Marta. Eliza Orzeszkowa
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Series Editor’s Preface
Marta by Eliza Orzeszkowa, reputedly one of the most prominent Polish writers, is an engaging period piece in the social realist genre that details the trials and tribulations of its female protagonist, whose life is upended by the sudden death of her husband. The novel follows the unfortunate woman through her heroic efforts to support herself and her child in a harsh patriarchal society during a period of industrialization and urbanization in nineteenth-century Poland. The novel reveals just how constrained life chances were for a single woman in that world.
Written with considerable narrative verve, the story proceeds briskly, through a series of arresting plot twists, to a final denouement that may surprise and certainly will shake empathetic readers. The feminist sensibilities of the author shine brightly throughout this absorbing book. The story and its star-crossed yet resolute heroine should intrigue general readers interested in period fiction but also provide excellent opportunities for classroom discussion of historical and contemporary—and universal—issues involving gender and class.
This original translation by Anna Gąsienica Byrcyn and Stephanie Kraft is illuminated by an incisive introduction to the work and period by Grażyna Kozaczka, Professor of English at Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, New York. Professor Kozaczka usefully sets the book in historical and literary context and provides a list of questions that can inform discussion as they aid critical consideration of the novel.
Publication of the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series marks a milestone in the maturation of the Polish Studies field and stands as a fitting tribute to the scholars and organizations whose efforts have brought it to fruition. Supported by a series advisory board of accomplished Polonists and Polish-Americanists, the Polish and Polish American Studies Series has been made possible through generous financial assistance from the Polish American Historical Association and that organization’s Stanley Kulczycki Publication Fund, the Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish American Studies at Central Connecticut State University, and the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professorship in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and through institutional support from Wayne State University and Ohio University Press. The series meanwhile has benefited from the warm encouragement of a number of other persons, including Gillian Berchowitz, M. B. B. Biskupski, the late Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Thomas Duszak, Mary Erdmans, Martin Hershock, Rick Huard, Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, Grażyna Kozaczka, Brian McCook, Anna Muller, Thomas Napierkowski, James S. Pula, and Thaddeus Radzilowski, and from the able assistance of the staff of Ohio University Press. The series also has received generous assistance from a growing list of series supporters, including benefactor Thomas Duszak, contributor George Bobinski, and additional friends of the series including Alfred Bialobrzeski, William Galush, John A. and Pauline A. Garstka, Jonathan Huener, Grażyna Kozaczka, Neal Pease, Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek, and Mary Jane Urbanowicz. The moral and material support from all of these institutions and individuals is gratefully acknowledged.
John J. Bukowczyk
A Note on Eliza Orzeszkowa
Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910) is one of the most prolific and esteemed Polish prose writers of the nineteenth century. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 together with Leo Tolstoy and Henryk Sienkiewicz, who became the recipient of the prestigious award. Orzeszkowa began her writing career with her short story “Obrazek z lat głodnych” (A picture from the hungry years), published by the literary magazine Tygodnik ilustrowany (The illustrated weekly) in 1866. She wrote novels, short stories, and a series of articles and commentaries on education, class discrimination, anti-Semitism, and women’s emancipation, all within the frame of Polish literary Positivism.
Orzeszkowa achieved widespread fame at home and abroad with her famous roman-fleuve Nad Niemnem (On the banks of the Niemen, 1888), which dealt with traditional values of the Polish gentry, issues centering around marriage between members of different classes, and the effects of the January Uprising in Russian-occupied Poland. Throughout her lifetime Orzeszkowa fought for her personal independence by working as a writer; as a teacher at her house in Grodno, which she made available for girls who wanted to pursue their studies under her guidance; and as manager of her own bookstore, which was transformed into a publishing house in Wilno. Her novel Marta (1873) presents a widowed heroine facing a grim battle to earn a living in a time when employment opportunities for women were severely restricted; the book is representative of Orzeszkowa’s depiction of women and her skill at creating moving and powerful scenes in her fiction. Marta explores matters that were vital and close to its author’s heart, namely women’s education and women’s emancipation, which she also discussed in her earlier article “Kilka słów o kobietach” (A few words about women, 1870) and her later novella Panna Antonina (Miss Antonina, 1891). Orzeszkowa’s writings deal with crucial topics that are still at the centers of controversies in many corners of the world today.
INTRODUCTION
Grażyna J. Kozaczka
In her 1898 treatise, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), an American feminist writer and lecturer, clearly identified the differences between opportunities available to either young men or women entering adulthood:
To the young man confronting life the world lies wide. . . . What he wants to be, he may strive to be. What he wants to get, he may strive to get. . . .
To the young woman confronting life there is the same world beyond, there are the same human energies and human desires and ambition within. But all that she may wish to have, all that she may wish to do, must come through a single channel and a single choice. Wealth, power, social distinction, fame,—not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter,—all, must come to her through a small gold ring. This is a heavy pressure.1
A quarter century earlier than Perkins Gilman, a Polish author and social reformer, Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910), placed the same issue at the center of her early novel, Marta (1873), which tells a story of a twenty-four-year-old widow and mother who gradually learns that the lack of the “small gold ring” makes her economic situation untenable. Orzeszkowa’s assessment of the condition of women in late-nineteenth-century patriarchal Poland is just as powerful as are the views expressed by Perkins Gilman. Orzeszkowa writes:
[A] woman is not a human being, a woman is an object. . . . A woman is a zero if a man does not stand next to her as a completive number. . . . If she does not find someone to buy her, or if she loses him, she is covered with the rust of perpetual suffering and the taint of misery without remedy. She becomes a zero again, but a zero gaunt from hunger, trembling with cold, tearing at rags in a useless attempt to carry on and improve her lot. . . . There is no happiness for her or bread without a man.2
In her novel, Orzeszkowa argues for women’s right to economic freedom, to successful and productive lives, to useful and serious education, and to equal employment opportunities. She extols the value of work not only as a means of financial support but also as a means of developing and strengthening character. Marta becomes Orzeszkowa’s social manifesto. It is a novel of purpose that advances the author’s worldview and illustrates it pointedly both with direct authorial commentary and with the story of her eponymous protagonist. This authorial commentary could seem heavy handed at times if it did not testify to the young author’s deep engagement in and her passion for the topic. Even before the publication of Marta, Orzeszkowa came out with a pamphlet, “Kilka słów o kobietach” (A few words about women) (1870), in which she advocated for sensible education of girls that would prepare them not only for a domestic role as a wife and mother but also for a possible career in the public sphere. Edmund Jankowski in his monograph about Eliza Orzeszkowa argues convincingly that this pamphlet together