Griet’s and Vermeer’s Relationship
Since a majority of the book focuses on Griet and Vermeer’s relationship, it’s only right to speak on it. Griet and Vermeer’s relationship as the story progresses becomes more complex in my opinion and it’s something that makes you uncomfortable as you read more. However, what I notice from the beginning is that the man who grabs the bucket for Griet is almost if not a little more for lack of a better word predatory than Veermer but it feels as if because Griet is in a world different than her own and Vermeer’s perspective on life she looks past the behavior. He has a fantastical about the way he builds and tears down worlds with his art that Griet views him as god. And the women in his life now including Greit are meerly subjects for him to build and tear down to create a version of themselves he enjoys. I think this is common in a lot of the work we’ve been seeing that leads to a question about the male gaze and the damage it causes to the female form and experience. To add there’s almost a romantic paternilism to they’re relationship. Where with Vermeer’s and Greit’s age gap you would want to see a “father and daughters” relationship but it feels more of an intimate love or more so an infatuation with a father like figure.
I also wonder why Veemer has such an infatuation with Griet. I wondered if it was something like the innocence of youth tainted with complex “adult” emotions. But I also wonder if it’s the want for someone to worship the art he does tthe chance to mold a young mind to see what he see’s. To fix a beauty to conform and contort to what the version of beauty he see’s. You can see that in some of their interactions where Griet thinks there is a right and wrong answer in art. When Vermeer knows that art has no answer which is why he takes so long on art cause there is no right or wrong way to do art but a way to present your vision in a way fitting to you.
Woman’s Scorn
I wanted to touch on Catharina’s role in this story. I feel she is a woman scorned by a man more obssesed with capturing beauty then valuing it. He doesn’t value the woman he has and instead parade’s a younger “woman” as the subject of his desire in his art wor which she know’s is deeply intimate to him. And for her to see him share that intimate part of himself he hasn’t shared with her create’s a resentment she then turn’s to Griet. In this sense Catharina’s character reminds me of Hera and Zeus’s relationship, where Hera continues to punish the lovers of Zeus rather then Zues himself.