Jagna’s conflict between desire and marital duty

Jagna’s conflict between desire and marital duty is a sustained inner struggle in which longing for Antek persists even as she recognizes that acting on it would violate her marriage to Boryna and the religious prohibition she has heard in confession. The conflict does not resolve into a settled choice: it repeatedly moves from yearning to fear, from efforts at restraint to renewed expectation, making ordinary work and household life the setting for an increasingly consuming anticipation.

Identity and Terms of the Conflict

Jagna is Boryna’s wife, and she understands her marriage as an enduring bond. The obstacle to her desire is therefore not simply the risk of being discovered. In her own moral reckoning, speaking to Antek would already cross a religious boundary: the priest has taught her in confession that the act would be a mortal sin. She imagines that even a single conversation might be possible if witnesses were present, but recognizes that the opportunity may never come. Her marital status and religious instruction make restraint feel like an obligation, while neither diminishes her longing.

The conflict has a history of separation and recurrence. Nearly three months have passed since Jagna last saw Antek, apart from once passing him on the road beneath the poplars before her wedding. The wedding, her move, troubles, and the demands of farm life had crowded him from her thoughts; other people also hesitated to speak of him in her presence. Then his remembered image returns abruptly, marked by a sorrowful, reproachful gaze. Jagna wonders why this memory should seize her rather than thoughts of Mateusz, Stacho Płoszka, or anyone else. The involuntary force of remembering makes desire feel less like a decision she has made than a pressure she cannot readily dismiss.

Memory, Work, and Longing

Once Antek comes to mind, practical activity offers little relief. Jagna tries to fend off the memory and turns to her tasks, but keeps recalling his blue eyes, dark brows, and lips. She tidies the room and, although she rarely does so, tends the cows in the evening. The work passes quickly under her hands without quieting the yearning. Eventually she sits beside Józka, who is making little globes, and bursts into tears.

Her family responds to the visible distress without being able to ease it. Her mother and Boryna comfort and pet her, looking into her eyes as if she were a child, but Jagna cries on. Then her mood changes abruptly: she rises almost merrily, chats and laughs, and seems ready to sing, though it is Advent. Boryna and her mother exchange a grave look and withdraw to whisper in the hall; when they return, they are suddenly joyful and affectionate. The episode shows the emotional volatility surrounding Jagna’s private struggle, but does not establish that her family understands its cause. Her thoughts remain with Antek even while the household interprets and responds to her outward behavior.

Advent and the Effort to Resist

During a later winter holiday, the village is lively despite a snowstorm: people visit and talk along the lanes, sleighs pass, and children play near the pond. Jagna, however, feels cold even beside the cheerful hearth and estranged from her own household, as if she were among strangers. Antek’s remembered whispers continue to sound in her heart. The contrast between public festivity and her inward distress makes her isolation especially plain.

The priest’s condemnation returns to her as a vivid inward presence, complete with his red face and threatening gestures. Jagna tries to strengthen her resistance by recalling the sin and resolving not to go out. Yet her longing is described through images of nature: a snow-laden tree yearning for spring sunlight and the earth tensing at the first warmth. The metaphors give desire the force of a seasonal awakening, while her religious fear insists that she must refuse it. She stays inside and is even afraid to venture into the farmyard, in case Antek is waiting there and calls to her. Her fear is not only that she might hear him, but that she would be unable to resist answering.

Jagna tries to occupy herself with work, but Józka has already taken charge of the household tasks and Boryna keeps close, telling her not to rush about. The lack of work leaves her with fewer distractions, while the presence of others narrows her opportunities to act. Neither arrangement resolves the conflict: restraint depends on avoiding the encounter rather than on the disappearance of desire.

Anticipation and Watchfulness

At supper, after the household’s previous exertions, Jagna bustles about feverishly, urging people to eat when they have already put down their spoons. She moves from laughter and talk with the girls to sudden trips across the house and back again. As evening drags on, her wish to run outside to the hayrick grows stronger. She cannot decide whether to go; she fears both discovery and sin, and imagines Antek waiting nearby, perhaps in the orchard or looking toward the windows.

For a moment, she prepares to leave. She looks for her apron and moves toward the door, telling herself that she might go only to say that she will not come because it is sinful. The attempt to turn a meeting into a refusal reveals how powerfully she is drawn toward the possibility of seeing him. But she stops. Jagustynka watches her every step, and Nastka and Boryna also seem to be observing her. Unsure whether they have noticed anything, Jagna decides not to go that night. The restraint is real, but it is achieved through fear, suspicion, and interruption rather than peace of mind.

Her attention remains fixed on signs that Antek may be near. When Witek mentions him while Boryna is away, Jagna stops what she is doing and listens. She offers Witek another ten kopecks and asks whether Antek went home, but darts out before hearing his answer. From the porch she scans the orchard and fences and looks behind the hayrick; finding no one, she quickly settles back into gloom. She then scolds Józka to hurry with the cows, and the two quarrel. A sound near the gable window again draws Jagna’s attention, and she sends Witek to check whether a piglet has escaped. The sequence gives no confirmation that Antek is present. Instead, his possible presence reorganizes Jagna’s attention, turning ordinary sounds and spaces into occasions for expectation.

Narrative Role and Significance

Jagna’s conflict is presented through repeated contrasts between inward desire and outward conduct. She can keep working, remain in the cottage, or stop at the door, but these acts do not end her longing; they expose how much effort restraint requires. Religious teaching supplies the language of guilt, marriage supplies the obligation, and the household’s watchful presence supplies immediate social pressure. Against these forces, memory and anticipation continually return.

The recurring places of possible encounter—the orchard, the farmyard, the window, and the hayrick—make the struggle spatial as well as moral. Jagna is drawn toward the outside while remaining surrounded by domestic work and other people’s eyes. Her waiting for Antek never becomes proof that he is there, and her alarm at a sound or mention of his name cannot be mistaken for a completed meeting. The uncertainty is central to the conflict: Jagna’s desire persists not only in contact with Antek, but in the suspense of imagining that he might appear and having to decide, again, whether to go.