Inline Close reading of Page 60

“…Go now in peace, my daughter. Be disturbed no more.”

Bertrand continued to kneel, only drawing her cloak closer about her shoulders.

Bertrand’s lingering, defiant suspicion is captured wordlessly in her continuing to kneel, rather than “go[ing] in peace”. To accept peace would be to move from her spot; as it is, she maintains her proverbial and literal ground.

Additionally, the isolating effect of Bertrand’s choice of beliefs is captured by her “drawing her cloak closer about her shoulders”. In response to the priest telling her to shed her opinions, Bertrand retreats inwardly, holding on tighter—perhaps in defiance, perhaps in fear. That this action is a metaphor for her clinging to her suspicion of Martin in defiance to what he Priest says to her is suggested by the phrasing “only drawing her cloak closer about her shoulders”   

The cold air seemed to draw slowly through the meshes of the wool and rise from the cold stones on which she knelt. At last she replied incredulously:

The lingering, disquieting quality of Bertrand’s suspicion is captured by the unsettling cold, which slowly and indirectly makes its way to Bertrand through ground, through the clutching defenses of her wool mesh cloak, and finally through to her knees.

“You then believe him to be no impostor?”

 “Surely not,” said the easy voice of the priest, warm, definite and uncomprehending.

While the “warm” quality of the priest’s voice would seem to mitigate the creeping, disquieting feeling of “cold[ness]” Bertrand feels while kneeling on the cold ground, the narrator undercuts the priest’s consolation. While his voice being “easy” could mean gentle, given that the narrator also calls the priest’s voice “uncomprehending” means the narrator dictates that the reader interpret the priest’s disbelief of Bertrand’s suspicions as shallow and ill-founded.

[…]

Slowly she got to her feet 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 into the familiar steps.

Familiar figures passed her, greeting her as they went on into the church. She answered them as in a dream, and as in a dream took the path to her farm.

Bertrand’s dreamlike state of mind is captured by the figures “pass[ing] her by”, as if Bertrand were a passive, stationary figure in a world moving around her. Additionally, her dreamlike lack of agency reflects her subservient position in the Guerre household. When Bertrand steps outside, she enters a “spacious” world of “freely moving air”. But her re-entrance into her domestic space is described as a “descen[t] into the familiar steps”. In descending stairs, the narrator rescinds the image of “freely moving air” and its implicit imagery of flight and replaces it with a “descen[t]” back down to Earth and with the image of steps, which with their serialized, sequential path, contradicts the unencumbered space of her fleeting moments in the outside world.

In short, the narrator enlightens Bertrand feelings of being trapped in a bad dream.