Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction. Grażyna J. Kozaczka
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and her desire to learn and know. Her mother attempts to correct Antosia’s attitude because the older woman has internalized the discriminatory practices against women rooted in religious beliefs. She understands the hardships faced by the rebellious under the threat of social ostracism, since, as William H. Chafe suggests, “clearly defined gender roles provided comfort and security for many, but . . . also discouraged deviancy.”42 Antosia’s mother’s favorite cautionary tale for her daughter has always been the biblical story of Eve: “Antosia, be not too bold, for curiosity is the first step to hell.” And when the daughter, a young woman now, with her husband and two small children decides to emigrate to America, “her mother warned her with a threat in her voice, ‘Antosia, you are such a crazy one to see . . . to know everything. Just stay home and take care of your man and your children.’” But how can this bright young woman heed her mother’s warning while “her big blue eyes sparkled with every new idea, every new thing that came to her”?43
Even though Antosia Milewski is a part of a strong ethnic community, she becomes aware of the subtle influence of the new culture on her immigrant friends when one of them abandons the customary kerchief for a beautiful hat purchased downtown. Thaddeus C. Radzilowski posits that American fashion became a strong “lure of modern life”44 for immigrant women. Antosia herself interacts with a couple of American women who offer different patterns of behavior, represent diverse values, and suggest new aspirations. She likes nothing better than visiting her children’s school and talking, in her broken English, to Miss Cook, the children’s teacher. Through Miss Cook, she also receives her first paid position, as a cleaning woman, which strengthens her self-esteem as a wage earner. However, her great desire to learn is repeatedly thwarted by her husband, who, although attending a night school himself, consistently refuses to allow her to join him. His answer is always the same: “A woman’s place is in the home. . . . With everything you want to get mixed up. . . . Better you just watch the kettles on the stove.”45 He even withholds his textbooks from her when she wants to study at night. Restrictions placed on Antosia’s educational goals bring to mind Tillie Olsen’s poignant novella, “Tell Me a Riddle,” where Eva, a young immigrant wife and mother, struggles to assert her right to intellectual stimulation against her husband’s indifference and self-absorption. He never relinquishes his social activities so she might leave the house full of their small children to join her friends in an evening discussion circle, and often when he returns home late at night “stimulated and ardent, sniffing her skin” as she is reading and nursing a baby, he orders her to go to bed, to “put the book away, don’t read, don’t read.”46 Contrary to Krawczyk’s Mrs. Kulpek, who chooses her quilt over her husband’s lovemaking, and Antosia, who does not capitulate in the face of adversity, Eva’s spirit is crushed and even in dying she is denied, in Mary Ann Ferguson’s phrase, “personal fruition.”47
In Krawczyk’s “For Dimes and Quarters,” Antosia continuously changes her tactics to find a way of crossing the boundaries set by her husband. If she cannot go to school, she studies at home; if she cannot share her husband’s books openly, she searches through all his belongings clandestinely to locate the precious objects and attempts to make sense of the lessons alone while he is at work. All these small acts of resistance culminate in her big decision to purchase a thirty-six-volume set of encyclopedias from a traveling salesman. Unquestionably, Antosia’s choice has been determined and empowered by her economic circumstances, by the fact that however small her earnings as a cleaning woman have been, she has her own money, which she keeps separate from the family budget.
The books’ arrival leads to a split in Antosia’s family straight along gender lines. While she and her two daughters are delighted with the books, her husband and both sons are scornful or dismissive. The boys never have enough time to read and the husband rages, “‘Are you crazy? Books are not bread. They cost money. . . . The children have books at school. I already pay taxes for them. What craziness got into your head? Remember,’ he shouted, ‘I do not pay a cent!’ He walked out slamming the door.”48 Thus the husband’s domination is again asserted through the economic pressure of the breadwinner. When unexpectedly the bill for the full, not the discounted price of the encyclopedias comes in the mail, Milewski explodes again, angrily chastising his wife for her extravagance and naïveté in trusting a salesman. Milewski joins several other husbands in Krawczyk’s stories who control their wives’ behavior or punish them by withholding financial support. For example, in “My Man,” Mrs. Sobota tells a tale of her husband’s insane jealousy, which leads him not only to abusive behavior toward her but also to his pressuring her through stopping her grocery or fuel credit. Yet, she does not allow herself to be victimized and seeks help from her son’s teacher in finding a lawyer and pursuing a divorce: “Now I got to fight! I got to fight for my rights!”49 Mrs. Sobota does not divorce her husband and the spouses make up at the end of the story, but Krawczyk still refuses to construct a female character who meekly accepts abuse and victimization. In considering a divorce, Mrs. Sobota is willing to endure the censure of her community and its religious leaders rather than stay in an unhealthy relationship that harms not only her but also her young son, Edvard.
Antosia Milewski possesses a similar defiant streak. Her husband’s anger over the purchase of the encyclopedia set notwithstanding, she blissfully devotes herself to perusing different volumes while her daily chores remain unattended to. The books have the power to transport her back to the country of her youth when her daughter reads to her the encyclopedia entry on Poland, and the pictures of the Polish countryside bring Antosia to tears. Even though Antosia manages to convince all her four children of the value of education hidden within the encyclopedia, the husband remains in opposition. If it were not for the help of Miss Cook and the children, Antosia would lose her battle and would have to return all thirty-six volumes. But she does triumph, and “the books would remain in her house.”50 Undoubtedly, Antosia’s story pays tribute to Krawczyk’s own Polish immigrant mother, Anastasia Fortunska Kowalewska, who not only mothered eleven children of whom Monica was the firstborn, but also “taught herself English and bought books for herself and her children,”51 and endured her neighbors’ censure for sending Monica to school instead of forcing her to work, as was the practice of most Polish immigrant families at the time.52
In both “For Dimes and Quarters” and in “Quilts,” Monica Krawczyk deploys a symbolic object—an encyclopedia and a quilt—the value of which, even though universally recognized by the dominant culture, escapes the Polish immigrant men and is appreciated only by the women. Krawczyk’s women are certainly better at understanding the new environment and “reading” the value system of modern America. In her short stories, Krawczyk repeatedly suggests that women face a difficult struggle to convince the men to adapt to the new-world values in order for their families to thrive.
Undoubtedly with her mainstream American readers in mind, Monica Krawczyk offers subtle patterns of ethnicity in her stories. Only “If the Branch Blossoms,” the title story of her collection, is set in Poland, on a prosperous farm where a family practices the traditions which also find their way to America with thousands of Polish peasant immigrants. In her ethnic stories, set in both urban and rural settings, Krawczyk, like many other writers after her, conflates ethnicity with social class: her Polish immigrant characters are mostly farmers or represent the urban working class. She uses typical ethnic markers such as a few Polish expressions, descriptions of Polish holiday customs or traditional foods, and stories about life and family left behind in Poland. Such ethnic elements notwithstanding, her characters are mostly immigrants who seek assimilation and success in their new environment. Using an ethnic milieu, Krawczyk constructs her female characters within a domestic sphere, which turns into a space where the triumvirate of gender, socioeconomic class, and race come together. This domestic immigrant sphere is only rarely invaded by American white middle-class women, and then Krawczyk underscores ethnic and class differences rather than racial solidarity. Her characters perform the traditional tasks expected of wives and mothers, but she also endows them with the ability to understand that they, alone or with the support of other women, have to seek a self-fulfillment impossible to achieve just through repetitive housekeeping tasks in an oppressive environment. Motherhood also falls short of providing exultation and self-satisfaction, since Krawczyk’s women seem to be consumed by the drudgery of the