Will the REAL Martin Guerre please stand up? - Rebeca Felix

Examination of a passage from “The Wife of Martin Guerre”

Beginning page 45, Martin’s return home:

When Martin returns home after an eight year absence, Bertrande is understandably shocked. However, I found it interesting that her first reaction to the reappearance of her husband is full of anger and resentment. She shouts at him: “Ah, why have you been away so long! Cruel! Cruel!” as if to indicate the feelings that she will fully realize for this imposter further on in the story (45). Lewis subtly foreshadows future events through the emotional reactions of his characters and does well to create an internal conflict in Bertrande from the first contact with this strange, but familiar character.

Several pages before Bertrande actually forms a specific suspicion in her mind, she foreshadows her distrust for this arrival by saying to herself “he is noble, he is generous, he is like his father again, but become gracious” (46). One of Bertrande’s immediate responses to this man’s behavior, a man she thought to know very well, is out of character for her husband. Lewis presented Martin as reasonable and kind, but implies that Martin had become gracious, a trait he was not previously attributed by his wife before his disappearance. That this thought comes to Bertrande so immediately upon reuniting with her “husband” makes clear the closeness the couple shared in their first years together and how different this man is from the true Martin. Lewis creates a wonderful juxtaposition between the “original” and “new” Martins that the reader would be foolish not to be suspicious of the man.

Bertrande’s self-remark becomes an internal concern when she realizes that she is with child a short time after “Martin’s” return. Lewis takes this opportunity to create a more intense sense of conflict when Bertrande asks herself “what if Martin, the roughly bearded stranger, were not the true Martin…?” (50). Surely if Bertrande’s suspicions were confirmed she not only would have allowed an interloper into the home of her true husband, but she would also have committed adultery and fostered the child of another without even realizing. The emotional stress of such a possibility was too great to stay bottled in Bertrande’s head and develops with each turn of the page.

It is on page 51 where Bertrande firmly denounces this false man and claims to herself that this interloper is not, in fact, her husband: “It is not possible that this man should be Martin Guerre.” She speaks this to herself while she is alone, so no one hears Bertrande’s discovery and the subsequent denial of this man from her family. Perhaps she realizes how much trouble such an accusation would cause to the family that was so happy to have their son return safely home. Lewis draws the anticipation out for a few pages, which was well-paced and not too long for me to become frustrated as a reader, but not too short for me to miss out on the suspense of Bertrande’s discovery.

-Rebeca Felix