Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose
Does revealing the presuppositional layer always have such a clear influence on the interpretation of a novel as in the case of Pan Graba? Of course not. Often that which is stated explicitly refers to obvious matters that become apparent in the natural course of things. Many Realist novels published after 1864 would refer to the context of the Uprising even if they do not feature the figures typical of Aesopic speech. Certain types of writers are predisposed to creating presuppositions, namely authors with a moral or ideological – or tendentious as some call it – message that seeks to elevate, exalt or “round-off” the plot so that reading might provide readers with some kind of benefit. Orzeszkowa absolutely matches this description. Not only Pan Graba but also Marta and other novels “generate” a powerful and, just as importantly, surprising and unexpected presuppositional sphere. In the case of Marta, these presuppositions refer not only to the phenomenon of women’s emancipation but also to the economic conditions that demand this mode of modernization and indeed speed it up. A month after publishing the novel, an article by a certain T.S., translated from then French press, appeared in the periodical Tygodnik Mód i Powieści [Fashions and Novels Weekels]. Titled ‘Emancypacja kobiety w stosunku do socjalizmu i ekonomii politycznej’ [Women’s Emancipation in Relation to Socialism and Political Economy],[1] the female author refers to the works of Heinrich von Sybel, Albert Schäffle, Wilhelm Georg Friedrich Roscher, Julius Fröbel, and Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. It became evident that women’s emancipation is as much an economic as a social question. I do not have in mind women’s incomes as an argument in support of them taking up work outside the home. On the contrary: the nineteenth-century economics was generally unfavourable towards women’s emancipation (the notable exception being John Stuart Mill). Resistance towards this issue was gradually overcome, albeit not without a struggle. Marta was written around this time and is full of tension and evil looks. The drama in the novel can thus be seen as a consequence of debates around both emancipation and economics.
The aforementioned article published in Tygodnik, perhaps not the best-written or rather turgidly translated (and Polonized) – or both, nevertheless brings a few interesting contributions to the emancipation question. Firstly, it belies the seemingly commonplace view that emancipation is an outcome of socialist thought. Neither the community of Henri de Saint-Simon, nor the communal settlements of Robert Owen, nor the phalanstery of Charles Fourier assume freedom as such, the article’s author argues. She also counters the argument that freedom – for example autonomy, including over whether to work – means something different when applied to women and men. If women working would mean the collapse of the family and as such would need to be banned, then these restrictions could produce only one outcome, namely: half of the human race would not be subject to the solid principles of political economy and the new capitalist ἐπιστήμη (episteme), thus violating the foundations of nineteenth-century liberalism in the spirit of John Stuart Mill, whose words provided the motto to the text.
