The Return of Martin Guerre

In the Introduction, Davis begins by addressing the ways in which history and literature remember peasants, and throughout the rest of the book, Davis focuses on this particular culture within French society. Her version of the story of Martin Guerre illuminates peasant life and identity in sixteenth-century France, and she addresses directly the social conditions of the peasant existence that could have produced such a brazen act of dishonesty as Arnaud’s fraud. In this culture, Davis sees a fluidity between truth and lies as the peasant culture seemed open enough to allow some fluctuations in morality. As well, Davis looks closely at the French legal system of this time, which accords peasants in need of legal assistance the same rights as wealthier members of society. Between detailed descriptions of their daily lives, types of employment, and family dynamics, Davis paints a vivid picture of peasant life that goes far beyond traditional comic depictions. 

Davis traces the complications of both the female and male peasant experience in sixteenth-century France, identifying the different challenges girls and boys, and women and men, faced under a patriarchal system. Girls lived a constrained life, first attached to their childhood home and then to the marriage home that was decided for them.