Undressing Janet Lewis and Getting Under the Sheets with Martin and Bertrande.

It’s always fun to closely examine stuff. It’s even more fun to closely examine women. So let’s close read Janet Lewis, stripping everything away until she’s bare and naked and revealed to us. In particular let’s examine the Wife of Martin Guerre. Martin himself is long dead, so he won’t mind us checking out his wife. Now I think the most fascinating place to examine a woman is in a bed. And even more so on the night of her Honeymoon! So enough talk, let’s jump right under the covers with Martin and Bertrande and see what’s happening. This scene takes place from pages 14 to 16, so let’s all turn there and read along, closely of course though.

            Now page 14 finds the young couple in bed. The preceding paragraph ends with “The child began to doze” (14). This releases Janet Lewis from the shackles of moment-to-moment narration and allows her to fast forward to the future. The next paragraph begins with a time tag to jump us forward, “An hour or later the door opened”. We’ve missed all the excitement of two snoring individuals, but are now present for the next action to occur—an opening door. The scene is now ready to begin. The scene ends with a time tag, again releasing Lewis from moment-to-moment narration. It ends as it begins, with sleep, with Bertrande“[falling] into a deep untroubled slumber” (16). These two beginning and ending time tags neatly package the scene into a distinct scene.

            The scene starts with Bertrande waking up. She is in an unfamiliar place and, as of a few hours earlier, married to an unfamiliar boy. The scene takes Bertrande, an uncomfortable and nervous girl, and in the end transforms her into a more secure and optimistic woman, a wife. Bertrande’s new-found comfort comes from a motherly chamber maiden who awakens her. When Bertrande first wakes up she is, “a little dazed and worried” (14). The chamber maid comforts her and encourages Bertrande to relax and enjoy the midnight meal she has brought. Bertrande responds to this calming woman, “Thus urged, [Bertrande] rubbed [her] eyes fell to, while the woman stood by, her hands on her well-draped hips” (15). The chamber maid continues to soothe Bertande’s fears saying, “It is all kinds of an affair, this getting married . . . And by and by you will appreciate all that your parents have done for you” and Bertrande absorbs this maiden’s advice, noting that, “it was the sort of attention that she could understand” (15).

            The wise maiden is not done quite yet, though! She continues, comforting Bertrande about this strange man she is suddenly married to, “Take Martin now. He will not be a pretty man, but he will be very distinguished, like his father . . . For the rest, I doubt not but that he will be capable of all that is required of a man” (15). Throughout this scene, Martin is nonchalantly eating the midnight snack, too drowsy to be concerned with the strange woman next to him or the chattering chamber maid. The combination of this unconcern and the wisdom of the maid, comforts Bertrande. After the meal, “Madame Martin Guerre, born Bertrande de Rols, comforted by the inward presence of pastry and custard and by the wholesome unconcern of her husband, fell into a deep untroubled slumber” (16). This sentence does two things: it illustrates Bertrande’s new found comfort, and it also refers to Bertrande as ‘Madame Martin Guerre’, officially transforming her from a worried little girl into a man’s wife. The scene then ends. It was so brief, so important, so hazy, that it almost seems it could have been a dream. Having closed the tight scene, Janet Lewis forges onward, fast forwarding through several years of the Bertrande’s life until she moves into the Guerre household as Martin’s lawful wife.

~Mike Gioia