What Discoveries await in the Provinces? Or: A rather unusual thesis novel
Orzeszkowa’s 1869 novel to some degree marked a turning point in her oeuvre. It was the last that she would write that was “Romantic-doctrinarian” and “sentimental-didactic tone,”[1] attracting little attention from critics. It would also be the last of her novels that would tend so evidently towards the legacies of post- and pre-Romanticism, Biedermeier, the Enlightenment, and even earlier epochs. As with her other early works, it emerged under what were fairly turbulent personal circumstances, as she was engaged in legal battles to keep hold of her inheritance, pay off further contributions and debts, and annul her marriage. At this time, she was also unperturbed in the early stages of a relationship with Zygmunt Święcicki, with whom she would later become engaged, while experiencing the final period of a relatively secure existence as part of the landowning class[2]. The tensions of being suspended between a state of despair and hope, depression and enthusiasm, peace and boredom, were clearly reflected in the tone of this novel, one of the darkest from this period of her work, yet still filled with a naïve, bucolic atmosphere. The inherent paradox of the piece goes much deeper, since despite its evident didacticism, it seems to be shaped by Positivism to a much smaller degree than her other more “progressive” works, while at the same time, as the most idyllic of her novels, it bears much greater resemblance to the later “rustic” Orzeszkowa. Given its rather conventional nature, Na prowincji does not entirely fit in with the poetics of thesis novel since it possesses a limited degree of auctorialism, while employing personal/first-person narration, clearly-defined characterization, a fairly matter-of-fact tone, and a plot based in cause-and-effect. Furthermore, while the novel is quite naively melodramatic, it is nevertheless free of the pathetic, affective pretention evident in many passages of the later work Pan Graba.
In light of this, the novel can leave anyone attempt to interpret it somewhat confused. What can be made of the rather banal central thesis, illustrating obvious truths and everyday truisms (“Remember, young lady, that only a person possessing a solid intellect and character, chosen not for superficial reasons, makes for a good lifelong companion”[3])? How is the spectacular pedagogical failure of the model upbringing of the young female protagonist to be judged, as her “lamp of reason” is extinguished by the flames of passion, while the maxim that “a man’s power of reason and nobleness” must always exert “an attractive influence” on a woman proves illusory?[4] Examining different aspects of the novel and putting various perspectives on it to the test might enable us to develop a better understanding of the differentia specifica of this particular example of creative “inadequacy,”[5] to use the term Orzeszkowa applied many years later to her juvenilia.
Przypisy
- These terms are drawn, respectively, from: J. Łada [Father J. Gnatowski], Ś.p. Eliza Orzeszkowa. Próba syntezy, “Wiara. Przegląd Katolicki” 1910, no. 23, p. 444; letter from E. Orzeszkowa to J. Sikorski, dated 10 (22) August 1869, E. Orzeszkowa, Listy zebrane, vol. 1, ed. E. Jankowski, Wrocław 1954 (Lz 1), p. 54.
- “I spend the whole winter at home […] – and I have become so accustomed to my lonely corner that I feel strangely calm and contented there,” Orzeszkowa wrote in winter 1869 while working on the novel (letter to J. Sikorski from January-February 1869, Lz 1, p. 46). As Barbara Noworolska argued, Na prowincji “emerged during a period of some degree of thaw, when the pressures of living under oppressive rule were less noticeable […] in a situation where Poles and the [Catholic] Church faced less repression” (Noworolska, Eliza Orzeszkowa: trwanie, pamięć, historia, Białystok 2005, pp. 39, 53).
- This is how Anna Martuszewska described the message of Na prowincji (Pozycja narratora w powieściach tendencyjnych Elizy Orzeszkowej, Gdańsk 1970, p. 141).
- See part 2, chapter VII in digital scholary edition E. Orzeszkowa, Na prowincji, edited, introduction, editor’s not and commentaries by A. Mazur, red. A.P. Lesiakowski, digital editing by A. Mędrzecka-Stefańska, B. Szleszyński, [in:] Orzeszkowa, Dzieła zebrane, ed. I. Wiśniewska, P. Bordzoł, A.P. Lesiakowski, vol. 3 (which provides the basis for the page references hereafter). Orzeszkowa wrote of the need for women to make good use of the “lamp of reason” in the late nineteenth century in an open letter titled List otwarty do kobiet niemieckich [An open letter to German women] (see E. Orzeszkowa, Publicystyka społeczna, ed. G. Borkowska, I. Wiśniewska, vol. 1, Warszawa 2020 (Publicystyka społeczna 1), p. 870 i passim). In the novel, there is an emotional passage, positioned at the intersection of personal and auktorial narratives, dedicated to this pedagogical fiasco (see part 1, chapter VIII).
- In a letter to Jan Karłowicz dated 24 May (old style calendar) 1884, she wrote of the “mental and creative inadequacy” of her first novels (E. Orzeszkowa, Listy zebrane, vol. 3, ed. E. Jankowski, Wrocław 1956 (Lz 3), p. 49).
