The story starts out with Griet and her family living in Holland in their poverty stricken home. Her father is a tile painter and recently went blind from the work that was involved in his job. Her father has lost his job also due to lack of sight and the family is going in debt. That is when they decided to send Griet to work at a house in Papists’ Corner, where all the rich Catholics lived, to become a maid.
Griet loved her family very much and did not want to leave them to go work for strangers. Griet and her family had a very strong relationship. They had already lost her older brother, Frans, who had already left to go to work in another tile factory; and the family did not want to lose another child to work and money. Later on they even lost Griet’s younger sister because she was ill, due to the plague, and died.
Griet and her sister had a very strong relationship. Her sister, Agnes, was six years younger than Griet and looked up to her big sister greatly. She was very sad that Griet was leaving and the night before Griet left, Agnes expressed her fear of being alone, “I’ll be alone. You’re leaving me all alone. First Frans, then you.”
From the first time Vermeer and Griet me they had a unique relationship. Johannes seemed to see the unnoticed things in Griet. Upon his first meeting her he noticed how she kept the colors of her vegetables in sections, and hated for it to be out of order, he knew that she would be the perfect girl fro the job that he wanted. She was to clean his studio without him noticing that anything was disturbed. Vermeer knew that he and Griet would get along in a strange sense and knew she would understand him and what he wanted.
Griet and her master, Vermeer, are connected in a weird sense. It seems as if Griet is amazed by him and is almost obsessed with him. She seems to love how he was so mysterious and how he paid so much attention to her and how he understands how she felt about everything. They had a secret and mysterious connection, which not many other people noticed, except for Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins.
Griet and Maria Thins had a good connection also. Maria seemed to have compassion for Griet and liked that she lived in the home, yet she didn't often show it because she wanted to protect her feelings from her daughter, Cathrina. Cathrina was a rude person, yet she seemed to get everyobdy on her side, I think that they were scared of her almost. Yet Maria noticed how Cathrina and Griet did not get along and she seemed to take Griet's side sometimes. This made Griet feel good when this happened, and she seemed to go to Maria Thins when she had problems or needed something.
Griet and her master had such a close relationship that they even had secual relations at one point. They seemed to be wso close and that just showed how close they felt to each other. They showed their feelings and expressed how much they cared for the other.
Griet had many different relationships with many characters in this novel. her relationships helped the reader to shape her and the other characters in the book. The relationships seemed to "make" the story. They let you understand the story and let you in on the feelings of the characters. Griet was a well-rounded character and had many different types of relationships, from strong to hateful, and they seemed to make the story much more interesting and twisted with her having such strong relationships.
