Religion in The Wife

For my close reading of a passage in The Wife of Martin Guerre I chose a passage dealing with religion. I believe that religion plays a very interesting and crucial role in the development of this story. From the very beginning when we first meet the young couple Bertrande likens their marriage ceremony to that of first communion. Additionally, both the priest’s support of du Tilh as well as Bertrande’s fixation on her sin of adultery gives the story a definite religious bend.

The specific passage that I want to look closer at is when Bertrande has just arrived in Toulouse and she is sitting in the diner with Pierre Guerre. This starts midway through page 93 with “They found and inn and ordered supper,” and continues until Pierre remarks, “In the days of Francis we were strongly French.” Lewis begins this passage with a detailed description of the inn and its occupants. Here we find ourselves is a busy common room of merchants and city men observed from the point of view of Bertrande who herself is seated in a corner taking in the scene. Here Bertrande is at first able to take “refuge” in this distraction, which has given her occasion to see through the “fog of personal misery.”

What is interesting about this scene is that while its supposed affect on Bertrande is proud and she is featured prominently within it, she doesn’t actually have any dialogue. The waitress speaks, Pierre speaks, but Bertrande’s actions, and thoughts, are only described. It is also first here that we hear mention of Catholics and Protestants, as well as their feuding with the province. The conversation and the countenances of its participants are described as that of a rebellion, which the hostess substantiates noting that “Toulouse has not always been bound to the French Crown.”

         For me this passage could have duel significance. First, the questioning of the absoluteness of religion seems indicated in the scene. Primarily, from the vantage point of Bertrande whose decision to press the matter of her husband’s identity runs contrary to the advise of the Cere, which in many ways is a distinctly protestant course of action. She believes more so in her own faculties in discerning the intent of god and signs in her life than she is with that of the church. She even admits at one point that the advice given to her was holy advice, but she continues to refuse it.

         The second significance I find in terms of religious significance in this passage focuses on another aspect of fallibility or the changing nature of religion and religious doctrine. Almost serves as a precursor to her assertion, and perhaps need, for the Guerre family patriarch to be of stable and unmoving unreproachability. In the end she is justified in this pursuit, perhaps her need was for moral justness a