Girl with a Pearl Earring: Chapter 1: 1664 Summary & Analysis

Griet stands chopping vegetables in her family kitchen when her mother appears in the doorway with two guests. A windswept pregnant woman with curly blond hair (later identified as Catharina) knocks Griet’s knife from the bench in her clumsiness. Her husband, a man who carries himself with calmness and reserve (later identified as Johannes Vermeer) retrieves it and carefully returns it to the bench, noticing Griet’s odd method of chopping the vegetables. She lays them in a circle divided into wedges according to color. The couple make an agreement with Griet’s mother, who sees them out of the house.

When Griet’s mother returns to the kitchen, she informs Griet that she will begin her work as a maid in the Vermeer household the following day. She will live there during the week but be allowed to visit home on Sundays. The family desperately needs the wages Griet will earn because her father can no longer work.

Griet climbs the stairs to visit her father, who sits by the light of the attic window. He used to paint tiles, but he lost both his eyes when a kiln exploded in the workshop. He’s sorry Griet must work, but he assures her that her new employer—whom he reveals to be the painter Johannes Vermeer—is a good man who will treat her well. Vermeer needs someone to clean his studio.

Griet’s mother packs a few family treasures with the rest of Griet’s belongings. She explains that  Vermeer currently oversees the Delft Artists’ Guild, which supports injured masters like Griet’s father. But the family needs more income, so when he learned that Vermeer needed a maid to clean his studio “without moving anything,” he suggested Griet. She has learned to put things down exactly to help her blind father navigate the home, but she worries it will be harder to do for a man with a painter’s eye for detail.

Griet’s impending departure upsets her younger sister, Agnes. She also grieved when their brother, Frans, left for his apprenticeship. Griet reminds Agnes that their parents will still be at home, and that she’ll get to visit on Sundays. That’s more than Frans, who has only been able to visit once—after their father’s accident—since his apprenticeship at the tile factory began. 

Before Griet leaves early the next morning, her father hands her one of his tiles, which displays an image of a boy and girl walking together. The painted figures look like Griet and Frans when they were younger. The neighbors complete early morning chores while she walks past. Everyone watches Griet—no longer just a respected tradesman’s daughter but a maid—with curiosity but no malice. Any family that loses its main provider might have to resort to similar choices to survive.

Griet becomes less melancholy as she walks along the canal. She, Frans, and Agnes used to sit and watch it change colors in the day’s shifting light. They made up stories about monstrous creatures lurking in its depths.  A few boats pass her; the oarsman of one carrying a load of bricks calls out a greeting, but she ignores him. Even at this early hour, Market Square hums with business as people go about their chores and errands. Griet looks at the church where she was baptized and remembers climbing its belltower once with her father and siblings to look out over the town from above.

In the center of Market Square, the stones make an eight-pointed star. Griet, Frans, and Agnes used to play a game here where each would pick one point and they’d race to see who could be the first to find an everyday object in that direction. But they never followed the point leading to “Papist’s Corner,” where the town’s Catholic population lives.

When she reaches her destination, Griet finds five children waiting by the door playing with bubbles. Griet assesses them in a brief glance before greeting them. As they debate who will inform Tanneke, the housekeeper, of the new maid’s arrival, Griet learns their names. Cornelia—the second youngest and wildest—runs inside ahead of the eldest sister, Maertge, leaving Griet outside with the second-oldest, Lisbeth, the youngest, Aleydis, and baby Johannes. Griet learns that the house belongs to the children’s grandmother, Maria Thins. It’s grander than Griet’s own, but not by too much. 

Tanneke appears in the doorway. Griet notices her appearance, down to the smallest details of her clothes, and quickly realizes that the housekeeper feels threatened by her presence, which means Griet will need to delicately handle interactions with her if she doesn’t want to be bullied. Crossing into the house, the number of paintings hanging everywhere surprises Griet. Later she will learn that Vermeer deals in art as well as selling his own paintings. Tanneke quickly ushers Griet down the hallway into a room dominated by a massive painting of the crucifixion. In the corner sits Maria Thins, smoking a pipe. As mistress and maid size each other up, Griet takes stock of her features and realizes she’s the mother of Vermeer’s wife, Catharina.

