Girl With a Pearl Earring

This section opens with Griet at home with her parents, her father complaining that she smells of linseed oil. Pieter is there as well, as he has become a weekly visitor in her parents’ home. One Sunday in February, Griet and Pieter leave her parents’ house and convene in the alley for their weekly tryst. Pieter becomes more aggressive squeezing and pulling at Griet’s breasts and then trying to run his hands through her hair under her cap. She stops him, but not before he has pulled loose a strand. He promises that he “will see all of” her hair, that she “will not always be a secret to” him (175), and that he will speak to her father about marriage as soon as she turns eighteen the next month.

The narrative shifts back to the month previous, the first day of the year, when Vermeer calls Griet into the studio so that he can decide what pose to paint her in. He offers her many props—has her pretend to read a letter and then a book, and then pretend to pour wine, and then look out the window—having her “do things a lady would do” (178).