The Silences of Martin Guerre
Natalie Zemon Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre was simply bound to turn heads. Davis’s blend of historical inquiry and fictional speculation blurred the lines between historical fiction and the cold, hard historiography of academia. One of Davis’ most prominent critics, Robert Finlay, took Davis to task for how she approached Bertrande de Rols, a peasant woman whose part to play in the story of Martin Guerre remains historically ambiguous. Finlay disputed Davis’ ability to come to conclusions that are unsupported by the court documents of the Martin Guerre case; Davis retaliated that while the story of Bertrande may be “in part [her] invention,” her attentiveness to the primary sources and their limitations render her story “tightly in check with the voices of the past.” While Finlay’s cogent deconstruction highlights Davis’ deliberate decision-making process, Davis’s ability to sniff out the silences in the historical record on Bertrande de Rols renders her telling of The Return of Martin Guerre a far more holistic one than Finlay’s.
Since all historical record of the events in The Return of Martin Guerre comes from court officials rather than the peasants themselves, the peasant point of view completely eludes Davis’ sources. As her primary source for The Return of Martin Guerre, Davis utilizes The Arrests Memorable by Jean de Coras, a set of court cases deemed so bizarre by the court that they simply warranted recording. In fact, if not for Coras’s labor, there would be no other proof of Bertrande de Rols and Martin Guerre even existing. This is due to the nature of power dynamics in 16th century France, where stories of elites and nobility dominated historical writing as opposed to the menial, unimportant peasant lives. It took a story as bizarre as an imposter convincing an entire town of a fake identity being taken to court and almost winning his case for Bertrande and Martin Guerre to even appear within historical memory. Everything about the case is written from Coras’s perspective, and as a jurist from the upper echelons of French society, he was entirely insulated from the worries and concerns of peasantry. Furthermore, the records also silence everything about the everyday lives of these peasants that remains beyond the scope of the case. What we do know is what Coras thought of during the case, as well as what he deemed “memorable,” not what the peasants themselves thought.
The second, and equally detrimental, silence in the story of Martin Guerre is the absence of the female perspective, since all we can know about Bertrande de Rols is what a male-dominated judiciary sees in her. Davis points out that Arnaud’s ability to recognize every member of the village by name must have had something to do with Arnaud’s stay with Bertrande at an inn before his return to the village. Of course, Coras himself makes no such conjecture, and is instead incredibly flush with admiration of Arnaud’s memory. Coras’ recourse even suggests potential necromancy; it was far more likely to Coras that Arnaud had magical abilities than it is that Bertrande assisted him. Of course, Finlay could easily repurpose this fact in his favor, claiming that since Coras himself did not doubt Bertrande, Davis has no greater authority and therefore cannot. His point would almost be valid, if not for the reasons behind Coras’ dismissal of Bertrande: “the weakness of her sex.”
Another compelling bit of evidence Davis uses is Bertrande’s vehement defense of Arnaud in spite of evidence that would at the very least make her question herself. A fellow soldier of Arnaud’s claims to have known him from battle, and Martin Guerre’s shoemaker points out that Arnaud’s feet are far smaller than Martin’s, and yet Bertrande “rudely insisted that that was a lie, that he was Martin Guerre her husband or else a devil in his skin, that she knew him well, and that if anyone henceforth was so foolish as to say the contrary, she would make him die." Bertrande replaced this intense altercation with a new story the moment Arnaud was arrested with no newer evidence, suggesting that Bertrande was adjusting her role to play in saving Arnaud from getting caught. Of course, all of these bits of evidence are also overlooked by Coras, for a woman in this case could only possibly be a victim of the horrific antics of the shrewd male imposter.
When the historical silences in Martin Guerre come into confrontation with Finlay, rather than speculate with Davis, he opts to take Coras’ word for granted. Frowning down on Davis’ “perhapses” and instead emphasizing “the sovereignty of the source,” Finlay points out that “no one ever suggested that Bertrande was Arnaud’s accomplice. No one, that is, until Davis and The Return of Martin Guerre.” To Finlay, Davis is committing a cardinal sin of historiography by suggesting a historical truth that is directly refuted in the primary source. Coras, and according to The Arrests Memorable, everyone around Corras believed that Bertrande was a victim of the manipulation of a despicable liar, thief, and adulterer. Finlay adds that much of Davis’ speculation is a process in which Davis “imposes her notion of peasant women on Bertrande,” and that it “does not yield a portrait of Bertande that is either plausible or persuasive.” Much of Finlay’s criticism rejects Davis’s lack of proof more so than it does her actual proof. After all, to Finlay, it is only fair that the burden of proof in a historical claim must lie on the historian making the claim.
However, because Davis is far more keen on filling the historical silences of The Return of Martin Guerre, her telling of the story is not only more captivating but it is also more holistic. In Davis’s attempt to fill the aforementioned voids of The Arrests Memorable, she offers sources on peasant kinship relations, inheritance laws, military customs, court procedures, and all sorts of other contextual evidence that Finlay dismisses as inadequate. While Finlay accepts that these contextual sources may be pivotal in broadening the scope of the Martin Guerre story, he simply cannot accept Davis’s claims about Bertrande because they are never bluntly stated in The Arrests Memorable. On the other hand, Davis’s rigorous dive into the psyche of peasantry and the sexuality of female peasants make for the most intricate historical inquiries into the lives of her subjects. If it is true that the full lives of Bertrande, Arnaud and Martin Guerre can never be grasped from a look at The Arrests Memorable, Davis ensures that she has left no area unspeculated. What to Finlay is mere background coloring to a main narrative is to Davis the most important aspect of her work: understanding those silenced perspectives.
Finlay’s assertion of “the sovereignty of the source” overlooks the limitations of that source, in this case namely the patriarchy of 16th century France. As Davis demonstrates in her historical inquiry, there is no shortage of proof that the judges underestimated the agency of Bertrande de Rols because of her nature as a peasant woman in 16th century France. The real sovereign in telling the story of Bertrande could not possibly be the bit of paper itself, The Arrests Memorable, so much as it is the historian. By asking complicated questions and uncovering relevant historical documentation, historians act as detectives in the mission to interrogate what is taken for granted. Finlay’s part to play in the process is undeniably valuable, as his quest to scrutinize Davis’ narrative shines light on her method of inquiry. Through this back and forth between competing narratives and contradictory evidence, the historian manifests his or her true sovereignty. To assert any other sovereign would be an affront to the nobility of investigating the past.
Bibliography
Coras, Jean de. “The Arrests Memorable.” Translated by Jeannette K. Ringold and Janet Lewis. Triquarterly 55, Fall 1982.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “On the Lame.” American Historical Review Forum, 1988.
Finlay, Robert. “The Refashioning of Martin Guerre.” American Historical Review Forum, 1988.
