[First Last Name]
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Natalie Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre
When Martin Guerre returned, the villagers of Artigat in the foothills of the Pyrenees (Finlay 553) had no clue that the person taking on the identity was not the real Martin Guerre, but an imposter by the name of Arnaud du Tilh, who was evidently a fraud and a thief. He went back to ‘his’ wife Bertrande de Rols and lived with her as her husband. Bertrande and Arnaud fell in love and regarded their marriage as reinvented. As Martin, Arnaud spent three years with Bertrande and fathered her child and his two children. However, the charade fell and reached the court when she filed a case (Ringold 87) and the true Martin Guerre exposed the deception. The story of Arnaud’s incarceration and eventual execution appeared in the traditional historical account written by Judge Jean de Coras, who was then a judge at the Parlement of Toulouse, which handed the judgment of execution on Arnaud in 1560, as recounted in his Arrest Memorable (Finlay 554).
There was, however, persistent interest in analyzing the perceived contradictions and contriving of facts in the ‘reinterpretation’ of this story by Natalie Davis in her book, Return of Marin Guerre, which was published in 1983. In order to provide a brief account on Davis’ historical approach in ‘reinterpreting’ the Guerre story and, in effect, her criticism of Coras’ Arrest Memorable, her approach will be presented in the light of one of her critics, Robert Finlay. The differences of their approaches will be of primary emphasis.
The Approach of Natalie Davis
Davis’ criticism focused on the wife of Bertrande de Rols and her relationship to Martin Guerre or Arnaud, painting her as an accomplice of his fraud based on her knowledge that Arnaud was not her husband Martin Guerre. Davis approached the story of Guerre with speculative reconstruction, a tool that historians admittedly use to make sense of inadequate evidence (Finlay 554). In effect, she viewed the Coras account as inadequate in determining the motive of Arnaud’s impostry. She, however, admitted the speculative nature of her interpretation of the historical account from a faithful analysis of the voices found in the account. To Finlay, however, the outcome of such historical method, as made available in Davis’ book Return of Martin Guerre, was an imaginative reinterpretation of the story as “a tale of devotion and collaboration, of love and identity” albeit “eloquently argued and intrinsically appealing” (Finlay 553). Moreover, contrary to Davis’ reinterpretation, Finlay insisted, the “180 witnesses” in the case never suspected Bertrande as an accomplice (555). Instead, the idea of Bertrande as an accomplice appeared only in Davis’ Return of Martin Guerre. To Davis (Return of Martin Guerre 118; cf. Finlay 557), this interpretation of Bertrande’s character in the Coras account was a consequence of male dominion in the sixteenth century culture.
Finlay (557), however, conceded on the substantial contribution of Return in establishing the historical context of the case from other sources.
The Approach of Robert Finlay
Unlike Davis, Finlay tended to protect the historical account of the incident by the judge Jean De Coras himself, noting on Coras’ focus on the traditional account’s “narrative of greed and deception, of perverted talents and a duped woman, of great ability in the service of fraud and theft” (Finlay 555). He held that, in Coras’ eyes, Bertrande was “a dupe”, an “ignorant”, and thus an “innocent of wrongdoing” and a victim of the “cunning and craftiness of men” (cf. Davis 110). Finlay interpreted Coras’ account as seeing Bertrande as an “innocent victim” (556) while Davis as a guilty accomplice, arguing against the historical behavior of the villagers who refused to condemn her as being so. Finlay regarded this as her imposition of a personal presumption of women in that century as rustic, calculating, and consistently maneuvering for their advantages.
In summary, the account of Davis somehow countered the observations of Coras and the Parlement while using the Coras account of the case, as Finlay observed. Thus, Return purported to reevaluate the evidence using the evidence presented in a manner contradictory to the interpretation of the Parlement. There is, however, an apparent inconsistency in Davis’ opinion of Coras’ judgment on the character of Bertrande and Davis’ reinterpretation of that character. While the judge presumed Bertrande’s innocence on the basis of her female weakness, Davis asserted that the judge was not capable of making such erroneous understanding of the female character. Although Finlay (557) contended that Davis’ showed no proof of any deliberation on Bertrande’s complicity (cf. Davis The Return of Martin Guerre 89), the evidence neither showed none happened (cf. Ringold 100).
The approach of Davis and Finlay differed significantly overall. While Davis (“On the Lame” 575) approached historical research concentrically with the Coras report at the center and contextual research in the periphery, Finlay insisted on sticking with the literal interpretation of the Coras narrative, seeing contexts outside the report as speculative. Where Davis (“On the Lame” 574) saw inconclusiveness and incompleteness in the narrative, Finlay insisted that the truth was all there was in those letters. Indeed, while Davis (“On the Lame” 575) wanted the Martin Guerre story read as a detective novel, Finlay wanted it read as a court decision. In essence, both disagreed on how far can or should the truth be.
Works Cited
Ringold, Jeannette K (Trans.). “Coras’ Arrest Memorable”. Triquarterly 1982, 55: 86-103. PDF
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “On the Lame.” The American Historical Review June 1988, 93(3): 572-
603. PDF file.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1983. Print.
Finlay, Robert. “The Refashioning of Martin Guerre.” The American Historical Review June
1988, 93(3): 553-571. PDF file.
