Bertrande Questions Martin

Page 63-4: "Then began for the woman a long game of waiting and scrutinizing...and he did not appear a monster."

This section of the novel directly follows the conversation between Martin [Arnaud] and Bertrande, where Bertrande asks him to leave the household because he does not love her. Throughout the novel, Lewis plays games with the use of names; sometimes characters are given names, sometimes the names are not employed, some characters (like Martin's father and mother) are never explicitly named. In this passage, Bertrande's name is never explicitly written, instead replaced with "the woman" or pronouns. This narratorial shift allows the reader to enter Bertrande's head while remaining unsure of whose thoughts we are actually reading. This slight confusion produces an empathetic reaction for Bertrande, for whom the question of names and identity is paramount.

The first line, "Someday, she told herself, he will be off his guard..." paraphrases Bertrande speaking to herself about catching the imposter in his act of deception and places the reader inside her head. However, the preceding line directly quotes Bertrande, "'Ah, Martin, Martin,' she cried in her loneliness," which places the reader outside her head but in close observation of her emotional state. This continual shift makes the reader feel as though he or she has, simultaneously, a solid grasp and no grasp of Bertrande's thoughts and emotions, no perception that is grounded in truth and fact.

This effect continues to the next paragraph, where Bertrande observes Martin sitting with Sanxi by the fire. Bertrande "watched him as he sat by the fire, fatigued from the day's work, yet playing gently with the children." The use of 'yet' to conjoin the two descriptions once again draws attention to the compresence of contradictory states and impulses. Martin gives the impression of energy and livelihood to his children while his wife can see his fatigue, but this commonplace deception fuels Bertrande's fears that his whole existence is similarly structured. Additionally, the placement of the scene by the fire references Bertrande's fearful first impression of Monsieur Guerre, where "his features, exaggerated in the flare of the torch, bent in an expression of great seriousness." As a child, Bertrande saw the shadow of the flame as a distortion, a warp in reality. However, as an adult, she looks to the flame once again in the hopes that the shadow will expose Arnaud's warping of reality, but the same effect is no longer possible. Bertrande hopes for the light of truth to be exposed, but she cannot escape the shadow of doubt it entails.