The Return Of Martin Guerre Sparknotes

The sixteenth century was a time of change. It was the beginning of the modern era, with the renaissance bringing change to every aspect of life. The novel The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis shares the story of Martin Guerre while revealing important aspects of French society, including work, family, religion, law, and social structure.

Europe depended heavily on trade to survive. Toulouse and Burgos were both trading centers and capitals of commerce in France. At the time, due to the popularity of work as merchants or farmers, people in early modern Europe tended to be uneducated, neither knowing how to read nor write. Uneducation was one of the many walls that furthered the divide between class. Inside a class there were separations too, for instance, the fact that only men were considered when determining class, since, “organizational structure and public identity were associated exclusively with males” (Davis 29).

Typically, women grew up helping around the house until they were married off to a suitable husband. Fathers paid a suitable dowry, large, at once, and with land for the more wealthy families, and broken apart over time for poorer families. Martin Guerre’s wife Bertrande De Rols dowry was generous and came with land, since her family was of a higher

Although, canon laws made Martin’s marriage illegal, due to Bertrandes young age, the Guerre family was too desperate to wait. As is tradition, families eagerly awaited the news of a pregnancy early in a marriage; however, in the case of Martin Guerre, the vacancy of such news brought embarrassment upon the families. Not being pregnant bore news of a cursed father, causing Bertrande's’ family to try to get her to leave him, as the marriage had not been