What Discoveries await in the Provinces? Or: A rather unusual thesis novel

Aneta Mazur

Genealogy

If Orzeszkowa’s early works are indeed “links in a chain that connect with each other in diverse ways and seemingly emerge from earlier links,”^[1] then her third novel indeed “emerges” from several earlier publications. It fulfils the non-romantic guiding principle of Początek powieści (The Start of a Novel; 1866), supplements Ostatnia miłość (Last Love; 1867), which “reveals almost nothing about the details of the life of unsuited marital partners,”^[2] and adds to the image of provincial life as a “cage” (W klatce [In a Cage], 1867) by treating marriage as another cage. It also makes reference to early pieces such as Beata and Wspomnienia z powiatu pińskiego [Memories of the Pińsk District].^[3] The novel also contains traces of the legacies that were typically incorporated into Orzeskowa’s early works, namely inspiration drawn from the prose of the period between the uprisings of 1830/31 and 1863 (Feliks Bernatowicz, Józef Korzeniowski, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, and Jan Zachariasiewicz – plots featuring love stories, vivid descriptions of family life, social milieux and provincial life), French literature (Jules Michelet, George Sand and Victor Hugo – post-Romantic rhetoric and pathos, as well as emancipatory themes), and Russian- and English-language prose (Nikolai Gogol, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Jane Austen – elements of social satire with lyrical and intimate studies of social mores). However, these influences were not of great significance in Na prowincji, whose eclecticism where genres are concerned suggests that the most apt description of it would be a social romance novel. It is indeed something of a fictionalized treatise on the causes and effects of an unsuccessful marriage (perhaps inspired by Michelet’s words: “For this purpose I have imagined a young couple, whom I marry, and whose life I constantly follow”^[4]). If Pan Graba was seen as a novel for men and Pamiętnik Wacławy [Wacława’s Diary] was one for the ladies, then Na Prowincji complemented both, combining warning against both giving young people a bad upbringing and young women acting impulsively. Nevertheless, the novel does not constitute one of the “numerous images of unhappy marriages entered into out of convention or calculation.”^[5] The oft-repeated arguments about the connections between the novel and Ostatnia miłość, Pan Graba and W klatce are true only to a certain degree since there is more to Na prowincji than its discussion of the habitus of upbringing and marriage. It provides impetus to explore further themes and aspects of reality, even if it does so superficially and enigmatically. Perhaps this is a result of the somewhat uncoordinated, eclectic, and experimental form of the novel’s discourse, something that must not necessarily be considered a failing.