Embers and Ice Cubes: A Tale of Two Martins

Towards the middle of the book, in the middle of pages 54 and 55, Bertrande tries to make sense of what is going on in her life and what her role is after the return of her husband. Many things have changed around the house: she has taken a lesser role, the family has more energy, her son has a father, and Bertrande is with child. Although she is suspicious of her husband at this point in the book, and has made it known to him that she believes he could be an imposter, Bertrande is enjoying what we might call today a "honeymoon period" where she is happy with her husband and observing the new colors of the blooming season.

In the scene that I observed, where Bertrande rides out across the valleys and sees the changes to the colors around her, I saw characteristics of both Martin Guerres (the real one and the rogue imposter). The narrator dips into Bertrande's point of view as she is riding through the valleys and observing the harvest, commenting about colors like scarlet and observing how the grass is aflame. The use of fire imagery, both in colors associated with fire and its characteristics, gives the reader an image of the farming life as passionate because it describes farm related places.

When Bertrande sees a group of soldiers, however, her view of her surroundings is changed. Her descriptions focus more on metal and its cool qualities. The reader is given images of metallic objects and noises, as well as a sense of order about the world. The colors also reflect her mood when she describes the blue hue of the sky (I found this significant because she mentions blue twice very close together). I think that here she is trying to associate blue with the cold images she is seeing because she could have just as easily described the fiery oranges and reds of a sunset or sunrise, rather than the blue of a midday sky. These two descriptive groups seemed to me to embody the two men she is trying to reconcile. Bertrande sees her husband before he left as being a lesser version of his father, orderly and strong but somewhat cold in personality. The man who initially returned from war, however, was much warmer to her and kind, bringing life back into the farm and making friends with his workers. Later on in the book, however, the true Martin Guerre reappears and bears much of the same coldness that she imagined he would have. The fiery imagery associated with the false Martin Guerre, and also associated with the farm, seems to be the idealized qualities that she wants in her husband; the focus on the farm for these images suggests that they are tied to the home, rather than abroad. The reminder of the soldiers brings to her images of how she knows that Martin Guerre actually acts, cold and orderly but focused more on military matters than matters of the home. Although we are not told whether he goes back to war, I think from Martin Guerre's brief comments at the end of the book that he does not want to focus on the farm but rather on the war. Bertrande is left split between the man that she wants and the man that she has (in marriage but not in the flesh), and their opposite images reflect her inability to reconcile her suspicions, since she is sure he is an imposter but not sure that she wants to be rid of him at that point in the story.