I wrote this for English class. We had not read the book yet, just looked at the cover, and were supposed to come up with our own version of why the picture was painted. So here goes!
Her ears were pierced the day after she was born, with a pearl drop held in a golden bracket. Her name was Alice, but nobody called her that. She was the Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her mother was dead two days after her birth. Her father three days after that. They were buried together in the cemetery while the baby bawled.
She grew up in the care of her scatterbrained grandmother. And at the age of twelve, she grew tired of searching the streets for discarded food. She grew tired of the feeling of perpetual hunger, of looking for potato skins to make a soup to feed herself and her granny. So the girl dressed herself in the brown smock that she wore every day to go out scavenging and left the hovel where she and her grandmother lived.
The Girl with a Pearl Earring was short for twelve years old. Her face was thin, but her lips surprisingly full and her eyes bright. She carried herself elegantly. Walking into bakeries, butchers, taverns.
Is there any work here?
How old're you girl, ten?
Twelve.
Well we don' have work here. Buy something or be on yo' way.
Hunger makes a person desperate. The Girl with a Pearl Earring walked into store after store. She went into the alleys. She entered a small shop, one whose door was dark and grungy, one where the stink of human sweat was overpowered by the sickly sweet smell of incense. The man inside looked her up and down.
Is there any work here?
He walked over and stood, looking down on her. He was holding a length of fine blue and gold cloth that she thought must have been stolen, must be too fine to belong here.
Is there any work here? more tentatively.
The cloth descended over her eyes. She kicked and struggled, but the man was strong and she was weak with undernourishment. Soon she was quiet, and lay still, and cried silently to herself the long night.
The man was a painter called Johannes. She called him Master Vermeer and he called her girl. She never told him her name and he never asked. She ran his shop, cooked his meals, and cleaned his apartment upstairs. She was not allowed to go outside. When he went to sleep at night, she was locked in a small room with a straw mattress and a chamber pot.
He did not treat her poorly. She had as much as she wanted to eat, and soon her face filled out. She wore her brown smock most days, but he gave her the blue and gold cloth to wrap around her hair when she worked. At night she fingered the pearls in her ears and thought of her grandmother and her parents.
Master Vermeer did not have a mistress nor did he have any children. He ran his little shop or painted his pictures. He did not paint quickly, one painting might take him six months to complete.
One day the Girl with the Pearl Earring asked if she might go out of the house. He agreed, but she was not permitted past the steps in front of his shop. She stared down into the street, and wondered if her grandmother was still alive.
She slept on the straw mattress in the little room every night for four years. She grew, and her face became beautiful and alive, though her eyes were filled with sadness. And Vermeer became attached to her, and gave her nice things and good food, and let her walk outside in the mornings.
Though she did not know it, she became his muse, and every painting he made had some part of her in it. And one day he made up his mind to paint the Girl with the Pearl Earrings. She stood for him, met his gaze evenly and coolly, as he sketched her, the full lips and bright eyes, the glint of ivory colored pearl. He painted her gently, with smooth, soft brush strokes. When the painting was finished at last the Girl with the Pearl Earring looked at herself and smiled for the first time.
Vermeer was glad to have made her happy, but he did not want to keep her imprisoned any longer. So he let her go with a heavy heart. She ran joyfully back to her hovel, and found it gone to seed. Her grandmother too had died.
So the girl had lost everyone, but gained her freedom. She cleaned up the hovel. She planted new seeds in the garden and cleaned the cobwebs out from the sill above the door. And she was happy, but lonely.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring made her way carefully down the alleyway. She stopped in front of a small, dingy shop. She hesitated, and then walked in. Vermeer was sitting behind the counter, staring off into space. She took a deep breath.
Is there any work here?
