Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose

Grażyna Borkowska

The final work in our overview of Orzeszkowa’s “easy” novels is Na prowincji [In the Provinces]. The plot is deceptively similar to the experiences of Lucjan Dolewski but the presupposed horizon of the novel refers to somewhat different issues as suggested by the motto drawn from Benjamin Franklin: “Those who show that it is possible to achieve anything without hard work and effort are spreading poison among the people” (NP, part 1, chapter I, motto). In this piece, it is a case of confronting the guiding principles of the protagonists of the novel with the emerging models of individuals, including those inspired by Franklin that emphasise hard work, modest, frugality, rationality, and enterprise. These are all things that we can establish by reading what is written on the pages of the novel. However, having Franklin as the motto draws readers’ attention to the fundamental values of the US-American Revolution, which Orzeszkowa wrote about in-depth and with expert insight in relation to the women’s question.^[1] Orzeszkowa, like much of Polish public opinion that was positioned generally favourably towards the revolution, was aware that a war against the British monarchy brought the United States of America freedom, a freedom that was fought for by modest, ordinary, resilient farmers and plantation owners. Indeed, the very same people who often showed great cruelty towards Black slaves.^[2] After the war, Poles recalled US-Americans as great freedom lovers, although their less praiseworthy acts, including persecution of Black people, tempered sympathy somewhat. However, there was no reluctance in referring to Franklin’s social doctrine, which recognized “simple virtues,” fairness, hard work and efficiency as the key to success.^[3] The history of Polish Franklinism is long, stretching back to the eighteenth century. After Enlightenment Warsaw, it was Vilnius and the surrounding area that pioneered references to Franklin’s ideas, which provided guidance to the Philomath and Filaret groups. The circle of “Mickiewicz’s peers,” as termed by Anna Witkowska, did not shy away from the hard sciences, with economics first and foremost. At the University of Vilnius, the discipline was taught in accordance with Physiocrat theory, drawing on the textbook by the aforementioned Hieronim Stroynowski. In the 1820s, academic gatherings of Vilnius students often saw calls for modernization projects, including those concerning rural areas. They were also familiar with the work of many economists, including Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Adam Ferguson.^[4] As one current researcher writes,

The Philomaths associated mechanization of farming and the industrialization of the Polish lands with hopes of reviving the Fatherland, noting above all the positive (social) impacts of these processes. In the thinking of the Philomaths, the sentimental-early Romantic vision of rural areas that appeared in their poetry from the period (“pastoral cottages,” “flourishing orchards,” idyllic “fields, hills and forests,” “babbling brooks”) did not conflict with modernizing ideas. Students in Vilnius clearly proved adept at combining both spheres.^[5]

Orzeszkowa, as “Mickiewicz’s younger sister,” was equally adept at this. as was – even earlier – Klementyna z Tańskich Hoffmanowa, as her diaries (Pamiętniki) showed.^[6] Her husband, Karol Boromeusz Hoffman, translated Franklin into Polish (Życie i pisma, vol. 1–2, 1827), dedicating the work to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, who was acquainted with both Franklin’s family and the Hoffmans.^[7] Narcyza Żmichowska also referred to Franklinism in her novel Poganka (English translation by Ursula Phillips: The Heathen, 2012).