Szymek–Dominikowa

Szymek’s break with Dominikowa turns a mother–son relationship into a dispute over land, shelter, and the right to build a household. On the eve of his marriage to Nastusia, Dominikowa has the farm transferred into her own name and refuses to give her son any land or settlement. Szymek answers first with despair and then with threats, but the conflict does not end in violence: he begins to imagine independence through a purchase at Podlesie, with Nastusia’s savings and practical help from the village. The estrangement shows how an intimate family bond can be broken by the material terms of inheritance—and how a new household may have to be assembled beyond the parental home.

The farm transfer and the approaching wedding

The crisis comes when the banns have been read and the wedding is set for Sunday. Szymek is not merely preparing to marry; he is confronting the question of where the couple will live and what resources they will have. Mateusz explains that Dominikowa has announced through the village official that the farm is written over to her and that she will give Szymek not a single strip of land or let him into the house. The timing makes the refusal especially stark: a marriage is about to begin, but the expected material basis for the young couple’s life together is being withheld.

The news leaves Szymek sitting in the orchard, silent and apparently drained. His stillness is not resignation. When Mateusz asks what he is thinking, Szymek declares that he will take an axe and finish his mother off. He repeats the threat as a vow before God, linking it directly to what he understands as the loss of his inheritance: she denies him land from his father, drives him from the house, and refuses him a settlement. He weeps as he asks where a poor man is supposed to go, then insists that he will not surrender what he regards as his own, even if resistance sends him to prison.

A filial bond pushed toward violence

Szymek’s threat makes the conflict more than a negotiation over acreage. His grievance is sharpened by the person who has acted against him: the wrong, as he sees it, comes from his own mother. He presents the loss of land and home together, so that economic dispossession also becomes a wound within the family. His desperate question about where he can go conveys the stakes of the refusal: without land, a settlement, or access to Dominikowa’s house, he fears being left with no secure place in which to begin married life.

The others do not accept his threat as a solution. They calm him until he falls silent, while Nastusia tries to speak to him through his grief. The people around him consider how they might help, but initially see no way to overcome Dominikowa’s refusal. The scene therefore holds two forms of power in tension: the mother’s control of the farm and household, and the son’s determination not to accept exclusion passively. Szymek’s words expose the violence latent in an inheritance dispute, but the action turns away from his threatened retaliation toward finding another means of securing a home.

Independence at Podlesie

Nastka supplies the practical alternative. She proposes that the couple buy six morgen from the squire at Podlesie and pay by instalments. Szymek returns to the others with renewed energy, praising the plan and declaring that his mother can no longer dictate his future. The proposal does not reconcile him with Dominikowa or restore the land he believes he should have received. Instead, it offers a route out of dependence: a separate holding acquired through a transaction rather than a parental settlement.

The plan immediately meets the question of money. Szymek’s confidence cannot by itself purchase land, but Nastusia has a thousand zlotys, enough for a down payment. The couple’s prospective home thus rests on her savings as well as his resolve. Later, when Nastusia timidly asks whether his mother might help with building, Szymek reacts sharply: he says he would not ask Dominikowa even if he were dying, because she threw him out and rails against Nastusia. His anger makes clear that the separation is relational as well as financial. Nastusia points out that they are left like beggars, without even a cow; Szymek answers that there will be one and that he already has one in mind. The evidence presents this as a determination and a plan, not as a completed purchase or a settled reconciliation.

A new household and the village’s aid

The couple’s independence is not depicted as self-sufficiency achieved in isolation. When Józka, ill and feverish, hears of Nastusia’s need, she asks Hanka to give Nastusia her piglet, so that Nastusia can say a prayer for her in return. Hanka accepts the offer and sends Witek to deliver the animal, since she hesitates to go herself. The gift is modest beside the lost farm, but it gives the threatened new household a concrete form of support. It also contrasts with Dominikowa’s refusal: one household denies Szymek land and a settlement, while another, through Józka and Hanka, offers what it can.

The relation’s arc is therefore a movement from inherited expectation to chosen alliance. Szymek’s first response to his mother’s decision is a violent vow; the intervention of Mateusz and Nastusia redirects him toward a land purchase, and Nastusia’s savings and the piglet gift help make a separate beginning imaginable. The estrangement remains unresolved in the evidence: Szymek rejects the thought of asking Dominikowa for help, and no reconciliation is shown. What changes is his course. Rather than accept exclusion from his mother’s farm as the end of his future, he and Nastusia begin to construct a household on different terms, with land, money, and communal assistance replacing the settlement he had hoped to receive.