Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose
Pride, courage, pathos: these are the prevalent traits of Rawicki’s behaviour (just as suffering is typical of Regina’s appearance). Despite or perhaps indeed because of this peacefulness and a certain stiffness, the engineer’s unusual nature becomes evident as he manages to gain the favour of those around him. This might not sound convincing, but the narrator insists that this is the case. Was there a void between aristocrats and wealthy landowners, on the one hand, and doctors, lawyers and engineers, on the other? Does Orzeszkowa pay too little or perhaps too much attention to this issue? Any diagnosis should be seen in artistic terms, an outcome marked by Orzeszkowa’s emancipatory choices and her own life experiences. The presuppositional realm of the novel, which is resistant to individual deviations, reaffirms the moment of transition, marked by conflicts between the end of the feudal epoch and the social prestige of such professions, which are carried out not only by highly educated people but also, according to Orzeszkowa, by individuals of the highest moral standing who demonstrate a dispassionate desire to help, guided by modesty and love of others. This leads us, then, to another of the young author’s “easy” novels, W klatce [In a Cage].
However, before we move on to that work, let us turn to what historians have said about the “treasured [nobility] and social barriers.” Of course, there are a variety of views. Drawing on the work of Jerzy Jedlicki, we could argue that on the one hand the barriers were increasingly broken down with each passing decade in the nineteenth century. This led to the emergence of a new nobility, an honorary nobility, and the awarding of noble titles, etc. On the other hand,
the resilience of certain issues relating to social structure in post-partition Poland and the persistence of certain ideas is astounding. This is a result of the non-revolutionary path of development and the strong economic principles of Polish conservatism, which was upheld by the policies of the partitioning powers. Throughout almost the entire partition period, someone would every few years announce yet another collapse of barriers between classes, giving citizenship status to lower social classes, and the birth of a child named the Polish nation. The country gained steel mills, mechanized cotton mills, towns, cities and roads, banks and a stock exchange were established, locomotives steamed through it, telegraphs tapped away, there were even factory strikes – but the question of the nobility comprehensively absorbed the minds of social thought, national writing and politics.[31]
It could thus be assumed that the presuppositions that form the background context to Ostatnia miłość and, to some extent, Cnotliwi, reveal the ambivalences, both of Orzeszkowa and the pre-Positivist era, towards the nobility. The class’s impoverishment, moral collapse, and abandonment of its traditions cannot be doubted. But at the point where there was a genuine, or perhaps exaggerated, fascination with modernity (the awe-filled descriptions of railways, communication networks and locomotives in Ostatnia miłość), Orzeszkowa still showed in the novel the concerns the higher classes had about the status of “outsiders” or arrivistes. Ultimately, it becomes clear that genuine social acceptance is achieved in the salons. Overcoming barriers thus occurs through the rather unexpected act of representatives of the higher classes granting status to homines novos through a gesture of recognition resembling Hegel’s dialectic of master and slave.
