Bertrande in the Confessional: A Close Reading

Starting on page 59, Bertrande comes to the priest to confess her sin of sleeping with a man who is not her husband, and at first a misreading of the priest's dialogue leads her to believe that he might be on her side in exposing this man as an imposter. The narrator says at this “her heart gave a great leap of joy, like that of an imprisoned animal who sees the way to escape” (59). The narrator only has access to Bertrande's interior emotions and uses figurative language (simile) to convey her emotion of joy to the reader.

This misunderstanding between them influences their dialogue as they push for different goals, the priest trying to convince Bertrande that this is the real Martin Guerre and Bertrande feeling she is confiding in an ally who will work with her to expose him as a fake. This creates an interesting tension in their dialogue that draws the reader in. But then the priest reveals his position as defending this “new” Martin, and Lewis focuses on external detail to convey how this affects Bertrande. She pulls her cloak closer around her because the “cold air seemed to draw slowly through the meshes of the wool and rise from the cold stones on which she knelt” (60). The visceral details of the cold and the stone is meant to help the reader experience how Bertrande feels in that moment, the harshness of her situation and the hardness starting to build inside her as she realizes that the world is against her.

“'You then believe him to be no imposter?'” she asks, and the priest responds, “'Surely not'” in a voice that is “warm, definite and uncomprehending” (60). This complicated cluster of attributes perfectly encompasses the priest's character; he is a well-intentioned person, confident in his beliefs, and yet quite clueless. A large part of what makes the whole situation of the novel so frustrating is these traits interacting with each other, because every character thinks they are doing the right thing and trying to help, but in so doing, they miss the truth.

Leaving the confessional, Lewis returns to more figurative language and external details. “Slowly she got to her feet,” Lewis writes, “and slowly made her way through the obscurity to the doorway, pushed aside the unwieldy leather curtain, stepped outside into the freely moving air and the more spacious dusk, and descended the familiar steps” (60). Lewis repeats the word “slowly” to reinforcs the sense of Bertrande's pace, and it is mimetic in how it slows down the reader as well. She also takes the abstract idea of the obscurity that Bertrande experiences and physicalizes it, which creates a slightly surreal moment as one could never actually wade through obscurity, and yet it helps the reader feel what Bertrande is going through. The word “unwieldy,” too, is quite purposeful as it is the adjective that describes Bertrande's life and attitude at that moment.