"Girl With a Pearl Earring" - Tracy Chevalier

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Emma Curtis        UC4T        02/05/2007

English Coursework Essay

“Girl With a Pearl Earring” – Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier is unusual in having taken a specific painting

and created a construction around it. How does she build a

convincing impression of the characters and their

circumstances in this unusual household on Papists Corner

in Delft between 1664 – 1676?

The novel “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is based around Vermeer’s painting of the

same name. Griet is a young girl sent to be a maid when her father, a tile painter, is put out of work. The novel follows her for two years while she works at the house and when she returns to her place of work ten years later. The novel is written from her viewpoint.

The novel is set in Delft in 1664.The setting of a novel is very important. If a novel is set in a real place and the details are not correct, then anyone who has been there will notice the faults and the read will not be as satisfying as it might be. A lot of real places in Delft are mentioned in the novel such as the Oude LangenDjick, Molenport, Sciedam Gates, Rietveld Canal and Koe Gate. Chevalier does this mainly to give a realistic setting for the novel. She has evidently visited Delft to be able to give such detail on the layout of the streets, and also she might have looked at maps of the town.

        The main meeting place in the town was the market place. The market gossip was the way most news got around Delft and was spread mainly by the women doing their shopping or selling things. Anything that happens in Delft  would almost certainly be passed around in this way, including the fact that Griet was going to be painted by Vermeer even though Griet did not even really know herself.  In addition, Griet was worried that details of her relationship with Pieter would be spread around Delft. The women were definitely the main town gossips and Griet knew just who will spread it best by manipulating her neighbour into thinking that she will not be in the painting, as she knows that everything she overhears will be repeated to the next person that she meets.

There are lots of Paintings either by Vermeer himself or by other

painters of the Dutch school, whose paintings show views of Delft at the time which she will have studied to get the feel of the place. Reading material of the time(Census’ or Wills).

        There are two main religions in Delft: Catholicism and Protestantism. The Catholics were in a minority and although they were accepted, it was frowned on for them to demonstrate their religion in public.

        “It was not that we avoided them but they kept themselves to themselves. They were tolerated in Delft but expected not to parade their Faith openly.”

This quote shows that Griet had never met any Catholics before she worked at Papists’

Corner.

“I knew no Catholics. There were not so many in Delft and none in the shops we used.”

And so Entering Vermeer’s household was a bit of a shock for her. The Catholics

lived in far more luxury than she ever had and there are crucifixion scenes that hung upon

their walls when they never would in a Protestant household.

“On the wall directly opposite hung a painting that was larger than me. It was of Christ on the cross, surrounded by the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and St. John. I tried not to stare but I was amazed by its size and subject. ‘Catholics are not so different from you and us’ my father had said but we did not have such pictures in our houses or churches or anywhere.”

She treats them and their house as totally alien as she has never known anything like it

before. In particular the paintings and furnishings. There is a distinct difference between the

grandeur of the Catholics house and the plainness of her Protestant lifestyle.

        “I tried not to compare it with that of the household at Papists’ Corner, but already I had become accustomed to meat and good rye bread. …The brown bread was dry and the vegetable stew was plain with no fat to flavour it. …Everything was simple and clean without ornamentation. I loved it because I knew it, but I was aware now of its dullness.”

        Guilds were an important part an artisan’s life in Delft. All fully trained

Artist’s, glassmakers, Tapestry makers, tailors etcetera had to be part of the guild Of St.

Luke. It cost Three Guilders to join, which was about three days wages for a working

craftsman of the time. The Guild gave a sort of ‘pension’ to members who had become

injured or fallen upon hard times. Chevalier helps to bring the importance of guilds into

the novel by making Griet’s father need the help when he has an accident involving his

kiln when he loses his eyesight. Also Vermeer was a Master Craftsman of the Guild of

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St. Luke. It helped chevalier to tie the story together and gave a reason for Griet to go

and work with Vermeer. He takes pity on Griet’s family and accepts her as a maid for his

wife Catherina.

 Delft tiles are also an important part of the surroundings in Delft.

They are in a lot of Vermeer’s paintings (Vermeer’s paintings were often set in one room in his house, the tiles around the floor were often used to cover rising damp- It could be suggesting that there could have been some in Vermeer’s house) and they were ...

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