Skip to main content

Girl With A Pearl Earring

By

Girl With A Pearl Earring

Johanne Vermeers' Girl with a Pearl Earring Painting

 In the novel "Girl with a Pearl Earring" the story rotates around the character "Griet" and her life as a maid for the painter Johannes Vermeers' family, and all the ups and downs of her life working for them, including when Vermeer paints her for his, now world famous, painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring."

 Griet comes from a protestant family with three children (Griet (15/16), her younger brother Frans (~14-15) and her younger sister Agnes (~12)) living in the dutch town of Deflt which is shown as a relatively small town. Griets' family falls to poverty after her father is blinded in an accident with a kiln explosion, taking his craft of tile-painting when he is blinded. This means Griet has to go and work for the Vermeers' where the painter needs a maid who can clean without moving anything and Griets parents volunteer her. There are a lot of small conflicts in the story adding up to a big climax filled with anger, betrayal and new beginnings.

 At first there are a few little conflicts concerning the decision for Griet to become a maid but a larger conflict comes when Griet meets the family she is to clean, cook and live with. The Vermeer family has 5 children at the time when Griet meets them and, in order from youngest to oldest respectively, called Maertge (~11), Lisbeth (~10), Cornelia (~9-7), Aleydis (~4) and Johannes (~1). Griet is also introduced to the childrens' grandmother, Maria Thins and the other maid Tanneke (28) who has been working for the family for 14 years.                                

The immediate conflict comes when Griet goes to fill to water "pots" for washing clothes, and Cornelia follows close behind her, lingering close to the water when Griet has already told her and her sisters to do otherwise. This results (eventually) in Griet slapping Cornelia and Cornelia then throws one of the pots into the canal and is throwing rocks at it when Griet comes out. Griet threatens to slap Cornelia to which she retaliates with "I'll tell our mother. Maids don't slap us."

Cornelia then continues to antagonise Griet with small acts, building up momentum to a big conflict. After the big conflict (no spoilers) we continue through to a time skip in which we can see that Cornelia is still as manipulative and spiteful, as well as turning out greedy and in a bad place in life.

The morals in the story include the ideas of Karma and of always trying to be the best person you can be and that you should always persevere through all the challenges life throws your way.
Cornelia (from the 2003 film adaptation)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best Actress 1976 + 1991 Academy Awards

By
A character analysis and comparison of the roles demonstrated in  the Best Actress category at the 1976 and 1991 Academy Awards  Background The two films under the spotlight are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Misery (1990). Both films are film adaptations of the novels of the same titles. I decided to analyse the Best Actress Academy Award as this is in my opinion what Hollywood decides as the peak of female representation of that year and such deserves to be rewarded for its achievements. I chose too analyse these two films as they both feature a Woman as a Nurse and as the main antagonist of the films. 15 years was also a nice time gap that would create a more interesting and apparent difference in representation instead of a smaller time gap of only a few years. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Background information about the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) is a film adaptation of the 1962 novel of the same title by Ken Kesey. ...
Post a Comment
Read more
By
Women Over Time Even before this unit, the representation of women had been a topic I was interested in. With social media nowadays, the subject comes up even more often, and has sparked many debates and protests. However, when the unit began, I realised that the sexism experienced by women was still a major ongoing problem in our society. Women are often portrayed as inferior to men. They are objectified, and pressurised to be physically beautiful, because society has forced them into believing that that is their role. Society has guided them from a young age, through books and movies and toys, to care more about their appearance than their aspirations and goals. Men, on the other hand, had whatever they needed to achieve their dreams from a young age. Wanted to become a police officer? Buy a toy gun. Wanted to be an explorer? Grab a pair of binoculars. And if a girl wanted to become any of those things, buying anything from the boys' section was frowned upon by society. Unle...
Post a Comment
Read more