Tanneke ushers Griet down the hallway and shows her the kitchen, two storage rooms, the laundry, a courtyard, and the trapdoor leading to the cellar where Griet will sleep. They tour the children’s bedroom, the great hall—a combination of receiving room and master bedroom—then the upstairs, where Vermeer’s studio lies behind a closed door. Tanneke points towards Maria Thins’s rooms at the back of the house. No one goes in there but Tanneke and Maria herself. In addition to cleaning the studio, Griet’s tasks will include laundry and helping with the shopping. She earns Tanneke’s goodwill when she compliments her on having taken care of the whole household by herself for so long. But in her own mind, she dreads the hard work the laundry will entail.

To start on the washing, Griet first finds a kettle and two pots to fetch water from the canal. She carries the pots past the children, who have resumed their game with the bubbles. Griet asks Aleydis to show her where to access the canal; Cornelia follows Griet across the street and down the steps to the water’s edge. When Griet asks if she will help carry the water, the untamable child laughs in her face. Griet slaps her, and Cornelia runs back to the house. Griet fills each pot and carries them to the top of the stairs. Then she carries one inside where she empties it into the kettle and puts the kettle on the fire to heat.

When Griet goes back outside, she finds the second pot floating in the canal instead of sitting where she left it. Reflecting on how difficult it will be to manage Cornelia, she looks for a stick to snag the pot. Unable to find one, she refills the empty pot in her other hand, brings it inside to add to the kettle, and returns with a broom. Cornelia tosses stones at the pot, trying to sink it. She threatens to tell her mother that the new maid slapped her, but Griet counters that she’ll tell Maria Thins what Cornelia has done. This subdues the child.

Looking up, Griet sees a boat coming down the canal, piloted by the man she refused to greet when he called out to her on her way to the Vermeer house. She asks if he will help her get the pot, and he complies—then tries to steal a kiss as payment. Griet wrestles the pot from his grasp and tries to casually ignore his flirting. As she walks back up the steps to the street, she thinks she sees movement in the windows of Vermeer’s studio.

Catharina  returns while Griet collects laundry from the courtyard. She looks hot and rumpled, and Griet thinks that a few minutes of calm reflection sitting by the canal would do her mistress good. Neither yet knows how to treat the other, making their conversation awkward. A short while later, Tanneke fetches Griet to go to the market. As they leave the house, they pass Catharina sitting on the bench, combing Lisbeth’s hair while overseeing Cornelia’s and Aleydis’s sewing.

On the walk to Market Square, Griet learns that Tanneke has served Maria Thins for 14 years—half of the housekeeper’s life. Although it’s been months since Griet’s family could afford meat, her old butcher recognizes her and calls out a friendly hello. Out of the context of her old life, it catches Griet off guard. The Vermeers patronize the handsome and outgoing Pieter the Butcher. He winks as he puts chops and tongue into the pail that Griet carries. After being introduced to the fishmonger, Griet follows Tanneke back to the Vermeer house, imagining running home instead.

When Tanneke and Griet return, Catharina has moved on to combing Cornelia’s hair. Griet helps Tanneke with meal preparation and sets the table in the great hall. As Griet stores the tongue in the pantry, Vermeer reenters the house through the front door. He pauses, but with the light behind him, Griet cannot see his face or tell if he’s looking at her down the long hallway. While Tanneke and Maertge serve the food, Griet looks after Johannes in what she’s begun to call the Crucifixion Room. When she finally gets her own meal, the meat tastes especially welcome after such a long time of going without.

In the afternoon, Griet and Tanneke do chores while the girls play and Catharina  rests. Maria Thins quietly stops in the doorway to watch Griet at her work, and although Griet notices, she keeps working. This seems to earn Maria’s approval. Vermeer receives a guest—a plump man with a long white feather in his hat (later identified as van Ruijven)—upstairs in the studio. In the evening, Tanneke and Griet eat a simple meal with the children while Vermeer and Catharina entertain their guest in the great hall.

When Griet finally climbs down the ladder to her little room, she feels utterly exhausted. Just before blowing out her candle, she catches sight of a painting hanging at the foot of the bed. It’s a crucifixion scene even more gruesome and upsetting than the one upstairs. She briefly thinks about taking it down but doesn’t dare. She still feels its ominous presence after she blows out her candle, and she sleeps poorly.

