6/01/01 

The Object as Subject: Girl with a Pearl Earring

From the story:

"Lick your lips, Griet."
I licked my lips.
"Leave your mouth open."
I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

It is a good thing the painting of its title is depicted on the cover of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring. You might find yourself, as I did, wanting to look at the painting often. You find yourself compelled to put a face to the girl who comes alive in these pages.

The impressive thing about this novel is that at the same time that it is an absorbing, if quiet, story, handled with grace by a gifted writer, it also presents an intersection of two predominant strains in feminist theory. The 'images of women' discourse, which is one of the foundations of scholarly women's studies as we know it today, here marries the issues presented by 'woman as artist.' Not necessarily at odds, these two strains of feminist discourse discuss women as both objects and subjects. Precisely what Chevalier does in this novel is turn the woman-as-object into subject. Ironically, Griet, the girl in the picture, is given an identity through the act of assuming the role of object of the painting.

This is not the story of a feminist before her time. Though Griet has an artistic bent that is evident to the people around her, she seems almost unaware of it. In a time and place where, no doubt, women did not see or know of few, if any, female artists, Griet is unquestioning of her duty. At sixteen, because her father, a tile painter, has been blinded in an accident, she is given a position as a maid in order to support her family. Griet, quiet, serious, and restrained, tells us only through hints that underneath her steely surface is a passionate young woman. When she becomes a maid in the house of the painter Johannes Vermeer, Griet awakens as an artist. Up until then her artistic talents are transmuted into domestic tasks. Vermeer notices upon first meeting her that she is sensitive to color, by the way she has laid out her chopped vegetables. It is because of her facility at being able to put things back to their exact positions after cleaning that she is chosen to clean Vermeer's studio--a task that he does not allow anyone else, including his wife, to do.

It would be tempting, and utopian, to imagine that Griet is secretly apprenticed by Vermeer and she goes on to make a living as an artist. She does not. She is after all bounded by the constraints of gender and class. Though the fictional Vermeer (only referred to as "he" and "him" in the novel) does give her secret, forbidden tasks, such as mixing paints, Griet always remains a maid, and eventually marries a butcher.

The novel is, essentially, a romance. With admirable restraint, Chevalier invents an almost imperceptible passion between Griet and Johannes Vermeer. It is clear to the reader that Griet is in love with him--even if she does not outright admit it in her narrative. Yet Johannes is somewhat elusive, something like an artist's muse. Though Griet obviously admires him, he is not invulnerable to the demands of his wife and family. He does conspire to hide Griet's activities in helping him, because he knows the knowledge will wreak havoc--and he seems to want to have as little do with domestic life as possible--but he does not go to any sacrificial lengths for Griet.

Vermeer's decision to paint Griet--to make her the object of his painting--paradoxically moves Griet from an object--a servant--to a subject. "'I will not paint you as a maid,'" he says, "'I will paint you as I first saw you, Griet. Just you,'" (179). Through his gaze, Griet becomes more than just a girl, a maid; she becomes recognized as something deeper. The maid--a silent person who does the invisible labor of making a house run--here becomes visible. Griet's transformation from maid to young woman happens gradually. At first she just sits (a luxury for her). Then he asks her to pull back her cap and show her hair. Griet refuses. "I could not show him my hair," she tells us; "I was not the sort of girl who left her head bare," (182). Griet's resistance is a mark of her own subjectivity, her own confidence in herself as more than simply an object to be painted. Later, Johannes enters the storeroom while she is changing caps, and sees her hair. The language here is almost akin to a rape. Afterwards, Griet tells us, "I no longer felt I had something precious to hide and keep to myself," (196). That night, she allows Pieter, the butcher's son, to have sex with her, but imagines herself with her hair free, signaling that she had already lost her virginity to Johannes, the man she loves.

Griet knows that something is missing from the painting before Johannes does, but she remains silent. Though she is now more confident in her estimation--the same one that Johannes eventually comes to--she is aware of the potential impact her wearing of the pearl earring will have on the household and on her employment. But because at heart she understands the artistic vision, she gives in. Chevalier documents painstakingly--but not tediously--the chain of events that must happen in order for Griet to become a girl wearing a pearl earring. In addition to conspiring to borrow the wife's pearl earrings, Griet must undergo the act of self-mutilation in order to wear them. In piercing her ears, Griet performs the definitive act of becoming woman in her time--opening her flesh for the benefit of a union with a man. In her case, the union is through the painting, later to become one of Vermeer's most celebrated.

In the past few years Vermeer's work has become the subject of more than one book. Many of Vermeer's paintings depict women in the act of domestic tasks. Chevalier's may not be the only novel that brings one of Vermeer's subjects to life, but it is a rich and complex narrative of what the woman might have been. Girl with a Pearl Earring brings the object of one painting into a breathing, human woman, and it is this vision that makes the ultimate work of feminist writers most important in reimagining a world of equality.

The author's website for the book, http://www.pearlearring.com/ , features a synopsis and excerpt of the novel, images of and background on Johannes Vermeer and the paintings referred to in the novel, a link about Vermeer in recent fiction, and book ordering information.