Summary:
This book is in the first person. The narrator is Griet, a 16 years old girl that had to go to work in order to help her family. At the beginning of the book, the setting is in Griet's house when Catharena and her husband went to see her to see if she could work for them. During those pages we are told that Griet's father is blind because where he used to work an explosion occurred and he was the lucky one that is still alive while the others died. After their visit, Griet was informed that she was going to go to their house the next day. It was hard for her because she had never left her house before until now and more to a house of people that had different beliefs than her. When she got there she met the children, Johannes, Cornelia, Aleydis, Maertge and Lisbeth. Quite of a big family and another was on the way. She was received by Maria, the grandmother, mother of Catharena. Ironically, but the mother was so much different than the daughter. Tanneke, one of the other maids showed Griet where herr room was and told her all the tasks she was assigned to do. One of her tasks was to clean the studio, but she had to be careful because she could not move anything out of its place. In the days she was working in the house, she had not seen Catharena's husband, until one day that she was cleaning the studio and he was watching her. When Griet went to visit her family on Sunday, she told everything about her job, and she was starting to feel weird in her house because she has already accustomed to the house she worked in. Later in the week, Tanneke told Griet that the family barely have money to pay her, she was surprised because the lifestyle they live din does not show that. Also that Catharena keeps having babies because she wants to fill the house with babies since she cannot have all the servants she wants. They barely have money because her husband only paints like 3 paintings in a year and it does not give them a lot of money.
Quote:
"She had the manner of someone used to looking after those less able than she—of looking after Catharina. I understood now why I had been brought to her rather than her daughter" (Chevalier 18).
Reaction:
By reading this quote I can hypothesize that not everyone is going to be nice to Griet. This is a new way of life for her since she has not worked anywhere before. Since the beginning of the book Catharina did not seem as a nice person when they went to see Griet when they were looking for a maid. But not everyone at the house was mean to her, even the daughters of Catharina were being nice to but she still needed to watch out because you never know what is going to happen next. even if Catharena is bad and rude to Griet, she has to do her best to try to keep her job because she is working in that house in order to help her family.
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