Hanka confronts Jagna about her affairs

Hanka confronts Jagna about her affairs in a quarrel that turns a missed morning of planting into a direct contest over work, household authority, and Jagna’s standing in the home. Jagna refuses to hurry with her hair; Hanka answers with accusations drawn from village talk and her own account of Jagna’s conduct. The argument ends without a resolution: Jagna insists that she is in her own home, while Hanka points to Maciej Boryna’s continuing life as the condition that still limits her power to put Jagna out.

The dispute begins with the planting

The confrontation starts when Józka calls through the window to ask whether Jagna is coming out for the planting. Hanka sets aside the pan of borscht and hurries to the other side of the cottage. There, Maciej Boryna lies in bed facing the window, apparently watching Jagna as she combs her long, bright hair before a mirror on the chest. The scene places the everyday demand for fieldwork beside an intimate domestic image: Jagna continues arranging her hair while the others are preparing for labor.

Hanka challenges Jagna for staying inside as if it were a feast day. Jagna says that she cannot rush out with her hair loose. Hanka replies that Jagna could have plaited it many times since dawn; Jagna answers that she could have, but has not. The exchange is brief, but its competing claims are already plain. Hanka treats the delay as a refusal to join necessary work, while Jagna does not offer an excuse beyond her own choice and does not hurry to end the dispute.

A quarrel over whose home it is

Hanka warns Jagna not to play games with her. Jagna answers by challenging the threat behind that warning: will Hanka turn her out, or dismiss her from service? She insists that she is not in Hanka’s house by Hanka’s favor. When Hanka asks whose house it is, Jagna says it is her own and tells Hanka to remember that. The argument thus shifts from whether Jagna will work that morning to who has the right to command or expel her.

Hanka invokes Maciej Boryna’s death as the point at which the balance might change, saying, “Let Father die, and then we’ll see if you’re in your own home or not!” Jagna counters that while he is alive, she can show Hanka the door. Hanka reacts as though struck by the reply and insists that Jagna should be grateful not to hear worse. Jagna, in turn, declares that she is alone and has no one to defend her, but that they will see who comes out on top. Their exchange makes the household’s present hierarchy feel unstable: each woman claims a different source of authority, and neither yields the right to decide who belongs.

Accusations and an angry reversal

Hanka’s response moves from the immediate dispute to Jagna’s reputation. She says that the whole parish knows about Jagna’s affairs, alleges that people have seen her at the inn with Piotr, the Voyt, and recalls opening the door to her after midnight when she returned drunk from what Hanka describes as a disreputable gathering. Hanka presents these claims as evidence that Jagna has gone too far and warns that her influence will end, with neither Piotr, the Voyt nor Antek’s Brother-in-law coming to her defense. The scene establishes that these allegations are part of Hanka’s attack; it does not independently settle their truth.

Jagna gathers her hair away from her face. Her determined eyes seem to Hanka like a knife, and the sight intensifies Hanka’s anger until she shakes her fists and shouts. Jagna then answers that she does as she does and everyone else can mind their own business. Tossing her hair back over her shoulders, she is trembling, her hands fluttering at her hips as she glares. The narration makes the quarrel physical as well as verbal: the gestures and visible agitation carry the confrontation beyond an argument about rules or gossip. Hanka’s anger gives way to silence; she slams the door and runs from the room.

The aftermath in the cottage

The quarrel stops, but its effects remain. Hanka is unable to move and sits by the window with the baby, while Józka serves breakfast. The ordinary household routine continues around Hanka, now separated from the work she had set aside to confront Jagna. The scene does not report a reconciliation or a change in Jagna’s position; it records instead how fully the exchange has unsettled Hanka.

When the others go back to work, Hanka eventually pulls herself together and sets off to visit her father, who has been ill for several days. Halfway there, she stops and turns back toward the cottage. That interrupted journey extends the quarrel’s consequence beyond the room: even as Hanka tries to resume a family duty, she cannot carry through with it. The episode’s central reversal is therefore not a settlement of the household dispute, but the abrupt collapse of Hanka’s composure after Jagna’s defiance and the force of her own accusations.