In a garden of feelings
IV. Jęczmionkowski Sisters
Symptoms include not only specific ailments, but also – to use Freud’s metaphor – “suffering […] of the body, which cannot even exist without pain and fear as warning signals.” Among these undiagnosed patients, one can find the Jęczmionkowski sisters, who starved themselves excessively during official meetings:
Misses Elfryda and Zenobia didn’t eat the roulades, God forbid! They didn’t even drink the milk, though it had a more poetic, more shepherdly air than the meat. They were starving, looking at the simple but delicious dishes set before them, and they didn’t touch a thing, because they wouldn’t eat in front of a large gathering, especially in the presence of the charming doctor (part II, chapter IV).
Young girls have been raised according to conventions that prioritize appearance and good behaviour. They are fashionably dressed and uneducated (they have only the basics of a proper upbringing—they speak French in company), but they know what’s appropriate, and all their actions are directed toward one goal: marrying well. It becomes clear, however, that raising young women is torture for them, depriving them not only of the ability to function normally in society, but also of the joy of everyday activities: “the poor victims of virginal ideality ate nothing, and inwardly consoled themselves with the thought of the dumplings that were supposed to be home for dinner,” and “each of them promised herself that she would eat at least fifteen of them and snack on a decent piece of roast lamb” (part II, chapter IV). Their life of show exhausts them, so in reality they only want to rest and eat, which is only possible in the safe privacy of their homes. Pretending to live a real life, they mentally withdraw from the world. Both are subordinated to their mother and conventions, fulfilling the expectations of their environment, and thus living in a make-believe world. Evidently, Orzeszkowa, herself suffering from psychosis, treated this type of social illness with tenderness, as she discussed it in greater detail and in many ways in her study of women, noting, among other things, that
when we talk about the purpose of a woman’s existence, there is a common, eternal formula, repeated like a daily prayer: a woman is created to be a wife, a mother, a housewife, and there are also grateful expressions: sacrifice, self-denial, etc.
Even sacrificing her own health to achieve her goal of finding a suitable husband. Orzeszkowa obviously utters these words to start a polemic, but they are very apt and consistent with the message of the novel.
