The Return of Martin Guerre

by

Natalie Zemon Davis

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Return of Martin Guerre makes teaching easy.
Arnaud grew up in a village about a day’s ride to the north of Artigat. His childhood was in some ways nearly the opposite of the man he would eventually impersonate, Martin Guerre. Martin had only sisters, Arnaud had only brothers; Martin loved sword-fighting, Arnaud didn’t like sports. Arnaud’s talents lay elsewhere, in his powerful eloquence and extremely good memory. Indeed, Davis writes that he was so clever that people suspected him of being a magician. As he grew up, he had a reputation for getting into unsavory entanglements with drinking, gambling, and prostitutes. His large appetites garnered the nickname of “Pansette”—the belly. At some point, he evidently discovered that Martin had abandoned his family and inheritance and decided to impersonate Martin. This impersonation was an extraordinarily impressive feat: he informed himself as much as possible about Martin’s life, essentially “rehearsing” for the role he would perform for nearly three years. Davis argues that Arnaud and Martin’s wife Bertrande fell in love, and that although she was not convinced by his impersonation she colluded in his deception so that they could live together as a married couple. This makes his eventual trial and execution for impersonating Martin all the more poignant. Arnaud argued persuasively, almost convincing the court that he was indeed Martin—until the real Martin himself showed up. At Arnaud’s execution, he maintained that Bertrande was an honorable woman and he had deceived her, an attempt to protect Bertrande’s reputation that Davis takes as an indication of his continuing emotional attachment to her. Davis’s depiction of Arnaud is admiring and sympathetic. He was clearly very intelligent and gifted, and he led an extraordinary life. One might even argue, Davis suggests, that the real tragedy was not in the impersonation but in Arnaud’s punishment and death.

Arnaud du Tilh Quotes in The Return of Martin Guerre

The The Return of Martin Guerre quotes below are all either spoken by Arnaud du Tilh or refer to Arnaud du Tilh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Identity and Property Theme Icon
).
Preface and Introduction Quotes

But we still know rather little about the peasants’ hopes and feelings; the ways in which they experienced the relation between husband and wife, parent and child; the ways in which they experienced the constraints and possibilities of their lives. We often think of peasants as not having had much in the way of choices, but is this in fact true? Did individual villagers ever try to fashion their lives in unusual and unexpected ways?

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

[H]ow, in a time without photographs, with few portraits, without tape recorders, without fingerprinting, without identity cards, without birth certificates, with parish records still irregular if kept at all—how did one establish a person’s identity beyond doubt?

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Was it so unusual for a man in sixteenth-century villages and burgs to change his name and fashion a new identity? Some of this went on all the time. The Daguerres left Hendaye, became the Guerres, and changed their ways. Every peasant who migrated any distance might be expected to do the same…At carnival time and at other feastdays, a young peasant might dress as an animal or a person of another estate or sex and speak through that disguise.

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh
Related Symbols: The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I think we can account for the initial acceptance by family and neighbors without having recourse to the necromancy of which Arnaud was later accused and which he always denied. First of all, he was wanted in Artigat—wanted with ambivalence perhaps, for returning persons always dash some hopes and disturb power relations, but wanted more than not. The heir and householder Martin Guerre was back in his place.

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

What hope might the Protestant message have offered to the new Martin and Bertrande during the years they were living together as “true married people”? That they could tell their story to God alone and need not communicate it to any human intermediary. That the life they had willfully fabricated was part of God’s providence.

Related Characters: Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

To put it another way, if the real Martin Guerre had never come back, could Arnaud du Tilh have gotten away with it? Some of my pragmatic fellow historians have suggested that, if the impostor had not asked for the accounts and had followed more closely the uncle’s expectations in regard to the family property, he could have played Martin Guerre for years and no one would have mind. On the other hand, recently when I talked about Bertrande and Artaud with people in Artigat who were still familiar with the old story, they smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and said, “That’s all very well—but that pretty rascal, he lied.”

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Forty-five people or more said that the prisoner was Arnaud du Tilh alias Pansette, or at least not Martin Guerre, since they had eaten and drunk with one or the other of them since childhood…About thirty to forty people said that the defendant was surely Martin Guerre; they had known him since the cradle.

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

If [Bertrande] had wanted to betray [Arnaud] at this point, all she had to do was tell a story he could not repeat; instead she adhered to the text they had agreed upon months before.

Related Characters: Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Even on the ladder up to the gibbet he was talking, preaching to the man who would take his place not to be harsh with Bertrande. She was a woman of honor, virtue, and constancy, he could attest to it. As soon as she suspected him, she had driven him away.

Related Characters: Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Lawyers, royal officers, and would-be courtiers knew all about self-fashioning—to use Stephen Greenblatt’s term—about the molding of speech, manners, gesture, and conversation that helped them to advance, as did any newcomer to high position in the sixteenth century. Where does self-fashioning stop and lying begin?

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh, Jean de Coras
Related Symbols: The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

The originality of Coras’s vision of this peasant story should be stressed. The French tragicomedy ended happily and used aristocratic figures for its leading personages. […] That Coras could conceive of “a play of tragedy between persons of low estate” depended on his being able to identify himself somewhat with the rustic who had remade himself.

