Maciej Boryna’s jealous punishment of Jagna begins not with an accusation but with a silence. After a feast day, the household seems tomb-like: no one argues or cries out, yet fear and resentment thicken beneath the quiet. Maciej initially says nothing against Jagna and makes no complaint to Dominikowa. His anger instead turns inward, leaving him bedridden and the household suspended between apparent calm and the expectation of disaster.

Illness and the growth of suspicion

Maciej’s sickness is described through its bodily effects: nausea, stabbing pain in his side, and fever leave him unable to rise. Dominikowa rubs him with hot oil and offers a physical explanation for his pain, while also trying to defend Jagna in private. Maciej does not answer her arguments. He turns toward the wall, groans, and withholds any reassurance, making his silence itself a source of fear in the cottage.

Only after he is confined to bed does Maciej begin assembling what he has heard about Jagna. He revisits old reports, weighs them together, and settles on the belief that her conduct with Antek has made a mockery of him. The narration presents jealousy as something that overtakes both thought and body: Maciej tosses restlessly, curses under his breath, and watches Jagna with a hawk-like stare. His suspicion is the motive for what follows, but this episode establishes what Maciej believes, not independent proof of the accusation.

For nearly a week, Jagna lives under that gaze. Pale and gaunt, she moves through the house as if half asleep; she cannot rest, has little appetite, and finds that even ordinary tasks slip from her hands. She fears Maciej’s silence and his constant watching, while longing for Antek and receiving no sign from him. At dusk she repeatedly looks beneath the hayrick, afraid to ask anyone about him. The place becomes a focus of anxious expectation: she searches it in mortal fear, but the week passes without Antek appearing.

A household turned against her

Jagna finds no reliable refuge in the surrounding household. She goes repeatedly to Dominikowa’s home, but her mother is often away visiting the sick or at church; when present, Dominikowa gives her stern looks and reproaches rather than counsel. At the neighbors’ homes, people do not openly send Jagna away, but they speak through clenched teeth and regard her severely. Their lamentations about Maciej’s illness make the village’s judgment part of the pressure inside the cottage.

The isolation is also practical. Józka needles Jagna whenever she can, while Witek is too frightened of the master to chatter in front of him. Pietrek’s quiet fiddle-playing in the stable is Jagna’s one pleasure, but Maciej will not allow the music inside the house. Even as she is treated less and less as its mistress, the domestic space remains ordered around Maciej’s authority and the fear of provoking him.

When Maciej recovers enough to be up, Jagna mistakes his return to his feet for an end to the crisis. She approaches him, glances into his face, and tries to coax him with sweet talk around the house. He answers sharply, and the hope of a return to their former intimacy collapses. He no longer caresses or indulges her, nor tries to understand her thoughts. Instead, he scolds her over disorder and drives her to work as if she were a hired servant.

Control of the farm and of Jagna

Maciej reasserts his position through the routines of the farm. He spends whole days threshing with Pietrek and working on the wheat in the barn, rarely leaving the homestead. In the evenings he mends harnesses or carves farm tools. His return to work accompanies a broader effort to keep everything within his grasp: he watches Jagna so closely that she cannot take a step without being observed, and he locks away her Sunday best, keeping the key on himself.

The punishment is not only surveillance but the removal of her place in the household. Maciej gives Józka instructions about the work, discusses practical matters with her, and charges her with keeping watch. Jagna is left spinning, wandering aimlessly, or seeking her mother, while the household’s responsibilities and authority are redirected around her. Maciej’s grievance is made explicit when he tells Dominikowa that Jagna had been mistress of the house and lacked for nothing, but that he will defend what is his and will not be made a fool of. He identifies her association with Antek as the reason for his conduct. His language casts both the household and Jagna’s position within it as possessions he can defend by command.

Jagna’s resistance and the unresolved conflict

The struggle changes when Jagna stops yielding. After a dispute over the key to her clothes chest, she insists that the things inside are hers and that she can look after them herself. From that evening the cottage becomes openly contentious. Maciej does not relent, but Jagna answers his words at length and loudly enough for the shouting to carry to the road; she begins doing things out of spite rather than submitting quietly.

Her defiance reaches into daily habits. She picks on Józka, makes Pietrek play in the evenings, and sings late into the night from the other side of the house, leaving Maciej alone in the first chamber. On Sundays she dresses in her best clothes and goes to church without waiting for her husband, lingering on the road with the young men. These actions do not end Maciej’s control, but they make its limits visible: he is astonished and furious, yet cannot dictate her moods or keep her conduct entirely from village notice. To preserve peace, he gives way more often.

The episode ends not in reconciliation but in an unstable contest over authority. Maciej still sees Jagna’s independence as a challenge to his standing, while Jagna refuses to return to the meek obedience he expected. Their marriage becomes a struggle over who may command the house, control its property, and define Jagna’s place within it. The movement from hush to shouting marks the change: jealousy first makes the cottage feel like a tomb, then turns it into a battleground of surveillance, possession, and resistance.