There were a lot of things that stood out to me while I read through A Girl with a Pearl Earring, though there were certain things that stayed consistently with me throughout the entire piece. This main focus was the overarching relationship between Griet’s two masters, the Vermeers, who she works for – three, if you included Maria Thins, Catharina’s mother. While I might reference this complexity, my post will mainly focus on the dynamic between Catharina and her husband, Johannes (though we don’t learn the name of until much later, which does irritate me a bit).
The main focus of this married couple, of course, is that they are Griet’s masters for who she works for. However, they have their own dynamic beyond that. We learn fairly quickly that Johannes Vermeer is almost secretive in nature, staying mostly in his studio or away for Guild work. It isn’t until about half way that he becomes a more central figure as he and Griet work closer together, both in his studio and outside of it (in regards of sending her to the apothecary for painting supplies). However, we also learn that Catharina is not a huge fan of this – to the point where even her mother tells Griet not to say anything. Catharina is rarely allowed in her husband’s studio, nor is she involved in his work (not unless he needs her jewelry box or something similar).
It’s this kind of interaction that really highlights the tension between Mr. and Mrs. Verneer. Catharina focuses so heavily on being excluded and replaced because of her husband’s paintings, and lashes out in a nature I would call jealous. Johannes, on the other hand, seems content with the silence of his work, both because he does not wish to paint her due to her restlessness and due to needed a break from his children.
Things get really complicated, however, when Griet gets involved in Johannes’s work by helping him mix paints and set out colors. Maria Thins is the first to learn about this, while Catharina doesn’t know about Griet’s involvement until much later in the book. I feel that Catharina’s jealousy continues even further, though she might secretly hope it means her husband paints faster. All of it is incredibly complicated on so many different levels, and this is without including the depth of Maria Thins’s relationship between the two master Verneers.
I’m glad that you talked about the interactions between the ‘masters’ of the house. Maria Thin’s relationship with the Vermeers is particularly interesting because she operates on her own terms, to the point that she has more say than Catharina and knows more about the goings-on in the house. Without her, I feel like a lot of the characters would interact much differently than they do.