Word Power

A A A 简体版

While most stories of the rich and the powerful in the Renaissance period have been left on the ash heap of history, the curious case of their contemporary, a French peasant by the name of Martin Guerre, retains its power to fascinate. This true story of the return of a man who may or may not be Martin Guerre after years of absence has been the subject of many works, including films, fiction and non-fiction books, and even musicals. Perhaps the most remarkable addition to this collection of work is Janet Lewis’s short novel The Wife of Martin Guerre, largely told from the perspective of Bertrande de Rols, Martin Guerre’s wife.

The novella opens with the 1539 wedding of eleven-year-old Bertrande and Martin of a similar age, the children of two rich peasant families in Artigues, an isolated French village. Everyone at the wedding is enjoying themselves except the newlyweds. They have never spoken to each other until the wedding day and Bertrande has only been told about the marriage the day before. The wedding ends with the child couple sharing a tray of custard and pastry in their new marital bed, oblivious to the significance of the day.

A 16th century farm is a self-contained world unto itself. The father rules his household like “some Homeric king” and expects “strict obedience and reverence” from those in his charge. Even Martin, the only son, receives severe punishment for minor acts of disobedience. When he goes on a bear hunt without asking for permission, his father’s fury gets Martin two broken teeth and an aching jaw. This ordeal bonds the young lovers, who become “a camp within a camp”. As time goes by, Bertrande’s affection for her husband evolves into “a deep and joyous passion, growing slowly and naturally as her body grew”. She gives birth to a son at the age of 20. However, little does she know that the pride she has in being the mother of an heir is a prelude to calamity.

One day, Martin once again disobeys his father by taking the latter’s seed wheat to plant a field—a trifling matter for the good of the farm, but still seen as an act of insubordination. Fearing the old man’s wrath, Martin tells Bertrande that he will be away for a little while, eight days at most, until his father comes round. Years pass. Martin’s parents die in his absence and Bertrande tends the household, raises their infant son and blooms in beauty as she waits for her husband’s return. Eventually, Martin’s face fades from her memory, and she begins to resign herself to the fact that she has been abandoned.

Eight years later, her husband returns to the family. Or does he? The bearded man walking through the door resembles Martin, knows things that only Martin knows. He even has the same two broken teeth. He has changed though—a wiser, more thoughtful man than the one she remembers. Bertrande is intuitively worried—for one thing, her husband, choleric and imperious, would never have spoken so gently to his own child. For a while, she puts her doubts aside, allowing herself to indulge in her husband’s newfound kindness. Bertrande soon gives birth to a second son. Yet her happiness is perpetually shadowed by a niggling suspicion that the man who has returned is not her husband and that she has therefore committed the mortal sin of adultery.

As her uneasiness grows, Bertrande is confronted by a difficult choice: should she expose the impostor and ruin everyone’s happiness, or should she stay quiet and let sleeping dogs lie? Bertrande’s dilemma may remind some readers of the iconic scene from the 1999 film The Matrix, where Neo, the protagonist, is invited to choose between the red pill of truth and the blue pill of denial. While Neo chooses to be enlightened, Cypher, a crew member disgusted with the harshness of reality, betrays his comrades in exchange for being brought back into the Matrix, a simulated reality where he can live a comfortable lie. He declares, “Ignorance is bliss.” In a similar sentiment, Bertrande’s old housekeeper says to her master accusingly, “Madame, I would have you still be deceived. We were all happy then.” What would we do if we were in Bertrande’s place?

In barely a hundred pages, Lewis tells a compelling historical story of depth and power that raises contemporary questions about the value of truth, about identity and belonging, about moral choices and responsibility, and about a woman’s capacity to act within a strict patriarchal society. Since its first publication in 1941, the book has been held by many as one of the greatest short novels in American literature. Robert Hass, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes, “I don’t know how many times over the years I’ve heard writers, making their lists of great neglected books of the 20th century, begin talking with excitement about The Wife of Martin Guerre.”

Although Janet Lewis is best known for this work, she is as fine a poet as she is a novelist. Lewis stated in an interview, “Probably my poetry was better than my prose because poetry itself is better than prose, usually.” A verse of her poem “Helen Grown Old” might serve as an accurate depiction of the fate of Bertrande as well as Helen of Troy, both trapped by love and duty in a male-dominated world: