Dominikowa

Dominikowa, identified as Marcjanna Antonówna and the widow of Dominik, is both a mother working to secure her family’s place in a land-bound village and a formidable presence within its disputes. She helps direct Jagna’s marriage to Maciej Boryna, manages the household’s religious and practical customs, and fights her sons over property and labor. Her life makes visible the cost of treating land as both family security and the measure of a person’s future: she struggles to preserve her children’s prospects, yet the struggle repeatedly divides the family she is trying to protect.

Identity and Household Authority

Dominikowa belongs to a village economy in which decisions about land and marriage cannot be separated from daily survival. When winter approaches, households debate what livestock or grain to sell and what clothing, tools, and farm supplies they must buy; ready money is scarce, and the cottages fill with arguments. Against this background, Dominikowa’s attention to property is not merely possessiveness. She sees land as the difference between a secure household and a life dependent on hired work. Speaking to Jagna, she insists that the villagers strive and quarrel over “Only land, property!” and warns that life without a field would be a life of poverty and hired labor. She says she has spent her life striving for Jagna, but also fears that her daughter’s marriage will leave her alone.

Her authority is expressed in direct, practical instructions as well as in moral admonition. At home she has a sharp exchange with Szymek, glares at Mateusz without greeting him, and goes to change in the storeroom. At another moment, she reminds Jagna to respect Boryna and avoid behavior that will set village tongues wagging. Her warning that people are “forever wanting something to bite on” shows that she understands reputation as a force that can make private conduct a public problem. The concern is protective, but it also asks Jagna to live within the village’s scrutiny.

Dominikowa’s work includes knowledge of care and customary practice. When she hears that an ailing woman is calling out, she abandons her intention to go to church and hurries to help; she is regarded as someone who knows illnesses and has nursed people back to health. At Christmas, she tells Jagna, now mistress of Boryna’s household, to distribute feed to the animals and not to milk them until evening the next day, lest they lose their milk. This practical expertise places her inside the seasonal rhythms of household labor, not only its disputes over ownership.

Jagna’s Marriage and Departure

Dominikowa’s strongest intervention in Jagna’s future is her support for the marriage to Maciej Boryna. When the marriage is being settled, she tells him, “Jagna’s yours, Maciej, yours.” The blunt assurance makes the family arrangement sound like a transfer, yet Dominikowa’s reasoning also rests on the material security that a marriage and land can provide. She believes Boryna is a good man who will respect Jagna, while Jagna, in turn, may have influence over him. Her confidence that the older man thinks highly of her daughter sits uneasily beside the unequal conditions of the match and Jagna’s private terror as the wedding approaches.

The farewell at Dominikowa’s cottage is a public and religious transition as well as a family separation. Boryna takes Jagna by the hand, and the two kneel. Dominikowa removes a religious picture, makes the sign of the cross over them, blesses them, and sprinkles them with holy water. Jagna falls at her mother’s feet in tears, then asks forgiveness and says farewell to the others. The women embrace her one after another, and the room fills with shared crying. Dominikowa’s blessing does not erase the pain of giving her daughter up; it gives that pain a customary form and places the marriage under religious protection.

The wedding festivities also make the change in Jagna’s status visible. The women lead her from the storeroom veiled in a white sheet and seat her on a quilt-covered kneading trough. Bridesmaids move to capture her, while boys and older men defend her; the two groups face each other and sing plaintively. The scene turns the departure into a communal ritual in which the family’s loss is acted out before the village. Later, as mistress of Boryna’s house, Jagna prepares Christmas food with sleeves rolled up, kneading dough and making strudels with her mother’s help. Their practical cooperation persists within a changed household order: Dominikowa can advise her daughter, but Jagna now occupies the place of householder.

Faith, Custom, and Reputation

Dominikowa’s religious life is woven into ordinary work and family authority. Her blessing of the couple accompanies the transfer of Jagna from one household to another; her care for the sick interrupts a planned church visit; and her advice about feeding and milking livestock draws on the customs surrounding Christmas. At Easter, although Hanka, Jagna, and Dominikowa barely speak to one another, they set a table together beside Boryna’s bed. Jagna fashions a butter lamb with rosary-bead eyes and red-wool features, among loaves and cakes prepared for the feast. The shared table does not mean that the women’s tensions have vanished, but it shows customary labor continuing across strained relationships.

