as amazed by the device when he was first exposed to it, which works to suggest erase the difference of power between them and make them, for a moment, equal. Vermeer’s final words in this passage also echo Griet’s description of herself as someone who “sees things as they are” (12), when he explains how the camera obscura allows them to “more of what is there.” Though this discussion is about artistic vision, it is also about the multiple perspectives one learns to inhabit when growing into adulthood—that there is more than one way that things “are” and that it is useful to see “more of what is there” when negotiating the challenges of adult life.
Though Griet is confused by this explanation and is summarily dismissed, it is already clear that her time as a maid in the Vermeer household will force her to see things—including her own home—in a different way., That she has already begun to “see more of what is there” is evident in her heightened attention to the details of the studio and of Vermeer’s paintings. This new way of seeing “more of what is there” is a metaphor for growing up, for taking on an adult understanding of the world around her.
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By Tracy Chevalier
