Close Reading of the Wife of Martin Guerre

    The passage on page 26 that continues on to page 27 starting with, “Being the mother of an heir,” and ending with, “He must be early prepared,” reveals many interesting things about the text. Within the passage we learn about how things are going well for Bertande now that she has given birth to a son. It talks about the house hold how it is run and will be run in the future. It talks about the inheritance of her son, but mainly this passage is on the joy taken from the expected.
    The first theme that can be seen in this passage is the idea of routine and the value and reliance on what is accepted and expected. A theme that runs thought the whole book, Bertande her husband and what to expect of him. Even thought this person who arrive to replace her husband later is nicer than he ever was, once she realizes he is not who she is expected by tradition and history to be with she accuses him. This passage shows the source of that accusation, Bertande takes joy in traditions and what is expected. Even her real husband’s death is mentioned somewhat positively in the passage as a vehicle of tradition to carry her son on to the life expected of him. “It was all part of his progress toward the assumption of the full authority of the farm, which could not come to him until after his father’s death, but for which he must be early prepared (27, Lewis).” Bertande builds her identity on a combination of ordered progress and controlled history that she eagerly embraces and in the end chooses over her own happiness.

    In order to embrace traditions and what is expected Bertande needed to understand those traditions and where she stood and in this passage for this period she does and is happy. “More than ever she understood her position in the household, part of a structure that reached backward in time towards ancestors of whose renown one was proud… (27, Lewis), this passage Showing insight into later when due to confusion over the identity of her husband she is forced to question her position and what is expected of her in this situation. Bertande waits so long to accuse her would be husband in part because of these routines, this cycle she does not want to break. So she contents herself for a while with a lie because she knows where she stands with a lie.
    Beyond the words themes that are readily apparent in the work, the way the author uses language in the passage further illustrates the idea of long drawn out traditions and ideas. Almost every sentence in the passage is a compound sentence involving in some cases more than on coma. The sentences are long and drawn out like the history and traditions they describe adding to the overwhelming feeling of tradition and histories importance in both the passage and the work as a whole.