| Reading
Group guide for Girl With a Pearl Earring
Discussion Questions
1. In Girl with a Pearl Earring,
Tracy Chevalier treats us to a richly
appointed portrait of intersecting faiths,
fracturing family dynamics, erotic
awakenings, community scandals, religious
tensions, and aesthetic compromises-all
filtered brilliantly through the eyes of the
young narrator Griet, whose concise,
wide-eyed perspective functions much like
Vermeer's camera obscura, rendering with
particularly sharp precision and subtle
insight the character of 17th-century Delft
itself. "The camera obscura helps me to see
in a different way, to see more of what is
there," Vermeer muses. Discuss the way in
which Chevalier's writing style achieves a
similar effect. What techniques does she use
to establish the novel's particular tone and
tension, to enrich the imagery, to develop
her character's motives, and to encourage us
"to see more of what is there"?
2. In the particular emotional realm of this
novel, the issue of "seeing" is central.
Griet endeavors for much of the novel to
manipulate all that she sees into a sort of
harmony, beginning with the soup vegetables
she so carefully arranges so that they will
not "fight when they are side by side."
Likewise, Vermeer's art relies upon his
ability to see the universal in even the
most prosaic settings. Griet's father cannot
see at all, and not coincidentally, he is
perhaps the novel's most tragic and impotent
figure. What does "seeing" mean to the
novel's other characters? Is it fair to say
that, of all the characters, it is Maria
Thins who sees the most clearly in the end?
Why or why not?
3. Compare Girl with a Pearl Earring
to other historical novels you've read in
recent years (e.g.: Jane Smiley's The
Greenlanders, A. S. Byatt's
Possession, Margaret Atwood's Alias
Grace, and so on). How does Chevalier's
novel-focused, detailed, and tightly framed
as it is-complement, complicate, and/or
depart altogether from the standard themes
and trappings of the historical fiction
genre?
4. What is the significance of the
eight-pointed star situated among the stones
at the center of the town square? What does
its presence underscore about Griet's
position in society, whether as a young
woman, as the daughter of a recently
impoverished family, or as the Protestant
maid to a Catholic family? How does Griet's
relationship to the star, and the choices
she makes in relation to its eight points,
evolve through the course of Chevalier's
novel?
5. What is the quality of life, and what are
the opportunities available, for a young
Dutch woman in the 1660s and 1670s? For all
of Griet's talent for looking at the world
from an artist's high-resolution vantage, is
her eventual progression from housemaid to
housewife really nothing but an
inevitability, given both the cultural
repression of her gender as well as her
parents' poverty? Discuss the subtle ways in
which Girl with a Pearl Earring
contends with these issues.
6. With the previous question in mind, link
Chevalier's novel to other books throughout
history that also explore the conditions of
women in society. What, for example, do Jane
Austen's alternately conflicted and
compromised heroines have in common with
Griet? [You might also consider Girl with
a Pearl Earring alongside works by
Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and, more
recently, Carol Shields and Diane Johnson.
What weight do geography, time period, and
politics bear upon these issues?]
7. Look again at Vermeer's painting, "Girl
with a Pearl Earring." In what ways has your
perception of the painting changed as a
result of reading Chevalier's book? Are you
more likely to attach particular emotions to
the girl's wonderfully ambiguous expression,
given Chevalier's elaborate conjectures and
interpretations? Does the girl look more
explicitly melancholy now? More amorous?
Explain.
8. Griet's fellow maid Tanneke is, perhaps,
the most likely to elicit mixed emotions
from readers. What was your initial reaction
to her? And how did it evolve as the novel
progressed? Did you struggle with her
emotions and choices? Imagine an alternate
novel in which Tanneke is the narrator, and
"The Milkmaid," for which Tanneke posed, is
the Vermeer painting from which Chevalier
conceives her tale. What sort of novel would
this be, and in what ways might its themes
differ from Girl with a Pearl Earring?
