Girl with a Pearl Earring

      I love the artist Johannes Vermeer so when I saw this book, I knew it was a must read. A few years ago I went to Amsterdam and my favorite part of the trip was probably the Rijks museum. I was lucky enough to see some phenomenal works, including a few by Vermeer. Johannes Vermeer painted many portraits and the majority of the paintings were of women. The most intriguing part about a well done portrait is always the story behind it. This book Girl with a Pearl Earring is the imagined story of the girl that inspired Vermeer's most popular painting.

   Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier tells the story of Griet, a young maid that is sent to live with the Vermeer family in order to earn money for her struggling family. The story takes place in 1660s Holland and does a wonderful job of illustrating the daily life and social structures that make up the small town of Delft. The story develops as Griet  struggles to find her footing in a new environment which includes a mysterious master and his mistrusting wife, skeptical servants, and an ever expanding brood of children.

      There are many beautiful things to be said about this novel. There are many references to and images of light in this novel and the way it transforms ordinary into beautiful. The most significant quality of this book, in my opinion, is the way in which it describes art and the processes behind it. The following passage in particular breaks down the way Vermeer creates each painting; it also provides a completely new way of viewing life for Griet,

He began the painting of the baker's daughter with a layer of pale grey on the white canvas. Then he made reddish-brown marks all over it to indicate where the girl and the table and pitcher and window and map would go. After that I thought he would begin to paint what he saw--a girl's face, a blue skirt, a yellow and black bodice, a brown map, a silver pitcher and basin, a white wall. Instead he painted patches of color--black where her skirt would be, ocher for the bodice and the map on the wall, red for the pitcher and the basin it sat it, another grey for the wall. They were the wrong colors--none was the color of the thing itself. He spent a long time on these false colors, as I called them...When at last he began to add colors on top of the false colors, I saw what he meant. He painted a light blue over the girl's skirt, and it became a blue through which bits of black could be seen, darker in the shadow of the table, lighter closer to the window. To the wall areas he added yellow ocher, through which some of the grey showed. It became a bright but not a white wall. When the light shone on the wall, I discovered, it was not white, but many colors...After that I could not stop looking at things. (p.100-102)

There were two things that I did not love about this novel. The first being that the author did not foreshadow any of the events, the opposite in fact, she went ahead and told you exactly what was going to happen. I never realized how important I find foreshadowing, but apparently I am a big fan. My other problem with the book was the lack of climax. I felt like I was continually waiting for a big event that never came. On the other hand, maybe that was the idea. Maybe there was not supposed to be a groundbreaking event but rather a series of subtle happenings that create the themes of awakening and self-discovery. I, however, felt a little let down at the end because the things I had been waiting for never occurred. Despite these criticisms of the novel, I did enjoy the book and it is a good read, especially for art lovers!

The following images are some of my favorite Vermeer paintings and are quite interesting to look at and compare while reading this novel.

He saw things in a way others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face. (p. 60)