Custard on a Wedding Night?

For my close-reading, I decided to choose a passage detailing Bertrande and Martin’s wedding night, when the old housekeeper comes in with their midnight wedding meal, pages 15-16. The scene marks the first instance where someone (attempts to) “prophesize” the future of these married children: the servant says that Martin “will not be a pretty man,” but “will be capable of all that is required of a man.” Because Bertrande has “two-colored eyes,” she is lucky and will “bring love to those [she loves].”

            Unfortunately for the extremely underage couple, the wedding has been consummated by the joint snacking of custard, and not by a more traditional activity. In a way, the lack of true wedding night undermines everything this housekeeper has intended. True, Martin will not be a “pretty” man, in terms of handsomeness, but he will not be “pretty” in any other way, either. His “ugliness” will extend far past external appearance, and into cowardliness and the inability to take responsibility for his actions, or genuinely love his wife. That the housekeeper predicts Martin’s manliness in such a verbose manner—“I doubt not but that he will be capable”—may suggest a foreshadowing of Martin’s actual lack of masculinity (…or maybe that is just how they spoke half a millennium ago).

            Bertrande, on the other hand, is described as someone who is very “pretty” and can only keep growing more beautiful. The disparity between their appearances (and their trajectories of potential beauty) may hint at the eventual split between the two—at Martin’s running away, and then refusing to take back his wife. In The Wife of Martin Guerre, outward beauty reflects inward beauty, and the same applies with ugliness; it seems in this case as if books can be judged by their cover.