Summary Of The Return Of Martin Guerre

Households were strictly patriarchal in which the man of the house made all the important decisions. Women's jobs at the time were mostly relegated to domestic service and occasional work at harvest time. The jobs were always of low pay, low status, and required little training. In addition to this females were not legally permitted to inherit land or property. This was the bleak life of a woman, with little hope or power, and always the subordinate of men.

The Return of Martin Guerre, written by Natalie Zemon Davis, is the tale of a court case that takes place in sixteenth century France. Martin Guerre is a peasant who deserted his wife and family for many years. While Martin Guerre is gone, a man named Arnaud du Tilh arrives at Martin’s village and claims to be Martin Guerre. Bertrande, who is Guerre’s wife, Guerre’s sisters, and many of the villagers, accepts the imposter. After almost three years of being happily married, Bertrande takes the fraud to court under pressure of Pierre Guerre, her stepfather and Guerre’s brother. Arnaud du Tilh is almost declared innocent, but the real Martin Guerre appears in the courthouse. Throughout this tale, many factors of the peasant life are

Starting with the premodern society and moving on to our modern society I will compare and contrast the two societies.

Even though women did not have a lot of social rights, they had two very important roles. They were to run the house and reproduce children. Even Euripides, a well known Greek playwright, stated , “Women run households and protect within their homes, and without a woman no home is clean or prosperous” (Neils 78). This shows that women were the ones who controlled the home. The wives would maintain the house and perform chores such as weaving, baking and cooking, cleaning, and fetching water. The women’s daily roles were simplified if they house had slaves. If there were slaves, they would do all of the chores and the wife would supervise

1. Throughout the story suspense is aroused and maintained excellently. This is achieved by the character the author creates. Mr. Martin is characterized as a neat and cautious man, who never took a smoke or a drink in his life. Our suspense is aroused when the author states that it has been “a week to the day since Mr. Martin had decided to rub out Mrs. Ulgine Barrows”. This arouses our suspense because we are told Mr. Martin is planning to murder this woman. The suspense is maintained with Mr. Martin’s thoughts. We as an audience are given his thoughts through the use of the 3rd person omniscient point of view. His thoughts are mostly on the issue on his dislike of Mrs. Barrows. Because of this, he

Women during this time had many restrictions in terms of not being able to vote, gain education and receive inheritance money. Regardless of their social position, they were never allowed to vote. The majority of women never attended school unless their family was considerably wealthy. Reading, writing, dance and skills like needlework were taught through husbands or parish priests. Many women however, remained illiterate. Women could neither inherit their father’s titles. All titles were passed from father to son or brother to brother.

Martin Guerre takes place in 16th century southern France, in a village called Artigat where the Guerre family is highly respected and is one of the leading families. Davis takes the story first of when the Basque Guerre’s arrive in Artigat and their quick assent in the village society. Davis explains that Martin’s father, Sanxi, arranged a political marriage with another high end family, the De Rols. The marriage occurred when Martin was just fourteen and Bertrande was ten. Davis does point out that even in the 16th century that was young. Davis shows the reader what life was probably like. She moves through their lives of Martin running away, his return twelve years later, and finally the imposer 's trial and execution.

Also, she provides her spoiled character Bertrandes modern qualities, such as lying, deception, desire and betrayal are really appealing to the modern reader. At the same time, the Vigne has bias as well, in favor of the fake Martin. For instance, Arnaud’s characteristics, wit, brilliance, sparkle, deception, greediness, boldness and appearance can be found in a modern personality. For him, shining Arnaud as the heroic figure, the director’s bias is clearly obvious towards this character throughout the movie. Yet Vigne with his movie, characters, and themes is able to capture and keep the audience’s attention. I felt myself hoping he would win through (despite already knowing the ending). Honestly, I have put this bias down to the filmmakers, perhaps pandering to their star actor, (Gerard

The women were expected to carry out the duties of the house without complaint and to remain diligent to her husband, as well as God. During this time, motherhood transformed from just being a child bearing figure to

Women and their families often grew up in rural areas, making most of their money and living from the land they would tend, and the crops they grew (bl.uk). Most women were neither nuns or housewives, but worked. “Women’s gender…excluded them from the learned professions of scholarship, medicine, and law. A women rarely considered herself as just a wife (“The Western Heritage” p. 218). Women held a lot of traditional roles and jobs in medieval times. Women were expected to be in charge of making all of the food for the whole family. Men rarely cooked, as this was the job of the women. Also, women were expected to be the primary caretakers of the children, as the men were often working in the fields, and

Natalie Zemon-Davis’s 1983 book The Return of Martin Guerre provided both the public and academic world with a fresh and interesting take on a classic story. Presented like a mystery thriller, Davis weaves a tale of deception based on a solid framework of cultural history. Her narrative depends on grounding the characters of Bertrande de Rols, Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tihl, and their associates within a web of social context. Davis draws heavily on the traditional Coras narrative, but also supplements the established story with the version presented in Le Sueur, a new source she discovered. Additionally, she incorporates unusual sources dealing with broader social context and infers specifics from a general study of period interactions. It is this latter approach that historian Robert Finlay disagrees with. He claims that Davis does not appropriately rely on the source material provided by the Coras narrative and thus gives an unnecessarily dramatic version of events. The AHR forum on the subject includes both Finlay’s review and Davis’s response, providing a model of scholarly debate that extends beyond the actual content of the book in question. In addition to being a rhetorical critique, Finlay is attacking the foundational methodology of modern social history that Davis is then compelled to defend.

The only thing that Arnaud and Martin really had in common was that neither was happy or had become very bored with their lives they were born into to remain where they were. The question in hand is, how could Arnaud successfully trade his identity for the identity of Martin Guerre?

Women were expected to basically be merely an object, even a trophy for their husbands. They were expected to stay home and clean, as well as cook. With all these expected tasks, women hardly had any time to branch out and figure out what they wanted to do with their life. They had no time for leisure activities of any kind because, of course, their activities involved taking care of the house. Women were also seen as the weaker sex, always submissive to their dominant male counterpart. Although the women were submissive, they were held to a higher moral standard. Adultery was twice shamed upon if committed by a woman rather than a man. (Hughes par.3) A woman could be stoned to death, but people would turn their cheek for a man while the woman still was expected to stay beside the man.

Then in society, men were portrayed as “dominant figures” and women were the “nurturers”. Men not only filled the fatherly role but they also usually earned the “breadwinning”, went to work all day, and financially provided for the wives and

The most important thing was obedience, also a fundamental duty of women. Paternal authority was unquestioned, children were to honour and respect their parents especially their father who represented the ruling figure and symbolized God's authority. They expected to give love and care for their parents for they were creators and deserved