Conley discusses Cixous's take on Vermeer: Ver meer. She uses the Dutch background to argue for the eruption of a rich unconscious surging, like light, from the privy parts of the female body:

(and here she quotes Cixous, who describes the women of Vermeer's paintings) The vibrating flesh, the enchanted belly, the woman pregnant of all her love. No seduction, no absence, no gulf-adorned with veils. Plentitude, that which does not look at itself, which does not reappropriate all its shapes reflecting from the face, never the eye-eater. She who looks with the look that recognizes, studies, respects, does not take, does not scratch, but attentively with a soft desire for flesh [acharnement] contemplates and reads, caresses, bathes, makes the other radiate. Brings back to life terrestrial life, fleeting, become too prudent. Illuminates it and sings its names. (Conley, 82)