9. Although Chevalier's book tells a
bracingly personal story of one girl's
transition into womanhood 325 years ago, the
author's depictions of love, self-doubt,
bravery, and evolving maturity are in many
ways universal. In what specific ways do you
identify personally with Griet, and with the
ways she confronts the challenges and
heartaches in her life?
10. "He is an exceptional man," van
Leeuwenhoek says of his friend Johannes
Vermeer. "His eyes are worth a room full of
gold. But sometimes he sees the world only
as he wants it to be, not as it is. He does
not understand the consequences for others
of his point of view." Is this an accurate
description of Chevalier's characterization
of the master painter in this novel? Discuss
the particular ways in which Vermeer's
failure "to understand the consequences for
others" affects the other characters. For
Griet, what could we say is the cumulative
consequence of Vermeer's chronic refusal to
see the world "as it is"?
11. St. Francis De Sales, a 16th-century
mystic, famously wrote that "the first part
of the body that a man wants, and which a
woman must loyally protect, is the ear."
With this in mind, discuss the rich
symbolism and implicit eroticism behind
Vermeer's mandate that Griet pierce her ear.
And what are the implications of Vermeer
later demanding that Griet pierce her other
ear as well, even though it is completely
hidden in the painting?
12. At every level, the depiction of the
relationship between Vermeer and Griet is
full of sexual tension. Griet is reluctant
even to take off her cap when she is
modeling. And when she finally does, the
moment that flickers between the painter and
the painted is absolutely electric. What
does Griet fear will happen once she exposes
her untamable hair, whether to Vermeer or to
Pieter, her future husband?
13. In the title portrait that results from
a series of long painting sessions (during
which Griet feels that Vermeer is literally
seeing straight into her soul by way of her
glistening eyes), we see that Griet's eyes
are moist, the earring hangs in shadow,
exotic and shiny, and her lips are parted,
which in the parlance of Dutch painting
means the woman has lost her virtue. Re-read
the scene depicting Griet's final sitting
for Vermeer. How does Chevalier bring the
above qualities-the moist eyes, the parted
lips, and so on-into play during this scene,
attaching to each the conflicting emotions
of love and fear, pain and longing?
14. What sort of a man is Vermeer? Seeing
the world through Griet's eyes, we as
readers are really never privy to his
feelings toward Griet, toward his wife
Catharina, and toward his chief patron, the
lecherous van Ruijven. Although we
experience with Griet the fear and eventual
heartache she feels as she struggles in vain
not to fall in love with Vermeer, we cannot
fully know how Vermeer himself is feeling.
"His eyes were masked," Griet tells us. At
what point do we finally get an absolute
sense of Vermeer's ambivalent emotions? What
subtle clues and muted suggestions does
Chevalier insert throughout her narrative to
indicate Vermeer's "masked" longings?
15. Describe the nature of the relationship
between Griet and Maria Thins. How does it
begin? What roles do intimidation, mutual
respect, and complicity play at different
points in their acquaintance? How do these
color Griet's role as a maid, and later an
artist's apprentice, in the household?
16. In conjunction with your discussion of
Maria Thins, consider also the dynamics of
Griet's interactions with Tanneke, Catharina,
Maertge and, especially, Cornelia.
17. Tracy Chevalier has said, "People are
voyeurs when it comes down to it. Vermeer
paintings are like a window, and you are
often not sure that you really ought to be
seeing what you are seeing." In what ways do
Griet's wide-eyed perspective, and indeed,
Chevalier's novel as a whole, resemble this
particular sort of window?
18. What does the future hold for Griet and
her family? For Vermeer's older daughters?
Construct an outline in your head for a
hypothetical epilogue set in 1686, a decade
after Griet sells the pearl earrings on the
last page of the novel. What has happened in
the interim? |
Girl
With a Pearl Earring tells the story of Griet, a
16-year-old Dutch girl who becomes a maid in the house of the
painter Johannes Vermeer. Her calm and perceptive manner not
only helps her in her household duties, but also attracts the
painter's attention. Though different in upbringing, education
and social standing, they have a similar way of looking at
things. Vermeer slowly draws her into the world of his
paintings - the still, luminous images of solitary women in
domestic settings. 