Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose
In Na prowincji, Orzeszkowa offers a masterclass in managing contradictions: rationalism with spiritual achievements, simplicity with an intuition that showed great ambition, a sense of being harmed with mercy, pragmatism with objective admiration. The simple farm-owning nobleman Bolesław Topolski, hardworking and a model farmer, is at the same time a great lover of nature capable of appreciating its beauty and developing powerful connections to the world around him. In response to a remark from Andrzej Orlicki, a natural scientist and author of textbooks on the subject of nature, he responds:
Yes, Sir, I love nature in all her guises because she has accompanied me since childhood to this very day. She has borne witness to all my labours and all the joys in my life, as well as to the sufferings that face us all (NP, part 1, chapter II).
Alongside his unattractive appearance, commonness, and bad clothes, Topolski also demonstrates Christian mercy and a Romantic heart, one that loves and forgives his fiancée’s transgressions (breaking off the engagement, her marriage to the vacuous yet handsome wastrel Aleksander Snopiński, which leads to her own death and the of her daughter). It will prove to be the case that sloth, a lack of a sense of responsibility alongside foolhardiness lead to disaster across the field, while the “Franklinian” models of a good upbringing and good behaviour, while seeming so obvious – rational planning, fairness, and working systematically – can prevent both small failings as well as family tragedies.