In the morning light, Griet examines the cellar more closely; she finds some spare furniture and two still-life paintings. She would like to replace the crucifixion with one of these, but she worries that Cornelia would notice and tell Catharina. Griet feels isolated as the only Protestant in a Catholic home, and she doesn’t want to make trouble. She climbs up from the cellar to find a drowsy Catharina at the front of the house. Catharina leads Griet up the stairs and unlocks the studio door.

The darkened studio smells of linseed oil. Catharina instructs Griet to open some of the closed shutters to let in the light, warning her not to touch the table or chair in the right-hand corner of the room. Griet can’t reach the shutter on that side without standing on the chair, so she hesitates. When the baby’s cries from downstairs draw Catharina away from the door, she climbs up and opens the shutters. Through the window she can see Tanneke scrubbing the dooryard. As she climbs down from the chair, she catches a surprise glimpse of herself in a mirror.

With the shutters open, Griet can see the studio clearly. It’s large, bright, and airy, with white-washed walls and a grey tile floor. A row of Delft tiles—none of which seem to be her father’s work—line the border between floor and wall. A chair and an easel with an incomplete painting sit under the middle window; a cupboard with paint brushes and palette knives and a large desk covered with papers sit along the lefthand wall. It's quiet and orderly, especially compared to the chaos of the rest of the house with all its residents. Griet goes to the right-hand corner and begins to dust a table cluttered with objects. Someone has dusted around them, but no one has properly cleaned the table in quite some time. Griet carefully moves things to clean, placing them back as exactly as she can, unsure if her work will pass Vermeer’s inspection.

Griet works her way around the rest of the studio and a small, attached storeroom, saving the area with the easel for last. For reasons she can’t articulate, she’s nervous about seeing the painting. But when she can avoid it no longer, she’s so transfixed that she doesn’t hear Maria Thins enter the studio. Maria tells Griet it's a portrait of van Ruijven’s wife and watches as the girl slowly takes in all the portrait’s details. Eventually, she realizes that it isn’t an exact replica of real life; Vermeer changes some of the details to suit his artistic vision. Maria excuses Griet to the rest of her work, but she lingers in the studio herself, studying her son-in-law’s work.

Griet collects water from the canal and heats it over the fire for the laundry. She finds a grouchy Tanneke helping Cornelia dress. Griet realizes that the housekeeper feels jealous of the new maid, who is allowed to go into the studio, which is off-limits to everyone else. Tanneke tells Griet that she modeled for Vermeer once—van Ruijven bought the piece—and Griet uses the opening to get back into her good graces with a compliment.

As Griet walks towards the town square for mutton, she relaxes, suddenly aware of how tense she was in the house. At Meat Hall, she greets her old family butcher, who offers to set some meat aside for her family and teases her for patronizing Pieter the Butcher and his handsome son. She goes there next, finding to her surprise that the butcher’s correct about the blond, curly-haired, and apricot-skinned Pieter. Griet refuses to give Pieter the Butcher the compliment he fishes for and holds her ground when he tries to sell her an unsavory leg of mutton, refusing to be intimidated by the man in the blood-stained apron and determined to show her good judgement and competence to the Vermeers.

Griet returns to the house to find Catharina feeding Johannes. In a low voice, Catharina tells Great that Vermeer found her work in the studio acceptable; she will stay in their service. The rest of the day passes like many to come: after cleaning the studio and fetching the day’s meat or fish, Griet turns her attention to the laundry and other chores. At night, she hangs her apron over the crucifixion scene at the foot of her bed. On her second day in the studio, Griet notices that Catharina refuses to cross the threshold. Griet wants to know if she should clean the windows—she’s afraid that doing so might change the light—and after consultation with Vermeer, Catharina tells her to leave them alone.

Griet is sensitive to “his”—Vermeer’s—presence in the house, though at first she mostly experiences him through the thrilling and dangerous hum of his voice in distant conversation. On her third day in the house, they nearly collide in the hallway. He regards her with scrutiny; unused to such attention, Griet struggles to meet his eyes. She wishes she had the self-possession she imagines van Ruijven’s wife—the subject of Vermeer’s current painting—has. This grand lady herself comes to the studio on the fourth day, wearing pearls and a yellow mantle. When Vermeer dismisses her, she looks for Catharina, to whom the mantle and pearls belong. Griet promises to put them away—Catharina is out doing errands—but van Ruijven’s wife doesn’t trust her with the pearls.

