Essay: The story of Martin Guerre, as interpreted by Natalie Davis and Robert Finlay

The Davis Debate
The historical debate centering on the story of Martin Guerre, as interpreted by Natalie Davis and Robert Finlay, is a controversial battle since both their arguments present different motivations and implications of the events that took place in 16th century Artigat. In Davis’ book, she argues three interpretations that she bases off cultural observations of 16th century France to explain the story of Martin Guerre. In response to Davis’ argument, Finlay criticizes her approach as telling the story because of her reliance on assumptions rather than evidence as a foundation for her arguments. Looking at the complexity of peasant life, the portrayal of Bertrande as self-interested, and the possible religious explanation in the story, Davis and Finlay open up a conversation about the history methods used to form each interpretation. According to Davis, the main problem rests in its inability to capture the complexity of peasant life thereby making it “hard to explain what actually happened” (Davis, Return viii).
In her book, The Return of Martin Guerre, Davis attempts to “show an event from peasant life being reshaped by men of letters” (Davis, Return ix).  In the case of Martin Guerre, Davis argues that Coras, the main source of information on the Guerre trial, is an unreliable chronicler because of his omissions and exaggerations in his accounts. Cross- referencing the Coras account with Le Seur’s account, Davis provides many instances where Coras and Le Seur have different versions of the story, proving that Coras’ account is not an indelible truth. Davis’ approach to retelling the story is to look at the silences and try to fill them with possible explanations. Davis does this by building a picture of peasant life in 16th century France based on legal records, accounts of the region around Artigat and uses the evidence to give the characters motivations for their actions (Davis, “Lame” 575). The main argument Davis makes is that Bertrande knew Arnaud as an impostor from the beginning and both their attempts to live in an invented marriage stemmed from the peasant custom of refashioning identities. Though the Guerre case is an exaggeration of refashioning one’s identity, Davis makes the claim that peasants often took on other identities temporarily during carnivals or charivari. A common practice of changing identities is her evidence for suggesting that the Guerre case is not an exception to peasant life, but an exaggeration of it, laying the foundation for her argument that peasants led complex lives (Davis, Return 40).
Davis also brings into question Bertrande’s role in the crime because of her view of Bertrande as an independent woman maneuvering through a patriarchal society through any means available to her (Davis, Return 28). Her evidence for Bertrande’s character and possible complicity can be traced to the original Coras text (Davis, “Lame” 593). Last is Davis’ argument about the role of Protestantism in Arnaud’s and Bertrande’s “invented marriage”. Davis argues that peasants frequently circled the church by wedding in secret and that Arnaud and Bertrande must have found a way to make their marriage real by converting to Protestantism. This is her weakest argument since the conversion hinged on the fact that Arnaud and Bertrande married each other in secret when there is no evidence for it. Her explanation of marriage practices serves only to show that religion might have motivated their actions but does not directly show causation (Davis, Return 46).
In response to Davis’ arguments, Finlay proposes an alternative version of events that he believes is more faithful to the primary sources. Finlay’s whole argument is contingent on the fact that the Coras text tells the true version of the story since it was never “lost to sight” (Finlay, “Refashioning” 553). His assumption that Coras’ version is the truth immediately silences any other perspectives on the story that could be found by examining the silences. Finlay also refuses to accept Davis’ argument on the complexity of peasant life because he thinks the Guerre case is an exception, not the norm. His arguments suggests that Davis uses the Guerre story to generalize about peasant life, ignoring that she actually does the opposite by using evidence from everyday peasant life to explain the events of the story (Finlay, “Refashioning” 571).
The second contention Finlay charges against Davis is her portrayal of Bertrande as a practical, self-interested woman in a society that oppresses her gender despite the contrary accounts of her character. The Bertrande that Finlay believes in is the innocent wife that is never accused or proved guilty of a crime (Finlay, “Refashioning” 555). However, Davis proves that the Coras account does not attest to Bertrande’s innocence since he does question her participation in the crime (Finlay, “Refashioning” 563). The final criticism Finlay has for Davis is her argument on the conversion of Arnaud and Bertrande. In this, Finlay is more successful in arguing that Davis reinvented rather than reinterpreted the Guerre story because there is no evidence of Arnaud and Bertrande ever being exposed to Protestant teachings or converting. This argument, however, fails to address that Coras had Protestant leanings, which creates a bias in his version of the story and produces silences within the text which support the Davis viewpoint (Davis, Return 114).
Davis attempts to address the silences in the story instead of accepting the primary sources as absolute truth. In her book, she questions the reliability of the primary sources by revealing that the complexities of peasant life motivated many of the events that occurred, a fact that escapes Coras, as well as Finlay. Although Finlay’s account can be viewed as valid because it portrays another possibility, Davis wins with her view.