Girl with a Pearl Earring

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

By Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier was born 1962 in Washington D.C. When Chevalier was 22 she moved to London and married a man and now-a-days got two children with. In 1993 she left her job as a publisher and began study creative writing at the university. The same year she wrote her first novel called "The virgin blue" which was published 1997 - it sold very few copies. Her next book - "Girl with a pearl earring" sold better and became her breakthrough. Girl with a pearl earring became very popular in both Europe and USA, it has also been filmed with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth as the main characters (Griet and Vermeer).

"A girl with pearl earring" is the fiction behind the 178uth-century painting by Johannes Vermeer. Griet, a sixteen year old girl, have to take a job as maid in a Catholic home after her own family being bankrupt. Griet are very good at keeping things at its place and to remember certain things, so that her blind father wouldn't be confused. In the family Griet arrives to she got to take care of the laundry and cooking but of all the most important in her daily chores is to keep the artist father in of the family (who is very finicky) things in order; there-by Griets competent in keeping things in order is a plus. The whole story takes place in the home of the Vermeer family and is told from Griets perspective. The different relationship between the people in the family is the main plot and specially the one between the two aesthetics; Griet and Johannes Vermeer.

Griet is the main character and the teller of this story. Griet has to be capable to manage on her own in a very young age. From a person who would encounter Griet she would seem settled in herself and is definitive in her way of doing things. At the same time she is troubled over problems with her family and is probably not that secure on her self that she liked to be.

Griet is very grown-up in her way to act and think. Johannes Vermeer is the father in the family that Griet starts to work. Vermeers big passion is his painting he spends at circus six months on every one, he isn't only an aesthetic but also a pedant one. As a person hard to define; but isn't a very social man, he rather keep himself away from his family than spending time with it.

"I would never stop working on a painting if I knew it was not complete, no matter who was to get it, that is not how I work" muttred Vermeer.

Pieter the son is the butcher's son who falls in love with Griet. The relation between the two teenagers is in constant development and the two plays a game where Pieter the son is trying to seduce her and Griet is trying to be polite and behave as a girl in her position should.

Pieter the son is very kind to Griet and helps her getting information about things that happen in the part of Delft that her 'real' family lives. By