85 to fling open the studio door and discover me in my chair, him at his easel.
p. 198
e. Freedom
The pearl earrings are also the symbol of Griet’s freedom because when Griet decides to leave the house and marries to Pieter the son, his master’s family
still has fifteen guilders debt in Pieter’s meat stall. As soon as I began working alongside Pieter they had switched butchers –
so abruptly that they did not even pay the bill. They still owed fifteen guilders. Pieter never asked them for it. “It’s the price I have paid for you,”
he sometimes teased. “Now I know what a maid is worth.”
Griet feels that her husband “buys” her from her master by considering that the debt has been paid off. When Catharina asks her to come to her house,
Griet wonders if she will pay the bill. She wants to tell her to pay the bill but does not dare to say it.
For a brief moment I wondered if Catharina was going to give me a painting too, to settle her debt with Pieter. p. 243
Fifteen guilders after all this time is not so very much, I wanted to say. Pieter has let it go. Think no more of it. But I dared not interrupt her. p.
245 Vermeer gives the pearl earrings to Griet through his will but Griet decides
to sell the pearl earrings in the man’s trade for twenty guilders after take them from Catharina.
Then I set out for a place I had heard but never been to, tucked away in a back street behind the New Church. p. 247
The man’s trade was keeping secrets. I knew that he would ask me no questions, nor tell anyone that I had gone to him. He held the earrings up
to the light, bit them, took them outside the squint at them. “Twenty guilders,” he said. p. 248
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
86 Griet gives fifteen guilders to Pieter to pay the debt and keep the rest of
them in the place only she knows. Now, she is free. There are five extra guilders I would not be able to explain. I separated
five coins from the others and help them tight in my fist. I would hide them somewhere that Pieter and my sons would not look, some unexpected
place that only I knew of.
I would never spend them. Pieter would be pleased with the rest of the coins, the debt now settled. I
would not have cost him anything. A maid came free. p. 248
f. Losing Vermeer’s Love
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