NOVEL THOUGHTS
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DUTTON, 2000
(available in paperback from Penguin, 2003)
IN HER FIRST NOVEL, Tracy Chevalier brings to life the young woman who inspired the seventeenth-century Dutch masterpiece by Vermeer. Set in the small city of Delft in the 1660s, Girl with a Pearl Earring is narrated by sixteen-year-old Griet, who is compelled to work as a maid in the Vermeer household to help her struggling family. Vermeer quickly recognizes Griet’s artistic talent and has her assist him in his attic studio, where she learns to grind and mix paints. Griet becomes entranced with the master’s creative process, and domestic tensions in the household increase when Vermeer’s jealous wife, Catharina, and mother-in-law, Maria Thins, become wary of the increasing intimacy between the painter and the servant. As Griet becomes part of Vermeer’s work and, eventually, the subject of Vermeer’s next painting, scandal and turmoil erupt, threatening to ruin them all.
In the novel’s opening scene, Vermeer and his wife, Catharina, visit Griet’s home to arrange for her hire. Vermeer instantly notices Griet’s artistic inclinations. Griet is chopping vegetables for soup and Vermeer is drawn to the color pattern she has created. Says Griet: “I always laid vegetables out in a circle, each with its own section like a slice of pie. There were five slices: red cabbage, onions, leeks, carrots and turnips. I had used a knife edge to shape each slice, and placed a carrot disk in the center.” Intrigued by the composition, Vermeer studies the circle and asks Griet if the vegetables are laid out in the order in which they will go into the soup. Griet responds:
“No, sir.” I hesitated. I could not say why I had laid out the vegetables as I did. I simply set them as I felt they should be, but I was too frightened to say so to a gentleman. “I see you have separated the whites,” he said, indicating the turnips and onions. “And then the orange and the purple, they do not sit together. Why is that?” He picked up a shred of cabbage and a piece of carrot and shook them like dice in his hand. I looked at my mother, who nodded slightly. “The colors fight when they are side by side, sir.”
With the order of the vegetables now in disarray, Griet, in an observation that foreshadows what is to come, says, “The pie slices I had made so carefully were ruined.”
Tracy Chevalier thought vegetable soup would be a perfect accompaniment to a book group discussion of Girl with a Pearl Earring, and told us this anecdote about writing the opening scene of her novel.
When I was writing that first scene where Griet is chopping vegetables and Vermeer comes to her house, I needed to see how the color wheel would look, so I chopped up a lot of vegetables and laid them out. Afterwards, I figured I really ought to make a soup with them, so I threw them into a pot with some herbs and boiled them up. The problem was, I was in the early stages of pregnancy and when I looked at the end result—a kind of pink-gray sludge, because of the red cabbage, I suspect—I couldn’t touch the stuff. I put the huge pot of it in the fridge, but even the thought of it sitting in there made me feel sick, so I had to throw the whole thing away!
Our version of Griet’s vegetable soup features onions, leeks, carrots, and turnips. We took Tracy Chevalier’s advice and included the red cabbage only as a garnish. The recipe was adapted from Ruth Van Waerebeek’s Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook (Workman, 1996). Chevalier suggests serving the soup with a hearty, rustic brown or rye bread.
NOTE: For a vegetarian version of this soup, replace the bacon with 2 tablespoons olive or canola oil, and add 1 teaspoon each of thyme, dill, basil, and marjoram.
To save time, use a food processor to chop leeks and onions.
2 large leeks 8 ounces lean slab bacon, cut into H-inch dice, or 2 tablespoons olive or canola oil 2 medium onions, finely diced 2 cups finely diced green cabbage |
2 cups finely diced peeled carrots 1 cup finely diced peeled turnips 10 cups beef, chicken, or vegetable stock Salt and freshly ground black pepper |
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½ cup red cabbage, cut into paper-thin slivers ½ cup fresh parsley, finely minced |
Rinse the leeks well and soak in cool water for 15 minutes to remove all grit. Halve leeks lengthwise and cut into fine dice.
Cook the bacon gently in a Dutch oven or stockpot for 5 minutes. Add the leeks and onion, and cook gently for 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally. Drain off bacon fat.
Add the green cabbage, carrots, turnips, and stock. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat. Simmer for 25 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish individual servings with red cabbage slivers and parsley.
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
In the early 1980s, a group of parents from the Grassroots Free School in Tallahassee, Florida, decided to link their futures in shared living in an “intentional community.” In contrast to the “circumstantial communities” that prevail in most American neighborhoods, the residents of an intentional community live near one another because of friendship or shared values. The twenty-five families own their own land and houses, as well as common land, a community pool, and a playground. “We all know each other and look out for each other,” says Lyn Kittle, an early member of the community.
Community member Jan Keshen invited interested neighbors to form the LunaChics Literary Guild, a book club that includes eleven residents of the intentional community and others from the greater Tallahassee area.
Girl with a Pearl Earring earned a 9 (on a scale of 10) from the LunaChics, all of whom admired the ingenuity of the subject matter. “The whole idea was a brilliant stroke!” says Kittle. “It was like going inside the painting or having the girl step out of the painting. I had seen this painting many times and had never given any thought to the young woman who inspired it. Chevalier made this girl and Vermeer come alive for me.”
When Nina Hatton produced earrings similar to the ones worn in the painting, group members spontaneously decided to dress up a fellow member, some taking turns covering the earring to see how “the picture” changed. “It makes a big difference,” says Kittle. “I never thought that such a small detail could be so important in a painting. It made the painting and the life of these people seem very real.”
The LunaChics Literary Guild of Tallahassee, Florida, regularly serves food at their meetings, often thematically related to the book. For Girl with a Pearl Earring, Nina Hatton served Belgian chocolates, Dutch cheeses, and Dutch waffles and coffee with chocolate and whipped cream. The evening’s fare was served on Delft china from Holland, collected by Hatton’s father when he was working in the Netherlands. To add to the Dutch ambience, Hatton set tulips in Dutch vases and displayed wooden clogs collected from Holland.