I chose a passage from The
Wife of Martin Guerre from pages 54 to 55.
Martin Guerre has returned and Bertrande looks around her as never
before.
This passage employs flowery, descriptive language to a very
effective result. Sentences punctuate
what has been shown by these very expressive illustrations of the area
surrounding Artigues. Bertrande sees the
world around her with new clarity and awareness; she notices the valleys that
“dipped in fire toward Luchon” and the gorgeous sky, “blue as a dream of the
Mediterranean or of the Gulf of Gascony”.
To make the purpose of these moments clear, brief explanations are given
for Bertrande’s newly developed care: “these things, intensely perceived as
never before since she could remember, filled her with piercing joy”, or later,
“all these she noticed and enjoyed as never before”.
The view of the narrator shifts to Bertrande’s in the course
of two sentences. The passage sets the
scene among the vineyards of the region with a note on the musky aroma of the
grapes. This regard for the senses is
repeated in Bertrande’s view of the valleys, first acknowledged as she sees the
“conical haystacks burning with dull gold”, feels the warmth of the sunshine
and cold of the wind, and sighs over the beauty of the blue above. A mutual attention to the color scarlet
complicates the division between the narrator’s voice and Bertrande’s vision;
the two seem to meld together in this passage.
The narrator’s language melts into the character’s perceptions.
We as readers are allowed to experience the sensations that
Bertrande feels. The language is
bewitching and sensuous, language that will not be found with such brilliance
in the rest of the novel, language that is much like the fire in the fireplace
“spreading shifting constellations of gold against the black throat of the
chimney”. The images can be read
allegorically in ways that divert from what seems to be the intent of the
narrator, but what the narrator presents is alone plenty to consider.
The impressionistic details ignite corresponding emotions
that reveal Bertrande’s inner struggles.
We feel the dread as Bertrande does, that word that will not go
away. The dread is a pleasurable sort of
disquiet. The dread “was a luxury”
because she has all the safety she could need or want—to feel anxiety is an
indulgence. This point will be central
to her family’s arguments about truth at the tail end of the novel. The servant woman that Bertrande speaks with
between trials answers Bertrande’s appeal to truth with words that echo this
passage: “Madame, I would have you still deceived. We were all happy then” (89).
Lewis carefully strips away at her character’s secret
passions and intuitions to the last sentence in the extensive paragraph, in
which she reveals that the dread, the “suspicion” of her newly returned
husband, intensifies the love that Bertrande feels. We already know that she suspects her husband
is an imposter, but the gradual unveiling of the gratification she finds in
this potential sin is masterful.
The passage from 54-55:
ReplyDeleteIt was the time of year when the grapes were being harvested, and the odor of ripe muscats was in the air. When the wine was made and the leaves on the vine stocks had turned scarlet, Bertrande rode out among valleys that dipped in fire toward Luchon between the irregular advances of the woods, saw the conical haystacks burning with dull gold beside the stone walls of farm buildings, felt, as she rode in the sunshine, the cold invigorating sweep of wind from the higher mountains, lifted her eyes and saw how the white clouds piled high above the rich green of the pine woods and how the sky was intensely blue beyond, blue as a dream of the Mediterranean or of the Gulf of Gascony. And returning, toward evening to her own house, as the blue haze of evening began to intercept and transmute the shapes of things, she smelled the wood smoke from her own hearth fire and thought it as sweet as the incense which was burned in the church at Artigues. Or she saw at the far end of a field, a man wearing a scarlet jerkin working in a group of men uniformly clothed in brown, a small dot of scarlet moving about on long brown legs against the golden surface of the earth, and these things, intensely perceived as never before since she could remember, filled her with a piercing joy. The cold metallic gleam of halberds moving forward under a steely sky against the background of the russet woods, as a band of soldiers passed her by; the very feel and pattern of the frost upon the threshold early in the morning as the season advanced; the motion and songs of birds, until their numbers diminished; and then the iron sound of the churchbell ringing in somber majesty across the cold valleys—all these she noticed and enjoyed as never before. And even, when winter had closed around them, one night from a far-off hillside, the crying of wolves had filled her with a pleasure enhanced with dread, for the doors were safely closed and all the animals safe within walls, and a good fire roared in the great fireplace, spreading shifting constellations of gold against the black throat of the chimney, so that the dread was a luxury, and her enjoyment of the strange distant voices all the greater. And all this vividness of feeling, this new awareness of the life around her, was because of her love for this new Martin Guerre, and because of the delight and health of her life-giving body. Yet even this love was intensified, like her pleasure in the cry of the wolves, by the persistent illusion, or suspicion, that this man was not Martin.