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

differences between the two women, though present, are diminished in favor of an
emphasis on the bonding aesthetic experience of Vermeer’s work. The way in
which this scene sets class boundaries into conflict with an alliance between these
women echoes Vermeer’s strategy in his paintings of maids and mistresses that I
have discussed above, such as the Love Letter or Mistress and Maid. Here,
however, the women’s alliance is even more equal, since it is not based on the
love affair of the mistress, but on a joint love and admiration of Vermeer’s art.
Peter Webber’s film, by contrast, underscores the tension in the class
relations by rendering the presence of Maria Thins disruptive of Griet’s aesthetic
experience, rather than sharing it. Moreover, the film foregrounds Griet’s status as
maid by focusing on her cleaning instead of her contemplations and thoughts, and
by ending the sequence with a jump cut to a shot of a butcher’s table with cut-off,
blood-dripping pig’s heads, an image that functions to stress the disparity between
Griet’s harsh reality and the world of sublime artistic beauty. The film does
indicate Griet’s personal connection to the work of art through jump cuts between
her viewing the painting and the painting itself and through a camera angle that
suggests identification between the viewer’s perspective of the painting and
Griet’s point of view. Yet the focus of the scene and its ultimate resolution is on
the way Maria Thins’ demands disrupt Griet's contemplation of the painting. Not
only is Maria Thins presented as impatient (“Well, get along girl. You’re not paid
to stand gawping all day”), but also unresponsive to the painting. Vermeer's
mother-in-law is clearly not “content to stand with [Griet] and contemplate the
painting” (37), as she is in the novel. Furthermore, the film relinquishes not only
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