Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose
Regardless of what the money was spent on, whether debts were paid off or not, what resounds in the presuppositional background of the novel are questions posed by classical economics: how is it possible to escape an economic and financial crisis? How can one’s own farm become wealthier? How can the wealth of an entire country or society be increased? These questions were posed by, among others, Adam Smith in his work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (vol. 1–2, 1776), as well as by his predecessors and successors. From at least the eighteenth century onwards, there have been systematic efforts to answer questions relating to the foundations of rational actions bringing planned outcomes. Classical economics did not come into disagreement with God, since it accepted that He had established universal laws were being discovered and realized by economists. Successive economic systems and their creators were outlined by Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi in the essay Nouveaux principes d’économie politique ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (vol. 1–2, 1819). He outlined the traits of mercantilism, which recognized trade and money as the main sources of national wealth, and of physiocracy, which saw the Earth and its natural productiveness as a potential source of increasing wealth. Adam Smith, meanwhile, saw labour as the source of wealth while emphasizing competition and criticizing the support offered by the state to the weak who were unable to compete on the labour market. Sismondi, however, took a broader view:
We have examined wealth in its relation to the population which it must support or make happy; a nation does not seem to us in any way grown richer by the sole increase in its capital, but only if its capital, in increasing, is spreading more comforts among the population it must support […].[16]
