Girl with a Pearl Earring-Tracy Chevalier

Inspired from the renowned painting of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier wrote a beautiful novel, which comes under the same title. Vermeer is a 17 th century Dutch Baroque style painter, who lived and worked in Delft, a canal town in Holland.

Griet, a 16 year old girl was appointed by the renowned painter, Vermeer, to do domestic chores and clean his studio. Coming from a poor family surrounding, Griet was forced to take the hard job and eventually she became the second maid in the house. Apart from cleaning, washing and thousand other domestic duties, she has to run for the fish, meat stalls and fetch water from the nearby canal.

Amidst in the hectic household work, Griet showed a growing interest in Vermeer’s paintings, the painter realizes the talent of Griet, and he made her as a model for his painting titled as Girl With a Pearl Earring. This shocked the wife of the painter and thus began new problems in the household. Meanwhile Griet developed a romance with Peter, a young butcher in the market. Griet was forced to stay aloof from the house and later she married Peter out of her indebtness to him in many ways. . After a decade she heard that her former master died and family fell into the depths of soaring debts. And a few days later her former mistress called and gave her the pearl earrings as per the instruction in the painter’s will. The most touching in the novel would be the stage where, Griet sells the precious pearl earring to pay off all emotions towards Peter and to free herself completely from any worldly debt

Girl with a Pearl Earring, won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. Nearly 4 million copies of the book has been worldwide and made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.