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh, Jean de Coras
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:

In Coras’s “comitragic” version…one can approve the cuckolding of the once impotent and now faraway husband. Here Arnaud du Tilh becomes a kind of hero, a more real Martin Guerre than the hard-hearted man with the wooden leg. The tragedy is more in his unmasking than in his imposture.

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh, Jean de Coras
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Montaigne insists how difficult it is to know the truth about things and how uncertain an instrument is human reason. “Truth and falsehood have both alike countenances…Wee beholde them with one same eye.”

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh, Michel de Montaigne
Related Symbols: Martin’s Wooden Leg, The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

The story of Martin Guerre is told and retold because it reminds us that astonishing things are possible. Even for the historian who has deciphered it, it retains a stubborn vitality. I think I have uncovered the true face of the past—or has Pansette done it once again?

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Related Symbols: The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Return of Martin Guerre LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Return of Martin Guerre PDF

Arnaud du Tilh Quotes in The Return of Martin Guerre

The The Return of Martin Guerre quotes below are all either spoken by Arnaud du Tilh or refer to Arnaud du Tilh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Identity and Property Theme Icon
).
Preface and Introduction Quotes

But we still know rather little about the peasants’ hopes and feelings; the ways in which they experienced the relation between husband and wife, parent and child; the ways in which they experienced the constraints and possibilities of their lives. We often think of peasants as not having had much in the way of choices, but is this in fact true? Did individual villagers ever try to fashion their lives in unusual and unexpected ways?

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

[H]ow, in a time without photographs, with few portraits, without tape recorders, without fingerprinting, without identity cards, without birth certificates, with parish records still irregular if kept at all—how did one establish a person’s identity beyond doubt?

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Was it so unusual for a man in sixteenth-century villages and burgs to change his name and fashion a new identity? Some of this went on all the time. The Daguerres left Hendaye, became the Guerres, and changed their ways. Every peasant who migrated any distance might be expected to do the same…At carnival time and at other feastdays, a young peasant might dress as an animal or a person of another estate or sex and speak through that disguise.

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh
Related Symbols: The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I think we can account for the initial acceptance by family and neighbors without having recourse to the necromancy of which Arnaud was later accused and which he always denied. First of all, he was wanted in Artigat—wanted with ambivalence perhaps, for returning persons always dash some hopes and disturb power relations, but wanted more than not. The heir and householder Martin Guerre was back in his place.

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

What hope might the Protestant message have offered to the new Martin and Bertrande during the years they were living together as “true married people”? That they could tell their story to God alone and need not communicate it to any human intermediary. That the life they had willfully fabricated was part of God’s providence.

Related Characters: Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

To put it another way, if the real Martin Guerre had never come back, could Arnaud du Tilh have gotten away with it? Some of my pragmatic fellow historians have suggested that, if the impostor had not asked for the accounts and had followed more closely the uncle’s expectations in regard to the family property, he could have played Martin Guerre for years and no one would have mind. On the other hand, recently when I talked about Bertrande and Artaud with people in Artigat who were still familiar with the old story, they smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and said, “That’s all very well—but that pretty rascal, he lied.”

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Forty-five people or more said that the prisoner was Arnaud du Tilh alias Pansette, or at least not Martin Guerre, since they had eaten and drunk with one or the other of them since childhood…About thirty to forty people said that the defendant was surely Martin Guerre; they had known him since the cradle.

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

If [Bertrande] had wanted to betray [Arnaud] at this point, all she had to do was tell a story he could not repeat; instead she adhered to the text they had agreed upon months before.

Related Characters: Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Even on the ladder up to the gibbet he was talking, preaching to the man who would take his place not to be harsh with Bertrande. She was a woman of honor, virtue, and constancy, he could attest to it. As soon as she suspected him, she had driven him away.

Related Characters: Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Lawyers, royal officers, and would-be courtiers knew all about self-fashioning—to use Stephen Greenblatt’s term—about the molding of speech, manners, gesture, and conversation that helped them to advance, as did any newcomer to high position in the sixteenth century. Where does self-fashioning stop and lying begin?

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh, Jean de Coras
Related Symbols: The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

The originality of Coras’s vision of this peasant story should be stressed. The French tragicomedy ended happily and used aristocratic figures for its leading personages. […] That Coras could conceive of “a play of tragedy between persons of low estate” depended on his being able to identify himself somewhat with the rustic who had remade himself.

Related Characters: Arnaud du Tilh, Jean de Coras
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:

In Coras’s “comitragic” version…one can approve the cuckolding of the once impotent and now faraway husband. Here Arnaud du Tilh becomes a kind of hero, a more real Martin Guerre than the hard-hearted man with the wooden leg. The tragedy is more in his unmasking than in his imposture.

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Bertrande de Rols, Arnaud du Tilh, Jean de Coras
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Montaigne insists how difficult it is to know the truth about things and how uncertain an instrument is human reason. “Truth and falsehood have both alike countenances…Wee beholde them with one same eye.”

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh, Michel de Montaigne
Related Symbols: Martin’s Wooden Leg, The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

The story of Martin Guerre is told and retold because it reminds us that astonishing things are possible. Even for the historian who has deciphered it, it retains a stubborn vitality. I think I have uncovered the true face of the past—or has Pansette done it once again?

Related Characters: Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tilh
Related Symbols: The Carnival Mask
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis: