A Study Guide for Tracy Chevalier's "Girl with a Pearl Earring"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for Tracy Chevalier's "Girl with a Pearl Earring", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535841481

Book preview

14

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Tracy Chevalier

1999

Introduction

When Tracy Chevalier was twenty-two years old, she moved to London, England, from the United States, where she had been born, grown up, and gone to college. The experience of leaving her home country and settling in a completely new place undoubtedly had a profound effect on her. In an interview with Felicity Librie for the Fiction Writers Review, Chevalier explained that there is an appealing universality to stories about someone out of his element and admits that her personal history has had an influence on her work: Although I feel much more comfortable in England than I did at the beginning, I'm still aware of being an outsider. I think that gives me an edge.

Chevalier's 1999 novel Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of these fish-out-of-water stories. It portrays Griet, a sixteen-year-old girl who becomes housemaid to the great painter Johannes Vermeer and forms a complicated relationship with him while she struggles to get along with his wife, mother-in-law, children, and housekeeper. Through Griet's eyes, the reader sees a fascinating, detailed picture of Delft, Netherlands, in the 1660s and watches Vermeer create one of his masterpieces.

Author Biography

Chevalier was born in Washington, DC, on October 19, 1962, and lived in the DC area until she graduated from high school. Even as a small child, she thought she might become a writer. In her interview with Librie, Chevalier described herself as one of those readaholics. I wasn't sporty, I was fat, I lay on my bed all day and read. As a teenager, she helped edit the school literary magazine. Although she was writing herself, she had a typical teenage girl's loss of confidence, and I didn't think that I would be a very good writer, but I could work on other people's stuff.

After graduating from Oberlin College, in Ohio, with a bachelor's degree in English, she moved to London and worked as a reference book editor for several years before returning to school. She earned her master's degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. While studying, she began work on her first novel, The Virgin Blue, which was published in the United Kingdom in 1997. (It was released in the United States in 2003 after the success of Girl with a Pearl Earring.)

Chevalier is best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was published in 1999. The novel had huge popular success, selling over four million copies and earning a Barnes & Noble Discover Award. The story was also adapted into a stage play and a