Wikipedia in its entry on ‘The Wife of Martin Guerre’ missed the piquant detail that Janet Lewis’s research into miscarriages of justice due to over reliance on circumstantial evidence was what first brought to her attention the strange almost mythical case of Martin Guerre. Herself and her husband, the poet and critic Yvor Winters, a professor at Stanford, were working to free a David Lamson accused of beating his wife to death with a piece of lead pipe.
They were successful but Lamson did spend 3 years in San Quentin, one year on death row. In those days you were hanged within a month from judgment so the slow development of a relationship that is the Hollywood scenario was impossible.
The story of Martin Guerre’s return is philosophically rich on so many levels and even its ramifications into modern life seem imbued with the mysterious power of alternative realities. Was David Lamson actually guilty? It came out later that he had accidentally shot dead a friend of his when he was out hunting as a kid. He left the body in the bush for two days before reporting it. He fired a rifle at a girl friend that he was cross with. No injury there but this is an unlucky man for whom mishap is unidirectional.
Arnaud de Tilh the imposter was hanged before the house of Martin Guerre in 1560. He had been sentenced to death by beheading but perhaps his confession of guilt led to the more benign form of execution that leaves the body intact. It’s probably a pineal gland thing. Descartes would know.
Lewis’s book enters into the mind of Bertrande the wife of Martin and persuades us that a woman might accept a stranger with sufficient likeness to her missing husband to be a good enough substitute. Besides he’s a nicer man now, mellowed by war. All his sisters and the household accept him as genuine and the security of the domus is intact again. There is a definite head in a time of real patriarchy; accustomed absolutes maintain order. The wife from time to time doubts until she finally along with Martin’s paternal uncle brings a case of impersonation. The fiction runs parallel with the history withal made truer than plain narrative by diving into the texture of life at the time.
The son’s expectations:
This was so well understood together with the necessity for the law, that it never occurred to Martin to suppose it might be otherwise. It was known throughout Languedoc that a father owned the privilege of freeing his son, if he chose, from the parental authority, but this could only be done through a deliberate and formal ceremony; and although there were fathers who sometimes so liberated their sons, if anyone had asked Martin Guerre what he thought of such a procedure, he would almost certainly have replied that he thought ill. All such authority as belonged to the cap d'hostal Martin Guerre wished to retain, however much he might personally suffer for the time being under such authority. After the lapse of years he expected himself to be cap d'hostal and when that responsibility should rest upon him he would have need of all the accumulated authority of antiquity, even as his father had need of it now.
However young Martin runs away after an infraction of the absolute rule of the cap d’hostal. He means to come back after a short while but does not. At a time of banditry and war, roaming mercenaries and general chaos, going missing was common. But there’s always hope which distorts into verisimilitude the false.
Lewis fills between the lines of the well known story beautifully. It is a classic which may have suffered the fate of being a set text in schools. The presence of essays offered out there on the web show misreading or the cunning of deliberate error. It’s strong enough to survive the assault of juveniles.
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