Dominikowa also claims the authority to judge conduct in religious terms. During Holy Week, she dismisses the suggestion that she might drink, then rebukes Ambrozy for indulging himself and warns that those who reject good and befriend wickedness will reap the consequences. Her sternness is not simply a public posture: she invokes sin and future judgment as part of how she understands the obligations of a household and a community. Yet the village’s judgments are not directed only outward. Jagustynka recalls Dominikowa’s own youthful conduct while attacking Jagna’s reputation, and Dominikowa grows pale and bows her head. The exchange exposes her vulnerability to the same sexual gossip she warns her daughter to avoid.

Custom also gives her a visible role in welcoming a child into village life. After a christening, she supervises Józka, who carries the infant on a pillow under a shawl, and takes the child around the house, pausing at each corner to speak according to old practice. Such moments place Dominikowa among the keepers of household ritual: she carries inherited forms forward even as family ties and property arrangements change around her.

Sons, Land, and the Fracture of the Household

Dominikowa’s relationship with her sons becomes increasingly defined by labor and inheritance. After Szymek returns with the other men and Jędrzych has recovered, the household might appear able to resume its former life. Instead, the sons refuse the women’s work they had previously done. Dominikowa tries to compel them with a stick; they resist, and their daily shouting and pursuits around the cottage draw neighbors in to calm them. The struggle concerns more than obedience: a household that depends on its members’ work cannot easily absorb their refusal to perform it.

The conflict sharpens when Dominikowa refuses Szymek a share of the family property and drives him from the house. She declares that not one strip of land or spoonful of food will be his, even if he is starving. When Szymek learns that she has had the farm written over to herself and will not allow him a settlement, he fears he has nowhere to go and says he will not give up what he regards as his. The quarrel turns inheritance into an immediate contest over shelter, food, and the right to establish a household. Dominikowa’s defense of her property is forceful, but it leaves her son feeling dispossessed by his own mother.

A way forward comes from outside the family’s existing holdings. Szymek returns with a plan to buy six morgen from the squire at Podlesie and pay by installments. His delight at the proposal signals a possible route to independence without first securing a settlement from Dominikowa. It does not reconcile mother and son; it changes the practical terms on which he might make a life. Dominikowa’s wider family history thus echoes the pressure she once described to Jagna: land promises security, but the fight over who receives it can damage the very relationships that land is meant to sustain.

Vulnerability and the Limits of Her Power

In later episodes, Dominikowa’s authority is further complicated by her failing sight. Jagna leads her, her eyes bound, into a gathering where Jagustynka seizes the chance to draw attention to the old woman’s presence. Dominikowa still speaks with force: she calls to Jagna to remind the others what belongs to her. She and Jagna go to court to accuse Hanka of throwing Jagna out, showing that Dominikowa continues to pursue a formal remedy even when she cannot act independently in the way she once did.

That effort unfolds amid broader hardship and family estrangement. Three days after the pilgrimage party leaves for Częstochowa, Dominikowa worries about Jagna but cannot discover what is wrong. Afraid that her friends may tell her more than she wants to know, she tries to guess until uncertainty becomes intolerable, then takes a drake under her arm and goes to the presbytery. Her response is concrete and persistent: she seeks an answer rather than simply accepting distance from her daughter. When she confronts Jagna, however, she recites the daughter’s offenses and accumulated wrongs, turning concern into a long indictment. Maternal attachment and accusation remain intertwined.

The village’s violence reveals how little household authority can protect her when the community acts as a mob. During the assault at her home, Dominikowa bars the attackers’ way; they trample her. Jędrzych comes to her defense and is beaten, and Mateusz is knocked unconscious while trying to stop the crowd at the storeroom. Later, bloodied, in torn clothes, and feeling her way with her stick, Dominikowa meets the returning groups and hurries to Jagna’s rescue. Her final actions preserve the pattern that defines her: she confronts danger on behalf of her daughter, even after age, blindness, family conflict, and public violence have stripped away much of her former control. Her strength is neither uncomplicated mastery nor simple victimhood; it is the stubborn, costly labor of trying to keep kinship alive when property and communal judgment repeatedly pull it apart.