Natalie Zemon Davis's the Return of Martin Guerre Term Paper

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Martin Guerre and his wife Bertrande?

Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre chronicles the strange, true-life story of a medieval woman named Bertrande who was left abandoned by her husband Martin Guerre for many years, only to live with him once again when 'he' returned -- in the form of an imposter. For many years Bertrande lived with the false Martin Guerre, until the actual Guerre returned to reclaim his wife and household. The question has lingered on: how could Bertrande have been so deceived? Davis has a very simple answer: she was not. In proving her thesis, Davis takes the reader on a tour of medieval French peasant life, with a specific focus on the role of women. "The male-dominated society put a premium on 'the woman's ability to get her way with the men and to calculate her advantages'" and Davis, contrary to the conventional reading of the Martin Guerre story as chronicled in the Arrest Memorable of Judge Jean de Coras, sees Bertrande's willingness to go along with the imposter as a calculated decision of a woman determined to survive.[footnoteRef:1] Davis uses Bertrande as a feminist symbol, versus the conventional reading of Bertrande as a foolish woman, besotted by an imposter, who was the dupe of an experienced 'con.' [1: Robert Finlay, "The Refashioning of Martin Guerre," The American Historical Review, 93, 3 (1988), 556]

The original marriage of Bertrande and Martin Guerre was not a happy one: it was an arranged marriage when Bertrande was still very young and Martin was apparently impotent for the first ten years of the eight-year union.

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The imposter Arnaud du Tilh, who was a peasant from a nearby village who resembled Martin was apparently kinder to Bertrande, winning her affection and ultimately her complicity in the plot to conceal his identity. Eventually, Tilh was convicted and put to death but Bertrande was not. According to Davis, Bertrande was Tilh's accomplice, not his dupe." She accepted Arnaud, they fell in love, and they regarded themselves as having an 'invented' marriage."[footnoteRef:2] [2: Finlay, 555]

To discern the history of the return of Martin Guerre was a challenge for the historian Davis because of the paucity of records left by 16th century French peasants. They were largely illiterate although some folk wisdom has been passed down through the ages such as the words with which she begins her book: "a good wife with a bad husband often has a sorry heart."[footnoteRef:3] Davis' central thesis is that the experiences of the three main protagonists of the Guerre story were not that much far removed from their neighbors, where marital strife was common. According to a defense she authored of her text primarily aimed at rebutting the criticisms of fellow academic Robert Finlay, deprived of journals, letters, and more conventional sources for her literary detective story, she instead focused on "the Arrest Memorable of Judge Jean de Coras, the special commissioner and reporter for the Guerre case to the Parlement of Toulouse;….....

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