Women’s Roles Theme Analysis

“But your cap covers all your hair. Why is that? Most women show some of their hair.”

I did not answer.

“What color is your hair?”

“Brown.”

“Light or dark?”

“Dark.”

Pieter smiled as if he were indulging a child in a game. “Straight or curly?”

“Neither. Both.” I winced at my confusion.

“Long or short?”

I hesitated. “Below my shoulders.”

He continued to smile at me, then kissed me once more and turned back toward Market Square.

I had hesitated because I did not want to like but did not want him to know. My hair was long and could not be tamed. When it was uncovered it seemed to belong to another Griet—a Griet who would stand alone in an alley with a man, who was not so calm and quiet and clean. A Griet like the women who dared to bare their heads.

“Oh yes, that story went all around the Meat Hall,” he answered, chuckling. […] “It was several years ago now. It seems van Ruijven wanted one of his kitchen maids to sit for a painting with him. They dressed her in one of his wife’s gowns, a red one, and van Ruijven made sure there was wine in the painting so he could get her to drink every time they sat together. Sure enough, before the painting was finished she was carrying van Ruijven’s child.”

“What happened to her?”

Pieter shrugged, “What happens to girls like that?”

His words froze my blood. Of course I had heard such stories before, but never one so close to me. I thought about my dreams of wearing Catharina’s clothes, of van Ruijven grasping my chin in the hallway, of him saying “You should paint her” to my master.

He did not treat me differently after the affair of the comb. When I thanked him for speaking up for me, he shook his head as if shooing away a fly that buzzed about him.

It was I who felt differently about him. I felt indebted. I felt that if he asked me to do something I could not say no. I did not know what he would ask that I would want to say no to, but nonetheless I did not like the position I had come to be in.

I was disappointed in him as well, though I did not like to think about it. I had wanted him to tell Catharina himself about my assisting him, to show that he was not afraid to tell her, that he supported me.

That is what I wanted.

Pieter led me to the alley later. There he began squeezing my breasts and pulling at their nipples through the cloth of my dress. Then he stopped suddenly, gave me a sly look, and ran his hands over my shoulder and up my neck. Before I could stop him his hands were under my cap and tangled in my hair.

I held my cap down with both hands. “No!”

Pieter smiled at me […] He had managed to pull loose a strand of my hair and tugged it now with his fingers. “Some day soon, Griet, I will see all of this. You will not always be a secret to me. […] You will be eighteen next month. I’ll speak to your father then.”

[…] “I am still so young. Too young for that.”

Pieter shrugged, “Not everyone waits until they’re older. And your family needs me.”

Now that he had seen my hair, now that he had seen me revealed, I no longer felt I had something precious to hide and keep to myself. I could be freer, if not with him, then with someone else. It no longer mattered what I did and did not do.

That evening I slipped from the house and found Pieter the son at one of the taverns […] I went up to him and asked him to come with me. […] I took his hand and led him to a nearby alley. There I pulled up my skirt and let him do as he liked. Clasping my hands around his neck, I held on while he found his way into me and began to push rhythmically. He gave me pain, but when I remembered my hair loose around my shoulders in the studio, I felt something like pleasure too.

He sat for a long time, mixing colors on his palette with his palette knife. There was red and ocher there, but the paint he was mixing was mostly white, to which he added daubs of black, working them together slowly and carefully, the silver diamond of the knife flashing in the grey paint.

“Sir?” I began.

He looked up at me, his knife stilled.

“I have seen you paint sometimes without the model being here. Could you not paint the earring without me wearing it?”

The palette knife remained still. “You would like me to imagine you wearing the pearl, and paint what I imagine?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked down at the paint, the palette knife moving again. I think he smiled a little. “I want to see you wear the earring.”

“But you know what will happen then, sir.”

“I know the painting will be complete.”

“I want you to do it.” I had not thought I could ever be so bold.

Nor had he. He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to speak, but did not say anything.

He stepped up to my chair. My jaw tightened but I managed to hold my head steady. He reached over and gently touched my earlobe.

[…]

He rubbed the swollen lobe between his thumb and finger, then pulled it taut. With his other hand he inserted the earring wire in the hole and pushed it through. A pain like fire jolted through me and brought tears to my eyes.

He did not remove his hand. His fingers brushed against my neck and along my jaw. He traced the side of my face up to my cheek, then blotted the tears that spilled from my eyes with his thumb. He ran his thumb over my lower lip. I licked it and tasted salt.

I did not pick up the knife. I turned and walked from the room, down the stairs and through the doorway, pushing past Tanneke. When I reached the street I did not look back at the children I knew must be sitting on the bench, nor at Tanneke, who would be frowning because I had pushed her, nor up at the windows where he might be standing. I got to the street and I began to run. I ran down the Oude Langendijck and across the bridge into Market Square […] I reached the center of the square and stopped in the circle of tiles with the eight-pointed star in the middle. Each point indicated a direction I could take. […] When I made my choice, the choice I knew I had to make, I set my feet carefully along the edge of the point and wen the way it told me, walking steadily.