Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

perception thus defined as “an activity that cuts against the grain; it proceeds not
in consonance with the body’s activities but in contradiction to them” (139).
An image of and about looking, then, this painting becomes self-reflexive,
thematizing spectatorship and the viewer’s gaze. In returning the viewer’s look,
the girl in the painting unsettles the hierarchy of seeing/seen and subject/object,
uncannily becoming the seeing subject and transforming the viewer into the
observed. Moreover, the painting’s ambiguous status as seemingly a portrait, yet
not really one, situates it within the portrait tradition by emphasizing its defiance
against it. In the traditional Renaissance profile portrait, the woman is seen from
the side, passively looking into emptiness, representing an object of exchange or
material wealth. This tradition of “gendered and possessive seeing” (179) is
countered in The Girl with a Pearl Earring by the active turn of the girl’s head
and eyes toward the viewer, affirming the female gaze and her power to break that
male tradition of looking at and objectifying women. 211
Tracy Chevalier’s novel in which the girl of this painting herself talks not
only about the creation of that work, but also about other art works, further
underscores that challenge to a male-dominated tradition by making the girl an
actively looking and speaking subject through the use of ekphrasis. The film, on
the other hand, focuses on the issues of social class in Vermeer’s work by
foregrounding the relationships between servants and masters and the social
power structures of seventeenth century Holland.
211 Wolf interprets Woman with a Pearl Necklace, rather than The Girl with a Pearl Earring in the
tradition of the Renaissance profile portrait (178-79). However, I believe that this context applies
at least partly also to The Girl with a Pearl Earring.
200