One morning in January, 1539, a wedding was celebrated in the village of Artigues. That night the two children who had been espoused to one another lay in bed in the house of the groom’s father. They were Bertrande de Rols, aged eleven years, and Martin Guerre, who was no older, both offspring of rich peasant families as ancient, as feudal and as proud as any of the great seignorial houses of Gascony.
The opening lines of the novel lay down the foundation of the novel: right from the beginning the relationship between Martin Guerre and his wife is not the kind that most readers would consider normal or, at the very least, traditional. Though this type of arranged marriage of children was hardly unique in 1539, even as readers are reminded of this historical fact, it makes for a jarring confrontation as an introduction to the story.
He had deserted her in the full beauty of her youth, in the height of her great passion, he had shamed her and wounded her and when he returned, if he should return after the death of his father, his authority would as great as his father’s then was…
Martin has disappeared and is possibly dead, but that it not certain. Which means that Bertrande’s life remains in limbo until certainty is established one way or the other. This line sets conveys to the reader the emotional state of a woman under such circumstance and provides a psychological foreshadowing for why she might be so willing to take part in a fraud perpetrated by a lookalike.
Even the room in which she slept in her aunt’s house seemed turned around, and the sun rose in the west and shone through western windows all morning. Or so it seemed to Bertrande.
In a sense, the story about the return of Martin Guerre is all about perspective. The view of whether Martin Guerre has actually returned after a long absence or is an imposter is dependent to a great extent upon where one stands in relation to whether he is the real deal or an imposter. Acceptance or denial is less an objective opinion than a subjective instilled by each character’s own individual self-interest in the outcome of the issue. Of course, this is true of no one more than the wife of Martin Guerre and this quote situates this literal reality through metaphor expressed in Bertrande’s emotional vertigo.
“I am imposed upon, deceived, betrayed into adultery, but not mad.”
The power of Church to punish has become greater than the power of love to fulfill and so Bertrand’s subjective interests alter and so her perspective changes accordingly. The key word here is “adultery.” Punishment for this sin would be equitable to punishment of transgression of law. And so at the moment of truth, Bertrand ironically decides to be truthful…to a point.
