Marta. Eliza Orzeszkowa
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Ibid., 110.
12. Jankowski, 154.
13. Ignacy Aleksander Gierymski (1850–1901), also known as Aleksander Gierymski, a Polish artist of the late nineteenth century, painted contemporary urban views of Warsaw.
14. Norman Davies, Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 170.
15. Ibid., 171.
16. Both Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” can be useful companion texts to Marta, as all three illuminate powerful social forces restricting a woman’s ability to construct an autonomous and fulfilled self. Each uses different narrative techniques to achieve a similar goal and to reach a strikingly similar conclusion. Perkins Gilman in her book Women in Economics suggests some solutions to the problem of women’s economic disempowerment that could also provide interesting material for a comparison with Orzeszkowa’s proposed solutions.
17. Further information about Orzeszkowa’s life and work can be found in Józef Bachórz, introduction to Eliza Orzeszkowa, Nad Niemnem (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1996); Grażyna Borkowska, Pozytywisci i inni (Warsaw: PWN, 1996); Grażyna Borkowska, Alienated Women: A Study on Polish Women’s Fiction, 1845–1918, transl. Ursula Phillips (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001); Jan Detko, Orzeszkowa wobec tradycji narodowowyzwoleńczych (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1965).
18. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 13.
19. Ibid., 16.
20. Frank Kelleter and Ruth Mayer, “The Melodramatic Mode Revisited: An Introduction,” in Melodrama! The Mode of Excess from Early America to Hollywood, ed. Frank Kelleter, Barbara Krah, and Ruth Mayer (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2007), 9.
21. More information about the connections between realism and melodrama can be found in Neil Hultgren, Melodramatic Imperial Writing: From the Sepoy Rebellion to Cecil Rhodes (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014).
Questions for Further Discussion and Writing
1. What social, political, and familial forces shape Marta’s character and life? Are they responsible for her tragic end?
2. How do some of the novel’s episodic female characters manage to subvert male power and achieve substantial financial success? What do they sacrifice in pursuit of their success?
3. Orzeszkowa’s Marta illustrates the oppressive power of patriarchy that is detrimental to a healthy development of all members of society. How does the author present the system of power relations between men and women and the disempowerment of women? What attitudes toward patriarchal oppression do her female characters represent?
4. Marta has a very keen moral sense, and the necessity to transgress her moral code causes her great anguish. What is the source of Marta’s moral code, given that Orzeszkowa does not characterize her as a religious person?
5. Is Marta’s tragic fate at the end of the novel a predictable and logical outcome of her story? What is the root cause of Marta’s tragedy, and could it have been averted?
6. In her search for employment, Marta meets several kind men and women who attempt to help her, yet each time their efforts are in vain. Why? What prevents them from solving Marta’s problem?
7. Marta’s childhood friend Karolina uses men to secure a comfortable lifestyle for herself. What is Marta’s view of such an arrangement, and does she pass a moral judgment on Karolina? What does the novel suggest about the sexual vulnerability of women?
8. What are Orzeszkowa’s views on motherhood?
9. Orzeszkowa’s passion for her topic influenced her narrative technique. She repeatedly interrupts the flow of her narrative by including authorial commentary and analysis. Does this technique still appeal to contemporary readers?
10. How does Orzeszkowa connect gender and class as two powerful forces oppressing Polish women in the late nineteenth century? Was this a specifically Polish intersection of oppression or a broader problem highlighted in other literatures?
11. What does Orzeszkowa’s Marta contribute to the feminist conversation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
12. Some literary critics analyze the tragic outcomes of such feminist texts as Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in terms of the character’s personal triumph. Could the ending of Orzeszkowa’s Marta be described as Marta’s victory? Why or why not?
Guide to Pronunciation
The following key provides a guide to the pronunciation of Polish words and names.
a is pronounced as in father
c as ts, as in cats
ch as guttural h, as in German Bach
cz as hard ch, as in church
g (always hard), as in get
i as ee, as in meet
j as y, as in yellow
rz as hard zh, as in French jardin
sz as hard sh, as in ship
szcz as hard shch, as in fresh cheese
u as oo, as in boot
w as v, as in vat
ć as soft ch, as in cheap
ś as soft sh, as in sheep
ż as hard zh, as in French jardin
ź as soft zh, as in seizure
ó as oo, as in boot
ą as a nasal, as in French bon
ę as a nasal, as in French vin or fin
ł as w, as in way
ń as ny, as in canyon
The accent in Polish words almost always falls on the penultimate syllable.
Marta
A woman’s life is an eternal burning flame of love, some people say.
A woman’s life is renunciation, others claim.
A woman’s life is motherhood, cry those who take that view.
A woman’s life is pleasure and amusement, still others joke.
A woman’s chief virtue is blind trust, all agree, speaking in chorus.
Women believe blindly, love, devote themselves to others, raise children, amuse themselves . . . hence they live up to everything the world demands of them. Yet the world looks at them awry and responds to them now and then with reproaches or admonitions:
“Things are not well with you!”
The more knowing, intelligent, or unhappy women look inside themselves or at the world around them and repeat: