Jagna Dominikówna

Jagna Dominikówna first emerges through the contrast between how others look at her and how little the village’s attention seems to occupy her. She works among the women scutching flax, dressed simply in a smock and red skirt with a kerchief against the dust. When Maciej Boryna calls a blessing to her, she answers merrily and raises her blue eyes to him. The brief exchange places her within the ordinary labor of the village while marking the attention that will gather around her.

Work and public attention

At church, Jagna’s appearance draws a more conspicuous response. She is as tall as the tallest men, and the farmhands gathered at the gates grin and stare. The women and girls notice the details of her festive clothing: a shimmering striped wool skirt, black boots laced over white stockings with red strings, a green velvet bodice embroidered in gold, amber and other beads, and ribbons trailing behind her. The description makes her beauty a public spectacle, admired by men and watched with envy by women.

Yet Jagna does not appear absorbed in that admiration. Her eyes wander over the crowd until they meet Antek Boryna’s fixed gaze; she blushes, tugs at her mother’s sleeve, and leaves without waiting. The gesture turns a public scene into a glimpse of private feeling. The village sees her clothes and figure, but the look she exchanges with Antek reveals an attachment that the onlookers cannot read from her appearance alone.

A marriage arranged around her

Dominikowa’s discussion of a possible marriage for Jagna is framed by practical considerations. Maciej Boryna is described as a substantial, devout, and still-strong farmer who knows officials and might help with Jędrzych’s impending army service. The match is presented as advantageous to the household, while the prospect of grown children claiming their portions makes the question of property and family circumstances part of the conversation.

When asked directly what she thinks, Jagna says that it is all the same to her and that she will go if her mother says she must. She leans against the distaff and gazes vacantly into the fire as the twigs crackle. Her spoken deference sounds like consent, but the narration immediately qualifies it: she is thinking of Antek, and that memory jolts her. The scene therefore distinguishes her quiet acceptance of her mother’s authority from an absence of feeling or desire.

Betrothal and narrative significance

The next day, news of Maciej Boryna and Jagna’s betrothal spreads through Lipce. The announcement arrives as village gossip: the Voyt’s wife, despite her husband’s instruction to keep silent until his return, goes to a neighbor under the pretext of borrowing salt and cannot resist whispering the news. Jagna’s marriage is thus established not only as a family arrangement but as a public event, circulating through the same network of neighbors that has already watched and judged her appearance.

In these early scenes, Jagna is both seen and only partly heard. Her beauty makes her an object of village attention, while her brief choices—a blush, a tug at her mother’s sleeve, and an answer that yields the marriage decision to Dominikowa—offer limited signs of her own response. The contrast between the match arranged for her and her remembered attachment to Antek Boryna establishes a tension between family authority and personal desire before the betrothal becomes village news.