On Saturday—Market Day—Maria Thins, Tanneke, Catharina, and Maertge go to the market for vegetables and other supplies. Although Griet longs to go with them, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother and Agnes, she stays at the house to watch the younger children, who play in the yard. When Vermeer appears—on his way to the apothecary for paint supplies—he speaks briefly to Cornelia but says nothing to Griet. The brim of his hat hides his expression from her. He hasn’t said anything to her since they discussed the colors of her vegetable wheel.

Griet wakes up early on Sunday morning and waits impatiently until she hears keys in the front hallway. Maria Thins, rather than the pregnant and exhausted Catharina, unlocks the door and sends her on her way. Agnes waits for Griet on the doorstep, just as excited as her sister for the reunion. Griet hands over her wages, then tells her sister, mother, and father about her work and the Vermeer family. After church services, Agnes and Griet’s mother make the meal while Griet tries to describe Vermeer’s current painting to her father. At dinner, Griet compares the Vermeers’ sumptuous food and décor to her family’s simple situation. She doesn’t want to leave the familiar comforts of home at the end of the day. 

Griet settles into her new role, helped by the fact that Maria Thins—whose lead everyone in the house follows—likes her. Nevertheless, she humbly deflects any praise for her own efforts and avoids Catharina—whom she knows dislikes her—as much as she can. As Catharina’s pregnancy progresses, she stays in bed more and more, requiring Griet and Tanneke to take on her chores in addition to their own. Griet learns with shock that the Vermeers can barely afford her wages, much less hire more maids to help. Vermeer only completes two or three works a year, which allows the family a few luxuries, like a wetnurse to feed the baby when it arrives, but not much more. Tanneke hypothesizes that having so many children makes Catharina feel like the great lady she wants to be.

Griet learns that she can stay on Tanneke’s good side by praising Maria Thins. She also learns to not let Tanneke’s bad moods affect her. And she begins to analyze the characters of the people around her: insufficiently consistent feedback about her work from Maria Thins and Catharina makes Tanneke uncertain and defensive. Despite her shrewdness, Maria tends to misjudge those closest to her, especially Tanneke and Catharina. The girls mostly behave, although Cornelia remains wild and ungovernable, and Griet keeps a wary eye on her.

The studio becomes a place of refuge from the dramatic personalities in the house for Griet. Over time, she becomes able to see the tiny changes in the room from day to day, which were once imperceptible to her: a cupboard door left ajar, a paintbrush or palette knife out of place. She also becomes sensitive to the often-minute changes Vermeer makes to his painting each day—small changes that nevertheless make it seem almost real.

One day, when Griet allows Maertge to come to the fishmonger with her, Griet catches a glimpse of Agnes in the town square. She hasn’t told her sister about the eldest Vermeer, afraid that Agnes will become jealous of the girl with whom she must share Griet. Afraid of mixing her two lives, Griet subtly indicates that Agnes should not speak to her, then turns her back until Agnes disappears. This choice will haunt her.

One warm day while Griet hangs laundry, Catharina plops into a courtyard chair. She wants Griet to see if “they” are gone, and Griet walks into the hallway to hear Vermeer and another man laboring up the stairs with a cumbersome object. Once she hears the studio door close, she helps Catharina out of the chair. Later, when she asks Tanneke about the incident, Tanneke explains that Catharina always now hides when van Leeuwenhoek, a friend of Vermeer’s visits, because she once broke his “box” (soon identified as a camera obscura). Vermeer forbids her from entering the studio because of her clumsiness.

Griet learns about the mysterious box the next morning when she finds it sitting on a table in the studio. Vermeer quietly enters the room as she studies it. He tells her it’s a camera obscura and offers her the opportunity to look into it. He crosses the room, adjusts the box’s inner workings, then drapes his robe over the box and his own head. Griet begins to worry about what anyone who might find her with the half-dressed Vermeer would think. She’s even more anxious when she realizes that she will be vulnerably exposed while unable to see him under the robe. But she doesn’t know how to say no to the man who employs her, so she obeys when he beckons her.

