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

the role and function of art in human socio-political history, and the disjunction
between art and humanity.
CONCLUSION
The different foci of these two films and novels point to the two aspects of
Vermeer’s work that Wolf has identified in some of Vermeer’s “mid-career
images of individual women absorbed in private tasks” (Wolf 173). While the two
films focus on “the social or political dimension of personal life,” that is, on class
relations, political history, and social, economical and gender-related issues of
power, the novels focus on the “second task” that these images accomplish, that
of representing “figures whose self-absorption parallels that of the painting itself”
(ibid.). But in foregrounding the self-reflexive aesthetic dimension of Vermeer’s
work, the two novels also use art and ekphrasis to empower their female
characters.
Vermeer’s painting of the Girl with a Pearl Earring emphasizes the girl’s
ambiguous status through the exotic costume and the absence of clear class
markers. Chevalier’s novel and Webber’s film do ascribe a specific social class to
the girl, thereby reintroducing the class markers absent in the painting, and
unveiling the costume. Yet, in exposing her rich, aesthetically sensitive inner life
particularly through her interpretive ekphrases, the novel also allows Griet to
transcend those class boundaries, emphasizing her ambiguous status just as
Vermeer’s painting does. Especially in contrast to Vermeer’s uncomprehending,
insensitive and bland wife Catharina, Griet’s keen artistic sensibilities render
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