Forbidden desire and adultery

Forbidden desire and adultery are presented through Jagna’s continuing attachment to Antek after she has married Maciej Boryna. The desire is not simply a secret affair already in progress: in these scenes it appears as memory that returns against her will, a conflict between longing and religious prohibition, and a charged invitation whose consequences remain uncertain. Jagna’s marriage binds her to Boryna, but it does not extinguish her feeling for Antek; instead, the distance between what she wants and what she believes she must do becomes the center of the drama.

Desire after marriage

Boryna’s household has settled into an outwardly prosperous order. He is besotted with Jagna, follows her with his eyes, and relies on her judgment, while she feels impatient with his attentions and increasingly wants to be alone. Her irritation spills into the household’s work: she leaves tasks to her mother or Józka, moves through the rooms in a temper, and finds excuses to check the oven or the colt. Yet the work and movement are less an escape than a cover for thought. Her mind turns to Antek, and the contrast between Boryna’s adoration and her own absent-mindedness exposes the emotional emptiness of the marriage for her.

Antek has been absent from her life for nearly three months. Since the wedding and the move, work and hardship have filled the days, and people have been reluctant to speak of him in front of her. Now the memory comes back with sudden force: she imagines him standing before her, sorrowful and reproachful. She asks herself why he alone has returned to her thoughts, rather than Mateusz, Stacho Płoszka, or any of the other men she knows. The question does not resolve her feeling; it makes its singularity harder to evade. She experiences the desire as something that has taken hold of her, disturbing her peace and carrying her imagination toward the woods and forest.

Marriage, conscience, and constraint

Jagna understands the boundary she would cross. She is Boryna’s wife, and she has heard in confession that speaking with Antek would be forbidden because it would be a mortal sin. Even the possibility of a single conversation, with witnesses present, seems to her both desperately desired and impossible. Her marriage is not merely the social setting around the desire: it is the obligation through which she names that desire as forbidden, while the religious teaching she recalls gives her a language of guilt and restraint.

The conflict is represented from within Jagna’s experience rather than as a settled moral judgment. The priest’s warning returns vividly to her, and fear briefly strengthens her resolve not to go out. She tries to renounce the desire and to forget Antek, but her longing remains, described through images of life waiting for warmth: a snow-laden tree longing for spring sun and the earth responding to the first breath of warmth. The seasonal imagery makes desire feel both embodied and difficult to command. Religious fear prevails in her actions for the moment, yet it does not quiet the force that makes her wonder whether she could resist if Antek called.

Christmas Mass: recognition and invitation

At Christmas Mass, the private longing becomes an encounter in a public, sacred setting. Antek has come with his wife and Stach’s family, but he stays at the back of the church rather than taking his former place among the farmers before the altar. When he sees Maciej Boryna’s household entering, with Jagna at its head, he moves through the crowd and kneels beside her beneath the spruce branches. Jagna does not at first see who is there; during the Mass she glances aside and recognizes him. The moment is silent, but recognition changes the service around them into a scene of intense mutual attention.

Jagna tries to look at her prayer book, yet the letters and pages cease to register. Antek’s sorrowful gaze fills her awareness, and his closeness is conveyed through her bodily response: she hears his short, hot breathing and feels overwhelmed by fear, joy, and desire. The congregation continues to pray and sing, while the two remain absorbed in one another. The contrast is sharp: the church gathers the community in shared ritual, but Jagna’s attention narrows until the public ceremony seems to fall away.

Antek leans closer and whispers her name. Then he asks her to meet him beyond the rick one evening, saying he will wait and needs to speak with her. Jagna does not answer aloud. Her strength fails, her voice catches, and she begins to rise as though she might go at once. The first carol interrupts that movement and brings her back to the people around her. The scene ends not with a meeting but with a suspended choice: the invitation has made the forbidden possibility immediate, while the interruption leaves her response unspoken.

The struggle to meet

Afterward, Jagna remains caught between the appeal of Antek’s words and the fear that she will sin. She is cold and alienated even in a busy household, and his whispered invitation continues to sound in her heart. She resolves not to go out, repeats to herself that it would be a mortal sin, and stays away from the farmyard because she fears finding him there. Her restraint is active and anxious: she watches herself for the moment when a call might overcome her resolve, and wonders whether she would be able to resist.

The later evening scene makes that struggle visible through restless behavior. At supper Jagna urges others to eat after they have put down their spoons, laughs suddenly, joins the girls in conversation, then darts across the house and turns back in the hallway. The urge to run out to the hayrick grows, but fear of being noticed and fear of sin hold her back. She imagines Antek waiting nearby, perhaps in the orchard, and begins to look for her apron, intending to go only long enough to tell him she will not come. Watchful eyes sharpen the risk: Jagustynka follows her movements, Nastka looks at her strangely, and Boryna is present in the household. Jagna finally checks herself, exhausted by the struggle. When Łapa barks outside and Boryna looks through the window, she springs up in alarm. The evidence leaves the encounter unresolved, but shows how secrecy has made even the possibility of a meeting govern her movements.

Narrative significance

The episodes distinguish desire from decision. Jagna’s longing is persistent, but it does not make her immediately act: she remembers Antek, fears religious punishment, senses the household’s scrutiny, and repeatedly tries to stop herself. The Christmas invitation and the later temptation at home therefore form a sequence of approach and restraint rather than a completed rendezvous. Their tension rests in the space between bodily impulse and chosen action.

The narrative also gives Jagna’s inward conflict substantial weight. Her desire is not reported only through Antek’s pursuit or through village judgment; readers see her thoughts, the work she uses to distract herself, her shame, and the physical intensity of the encounter at Mass. At the same time, her available choices are constrained by marriage, religious teaching, and the close attention of others in the household. Forbidden desire thus becomes more than a private attraction: it exposes the pressure between personal longing and the social and moral order in which Jagna lives, while leaving the immediate outcome open.