Under Vermeer’s robe, momentarily overwhelmed by its warmth and scent, Griet closes her eyes. When she opens them, she sees Vermeer’s familiar painting inside the camera obscura—almost, but not exactly. The woman is missing, and the details are switched around. Vermeer explains that the camera’s lens captures light from the scene and projects an image of it inside the box, upside down and reversed unless one uses mirrors to correct it. Griet feels fascination and terror simultaneously; getting the room’s image into the box still seems like a devil’s trick to her. Vermeer asks if she wants to look again, and she says yes, but only if he leaves the room. With amused surprise, he steps into the hallway to allow her privacy.

Alone, Griet can take in the image’s details, becoming almost as fascinated by it as the painting. When Vermeer reenters the room, he explains that the camera obscura helps him to see the scene afresh. He wants Griet to agree with him, and when she demurs, he becomes suddenly cold, the excitement in his voice dying as he dismisses her to the rest of her work. On reflection, Griet realizes that she does understand what he means, at least somewhat. Looking at the painting once more reminds her how differently he sees—and conveys through his paintings—common, everyday sights. By the next morning, the painting has again replaced the camera obscura under the middle window. This time, Griet notices a change so big it startles her: the map that hangs on the wall has been painted out in the portrait.

Later that day, when Griet makes the daily purchase from the butcher, Pieter tells her that plague has broken out in her family’s neighborhood, which will likely be quarantined that same day. It’s only later that she realizes he must have been asking around about her to discover where she lives, otherwise he wouldn’t have thought to share the plague news. Griet rushes back to the Vermeers’ in a panic, begging Catharina to allow her to visit her family before the quarantine falls. Catharina refuses. Griet retreats to the courtyard to weep while scrubbing the laundry, where Maria Thins finds her later. Although Griet refuses to acknowledge her presence, Maria scolds her for foolishness—since she can’t do anything to prevent her family from becoming ill anyway, it’s better that Griet stays where it’s safe.

The next morning, Vermeer comes into the studio while Griet sweeps. He offers condolences for her family’s situation and confirms that the city officially quarantined the neighborhood the previous morning. Just before he leaves, she asks if looking into the camera obscura inspired him to remove the map from his painting. His reaction betrays interest and pleasure at her perceptiveness, and he smiles when she recklessly tells him his change improved the painting.

Griet’s domestic work—at least outside of the studio—suffers. On the first Sunday of the quarantine, she ventures to the closest Protestant church, feeling out of place as she listens to the familiar service. She approaches the quarantine line, but no lists of the dead have yet been published, and the soldier stationed at the barricade doesn’t know her family. Another soldier offers to find out for her—if she’s willing to give him some bodily pleasure in return. It’s only later in the week that Pieter gives her news: Agnes has fallen ill. Griet feels thankful for his help, but also obliged. She doesn’t like feeling obliged to anyone. The second Sunday, she visits Frans at the tile factory and talks him into going to church with her. Although they pray fervently for their sister, they don’t know of anyone who has ever recovered from the plague.

One morning when she unlocks the studio door, Maria Thins tells Griet to clear out the corner where van Ruijven’s wife had posed for the painting. Vermeer no longer needs the props laid out there; he has finished the painting. Upset over losing the familiar tableaux, Griet dawdles over her work and lingers at the easel, looking for recent changes. Vermeer finds her staring at it and scolds her for her indolence. When she confesses how much she hates to move the objects from their familiar places, he offers to help. She finds Vermeer’s sudden energy and movement as strange and upsetting as the change in the room.

That afternoon, van Ruijven and his wife come to see the finished product. Tanneke and Griet sit mending lace cuffs in the dooryard when they arrive. Griet runs inside to warn Maria Thins and Catharina, who quickly straighten their clothes and hair before greeting their important guests in the front hall. There, van Ruijven catches a glimpse of Griet. He demands that the “wide-eyed maid” bring wine up to the studio instead of Tanneke. Griet collects five glasses and a white jug of wine, which she places on a tray and carries upstairs. Van Ruijven and his wife stand admiring the portrait; Maria takes the tray from Griet and quickly shoos her away, preventing the disappointed man from having an opportunity to get a “proper look at her.”

