Best sleep aid on the market

Johannes Vermeer’s most famous painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring, has touched and mystified audiences since it was completed in 1665 in Delft, Holland.

It depicts a beautiful, if simple, young woman in three-quarter profile wearing an unusual headdress and a large pearl teardrop earring. The girl’s wide eyes and slightly parted lips suggest a startling and innocent sensuality. Unfortunately, Tracy Chevalier’s novel of the same title (Plume Printing, 2001) captures none of the elegance nor timelessness of the original Vermeer.

The plot is similar to a school creative writing assignment concocting a story based on a still-life picture. Chevalier imagines the painting’s young subject as 16-year-old Griet – the daughter of a painter whose family is thrown into poverty by his sudden blindness.

In desperation, the family sends Griet to work as a housemaid in the home of Johannes Vermeer. Griet there encounters about 170 pages’ worth of discomforts – from fearing the family’s Catholic faith to finding virtually everyone in the household unpleasant. Vermeer’s wife, Catherina, envies her; his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, intimidates her; and his tiresome daughters pester her.

Long suffering Griet tolerates these irritations in silence, out of devotion to her master, who (for no comprehensible reason) enlists Griet to help him with his art. She buys his supplies, mixes his paints, and begins advising him on ways to improve his work. All the while she is falling into a sort of canine awe of him.

Eventually he is moved to paint her wearing his wife’s earrings – presumably because he finds Griet more attractive and engaging than the shrew to whom he is married, though we know from the outset this move is destined to end very badly.

Sounds dull? It is. This novel has to be one of the better sleep aids on the over-the-counter market. The real low point comes when Griet spends three pages describing her dusting routine.

What it lacks in plot, it lacks further in character. The story is told in first person by Griet. This was Chevalier’s first mistake. We spend 220 pages painfully aware that we are inside the head of someone who doesn’t think much. Griet simply isn’t fleshed-out enough to go through any changes as a result of her experience and therefore engender any interest or sympathy.

The prose itself is, at best, uninspired and, at worst, distracting. Chevalier makes no attempt to invoke the language of 17th century Holland. Her modern turns of phrase give Griet the voice of a simple-minded Midwestern girl from present-day America. The short sentences and limited vocabulary suggest she was striving for an elegant simplicity and wound up with something like the writing of a 7-year-old.

Fond as she is of reminding us about her illiteracy, Griet demonstrates a sudden and sophisticated knowledge of modern art theory, altering Vermeer’s subjects while he’s not looking and instructing her master in colors, shape, and light.

Chevalier holds a Masters degree in creative writing and cited only two references used to research the book – one on Dutch history and one on Vermeer. This may account for some of the novel’s shortcomings. It would appear she set off armed with only three bits of knowledge: that 17th century Dutch Protestants didn’t like Catholics; that most of them were illiterate; and the painting itself – all of which she proceeds to belabor at every opportunity.

It’s clear by the end that Griet’s sexual awakening and Vermeer’s unspoken passion are symbolized in the earring, but it's so obviously manipulated to Mean Something that it loses any power to move the reader.

The premise itself is interesting and could have made for a delightful story. While many art historians believe Vermeer’s subject was likely one of his daughters, part of the painting’s appeal is that no one really knows. Evidence suggests that it was not a commissioned portrait and the painting didn’t surface until after Vermeer’s death.

The lovely girl with her pearl earring, wide-eyed innocence, and sensual mouth have kept their secrets almost completely for 340 years. And the literary world would have been better off if Chevalier had left it that way. If you’re tempted to pick up Girl with a Pearl Earring, spare yourself and view the painting instead.