The Wife of Martin Guerre close reading

                The first dialog in The Wife of Martin Guerre begins nearly five pages in. Before this, we are introduced to characters, told of the events of the wedding day, and witness the scene in which Martin hits Bertrand in the corridor. We are then taken to the chamber where Martin and Bertrand get in bed. From here, the narrator makes a temporal distinction when he says, "Presently, she felt him stir," (13). This is the first time we are told we are viewing the present. This renders everything before this point more or less summary. And all this intensifies our experience of the short scene that immediately follows.

                Immediately after this temporal distinction is made, Martin speaks: "'I am tired of all this business,' he said, turning on his side and burrowing his head into his pillow," (13). For us, these words are loaded with meaning. Why? Because of what we are shown in the summary that prefaces it. Just before the temporal distinction, we are told that Bertrand does "know what Martin might not take it in his head to do to her," (13). And before this we come to know Bertrand by her shyness, lack of agency, and, more generally, seeming inconsequentialness. Amidst an "incredibly noisy conversation," she says nothing (11). At the dinner table, she only eats the food her mother serves her (11). She also "receives very little attention," (11). And most notably, she is struck by Martin at random when she approaches him in the corridor, and nothing comes of it (12). So based on our knowledge of both Bertrand and Martin, when Martin innocuously speaks and turns over we, through Bertrand, are relieved.

                Let's look at how Janet Lewis does this. All the energies the narrator has introduced converge at the word "Presently." There is Martin's inclination to arbitrary violence, Bertrand's softness, and the wedding that neither really understands. At this word, all of it is enlivened. And that she feels him stir casts an uncertain shade over this sudden aliveness of the text. Suddenly Bertrand's fear becomes more palpable and therefore more real for us. Martin has already hit her, and we don't know much about him up this point, so we may be prompted to think, Will he hit her again? Will this be a long night for poor Bertrand? Will this be the story of the rest of Bertrand's life? But nothing happens; Martin goes to sleep like a child, and the situation is deflated.

                Through the narrator's use of temporal distinction, we experience this scene with distinct immediacy. We have perhaps been put into a lull by the narrator's uninterrupted descriptions, but are waked by his introducing us to the present. And the moment in which he chooses to introduce us to the present is especially tense, as Bertrand, in a strange, uncertain space feels her violent, emotional and unknown-to-her husband stir. A situation charged with energy that could quickly take us along with Bertrand in any direction.