The next morning, Griet enters the studio to find the painting gone, carried off before she had a chance to look at it one last time. When she arrives at the Meat Hall, she learns that the quarantine has been lifted; Pieter ignores the other customers in line to serve her quickly—and to throw in something extra for her family. She runs home to find her mother and father sitting on the bench. Agnes is gone.

In the months following Agnes’s death, Griet feels hollow. Maria Thins and Tanneke treat her a little more kindly than usual, although Catharina doesn’t seem to know—or care—about what’s happened. None of the children knew about Agnes. But Cornelia must have overheard something, and she tries to provoke Griet by offering a hand-me-down doll for her sister with feigned innocence. Vermeer often leaves the house on Guild business. During this time, Griet finds Pieter’s kindness almost too painful to bear, although the family eats especially fine meat all autumn. And, although she sometimes convinces Frans to join her, her visits home become increasingly distant as her life centers more and more around the house in Papist’s Corner.

One Sunday Griet returns from her parents’ home to learn that Catharina has gone into labor. Not wanting to intrude on the birth, she gladly follows Maria Thins’s order to collect Maertge, Lisbeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, and Johannes, whom she sent to play outside. When Griet and the children return home, Vermeer meets them at the door with the news that they have a new brother, Franciscus. Griet finds his evident embarrassment puzzling until she realizes that he cares more about painting than his own children. Still, she has noticed the intimate way he looks at and talks to his wife; he seems interested in fathering her children. Griet drives this line of thought from her mind; she prefers to think of him alone in his studio. Or in his studio with her.

With the birth finished, Tanneke and the midwife open the shutters and begin to tidy up the great hall for a prayer of thanks. Although she’s uncomfortable participating in Catholic rituals, Griet knows that Protestants would do the same thing, so she joins the rest of the household. An exhausted but happy Catharina lies propped on pillows on the bed, and after the prayer, she hands Franciscus to the wetnurse. Tanneke and Griet, on the other hand, rise from prayer and almost immediately begin preparations for the birth feast. For 10 days straight, they scrub, wash, polish, and clean everything in the house. Maria Thins places special orders with Pieter the Butcher, and the house fills up with cheese, vegetables, and exotic fruits. Tanneke wryly notes that Catharina wishes to be waited on with such fuss every day.

Vermeer stays out of the house and out of the way during most of the preparations. Three days before the feast, Pieter brings a cart of meat to the house. He asks for Griet, smiling widely and unguardedly when she appears in the doorway. Griet realizes that both Cornelia and Vermeer observe her conversation with Pieter. When she turns towards the painter, she sees that that he’s noticed Pieter’s affectionate smile. He looks at Griet coldly, causing her to waver a little. Pieter sees her react to Vermeer’s displeasure, and she feels unpleasantly trapped between the two men. Vermeer pushes past Griet in the doorway and disappears up the street. Pieter asks her where he should put the family’s order.

When Griet goes home that Sunday, her mother asks about the new Vermeer baby, news of which she heard at the market. Griet’s father only wants to know if there’s a new painting. There isn’t. When her parents suggest that Vermeer might be lazy, Griet sharply springs to her master’s defense.

On the day of the feast, dozens of guests fill the house, including the artisans and merchants that the family patronizes, family members, other artists, and patrons. Catharina, dressed in a splendid dress and the yellow mantle pearls given to her by van Ruijven’s wife, circulates among the guests, animated and happy. Vermeer keeps to the periphery, comfortable but uninterested in socializing. At one point, van Ruijven corners Griet in the hallway, grabbing her face for closer inspection. Pieter the Butcher pops out of the Crucifixion Room and asks her for more wine, giving her an excuse to escape the wealthy patron’s grasp.

A long, cold winter sets in after the party. The girls  refuse to do their chores; Maria Thins retreats to her rooms; Catharina becomes more snappish. Bereft of distractions, Griet ruminates on Agnes. Most distressingly, she senses Vermeer’s anger at her; he refuses to acknowledge her presence in the house. Even worse, he hasn’t started a new painting, so the once-comforting refuge of the studio remains cold and sterile. There isn’t even much to clean in there, which leads Griet to attack the windows with soap and water one desperate morning. Vermeer comes in while she works, and she turns to look at him, unsure whether he will appreciate her decision or not. He studies her intently as she stammers an apology for changing the light in the room. By the next morning, he’s starting on a new work.