Dominikowa and Jagna’s mother–daughter relationship

Dominikowa and Jagna’s mother–daughter relationship becomes a bond under pressure: care and alarm persist, but household burdens, old grievances, and public disgrace drive them into confrontation. When violence finally reaches their home, Dominikowa is herself knocked aside, yet returns to seek Jagna’s rescue.

A household strained by neglect

In the summer, Dominikowa’s home has fallen into disorder. Jagna wanders in a stupor, seemingly unaware of the world around her, while Jędrzych does his chores carelessly and spends more and more time at Szymek’s. The farm’s neglect is visible in its animals: cows are sometimes driven to pasture without being milked, hungry pigs squeal, and horses chew at the hayracks beside empty mangers. Dominikowa, hobbling with a stick and nearly blind beneath the bindings over her eyes, cannot keep up with the work alone.

The season’s demands sharpen the crisis. Manure lies drying on the wheat strips instead of being ploughed in; flax needs picking, potatoes need tending, fuel is scarce, tools are rusting, and harvest is approaching. Dominikowa hires a woman as a hand and tries to work herself, urging her children to help, but Jagna does not respond to her pleas. Jędrzych answers a threat by reminding his mother that she threw Szymek out, and that he now has a house, money, a woman, and a cow. His taunt forces Dominikowa to face the consequences of the break with Szymek: she is vexed by him, yet recognizes that she may have to make peace. Her troubled household and her concern for Jagna are intertwined, but they are not the same problem; the farm needs labor, while Jagna’s silence leaves her mother unable to discover what is wrong.

A private crisis made public

Dominikowa’s anxiety about Jagna grows beyond the farm’s visible neglect. She cannot work out what has happened to her daughter, and Jędrzych is equally unable to explain Jagna’s withdrawn state. Dominikowa is reluctant to ask Jagna’s friends, fearing they will tell her more than she wants to know. For three days after the pilgrims leave for Częstochowa, she turns over guesses without finding an answer; finally, at the end of her patience, she takes a sturdy drake and goes to the presbytery.

She returns that evening tear-stained and breathing hard, but says nothing until supper is over and she is alone with Jagna. Then she tells her that people are talking about her and Jasio. Jagna answers that gossip does not interest her, but Dominikowa insists that the village will not let a secret remain private: people speak loudly about what is done quietly. Her warning is not merely a mother’s attempt to govern her daughter. It reveals that Jagna’s personal distress has become a public story, while Dominikowa has had to seek information outside the household because Jagna will not confide in her.

Dominikowa reports that the village judged Jasio on the night of the incident. The organist beat him, the priest joined in with his pipe, and Jasio was sent to Częstochowa, ostensibly to keep him safe from Jagna. Dominikowa presents these events as trouble Jagna has caused and presses her daughter with reminders of past wrongs, making the confrontation a reckoning over more than this single affair. She speaks of the disgrace brought upon her old age and of the way the villagers now regard Jagna. Jagna, in turn, answers that her mother was no better when she was young, turning the accusation back on the parent who claims authority over her.

Jagna’s response to the beating makes clear that the news has wounded her more deeply than her dismissal of gossip suggested. She leaps up, cries out that Jasio has been beaten, wishes harm on those responsible, and breaks into tears. Dominikowa takes little notice of that immediate anguish; she continues to enumerate the sins and grievances that have accumulated between them. Their exchange therefore exposes a painful gap: the mother approaches Jagna through blame, shame, and the demands of communal respectability, while Jagna’s grief for Jasio erupts in an act of feeling that Dominikowa does not acknowledge.

A mother’s attempt to protect and recover her daughter

Later, Dominikowa’s concern takes a more practical, if coercive, form. She asks Jagna why she sent Mateusz away; Jagna says she was tired of him and is not looking for a man. Dominikowa counters that having a husband might end the harassment and insists that Mateusz is capable and honest. Her proposal treats marriage as a possible shield against public scrutiny, even as Jagna refuses the match and the idea that she needs a man. The exchange shows care expressed through the limited choices Dominikowa can imagine for her daughter, rather than through an understanding of what Jagna wants.

When the villagers descend on the house, their violence makes the family’s private conflict physical. Dominikowa tries to bar their way and is trampled; Jędrzych is beaten when he leaps to defend her. Mateusz attempts to stop the attackers at the storeroom with a bar, but they split his head and leave him unconscious. Jagna, shut inside, does not fight back or call out. The mob tears down the door, drags her into the farmyard, and carries her away to be beaten and expelled. Dominikowa’s household, already weakened by neglect and estrangement, cannot protect its members from the village’s collective assault.

Dominikowa is away when Jagna is taken. Bloodied and in torn clothes, she hurries along with her stick, cursing the villagers as they pass; they duck and flee from her. She then strides to Jagna’s rescue. The shift from the earlier confrontation is stark: Dominikowa had answered her daughter’s grief with reproach, but when the crowd turns its violence against Jagna, she moves toward her despite her own injuries and frailty. Their relationship remains marked by accusation and failed understanding, yet the attempted rescue makes the bond’s enduring force visible at the moment of greatest danger.

Frailty, authority, and the storm

Dominikowa’s impaired sight shapes how she confronts a crisis she cannot fully see. At home, Jagna’s silence leaves her guessing; away from home, she seeks information at the presbytery. Later, bloodied and feeling her way with her stick, she recognizes the villagers passing her and curses them. The shift is significant: unable to command her daughter’s confidence or control the crowd, she still makes her voice a force the frightened villagers cannot ignore.

The rescue attempt leads into a storm that takes over the scene. Clouds gather, rain falls, and the wind bends the poplars and drives across the wheat toward the forest; thunder shakes the ground and cottages. The weather does not settle the mother-daughter conflict or explain Jagna’s fate. Instead, its mounting violence extends the chapter’s movement from a neglected household to a village in upheaval, leaving Dominikowa’s rush toward Jagna suspended within a landscape as turbulent as the human crisis.