Hanka the Farmstead Keeper

Hanka the Farmstead Keeper is at once a wife abandoned within her marriage, a mother struggling against hunger, and the determined guardian of a farm. Her decisive change comes when endurance ceases to mean silent submission: after discovering Antek’s betrayal, she recovers from a period of near-collapse and takes practical control of her children’s future and the land on which it depends.

Identity and Circumstances

Hanka lives with Antek and their children in poverty and domestic insecurity. Antek’s drinking, neglect of the household, and infidelity leave her bearing both the daily work and the emotional cost of a marriage in which she has little power over his choices. The children’s needs make her hardship immediate: during a bitter spell, the cottage runs out of firewood, there is no way to cook, and the family has only dry bread. Hanka goes out with the poorest hired hands to gather wood, joining women whose circumstances mark the depth of her fall from a more secure household.

The effort is not represented as a single brave gesture that ends her hardship. She has suffered before and returns to gathering wood more than once, teeth chattering as she presses on. She understands that pity will not provide much beyond a word, and that she has nowhere dependable to go. Her resolve is to keep herself and the children from being ruined, and not to become an object of pity or ridicule. The physical labor is therefore also a declaration of purpose: when necessity narrows her choices, she will still act.

Marriage, Neglect, and Betrayal

Hanka can distinguish between the hardship she has learned to withstand and the betrayal she cannot accept. Poverty, frequent hunger, and Antek’s disregard for home have become familiar burdens. He drinks with companions, returns late, and reaches for his stick when she reproaches him. She recognizes that such behavior is not unique to her household and, for a time, tries to treat it as an evil spell that may pass. His attachment to Jagna is different. The knowledge that he loves another woman while he has a wife and children wounds her as a betrayal that she cannot forget or forgive.

The marriage’s estrangement is made stark in Antek’s response when Hanka tries to bring him home after he has fought with his father. He refuses her appeal and says he would be freer in chains or a dungeon than at her side. The remark exposes how thoroughly he has turned their shared household into a site of rejection. Hanka’s care for him persists, but care cannot make him attentive to the family or soften his refusal to return with her.

Her anger and grief do not immediately become action. After she learns the full story from Weronka, Hanka spends two days in a state of near-stupor: she does not eat or sleep, scarcely responds to the children, and moves her hands without accomplishing her spinning. Antek leaves at dawn and returns late, ignoring her and the children, while she is unable even to speak to him. The betrayal has not merely added another grievance to an already difficult life; for a time, it suspends her capacity to conduct that life at all.

Grief and a Changed Resolve

On the third day, Hanka emerges from this numbness visibly and inwardly altered. Her face is ashen and drawn, and she has lost so much weight that her clothes hang from her. Yet she also discovers a stubborn will to live and fight, accompanied by the certainty that she can overcome what has happened. She gathers the children to her, kisses them, and weeps with them; the shared crying brings relief and restores her awareness of the world around her.

Her changed manner appears in ordinary exchanges as well as in crisis. When asked about the children, she answers directly that Pietruś has recovered from an illness and now wants to eat far more. She looks her interlocutor in the eye without her former diffidence or frightened meekness. Her composure is cold and firm; she speaks without complaint or reproach, as though meeting the older man on equal terms. The change is not a claim that her suffering has vanished. Her tear-worn eyes and harsh voice preserve its trace, while her new directness shows that suffering has altered how she carries herself.

Hanka names the practical consequence of this change when she reconciles with Weronka: she feels like a widow and must take charge of the children and everything else herself. The phrase describes her position rather than an actual bereavement. Antek is alive, but she no longer builds her plans on his presence or support. She thanks Weronka for caring for the household during her collapse and asks forgiveness for her past failings, then turns toward the responsibilities she can control.

Return to Boryna’s Household

Hanka’s return to Boryna’s home begins as a deliberate search for support and a place in the family’s future. She first goes to church alone, kneels at the altar of the Assumption, and confesses her own faults in prayer. She also pleads for mercy for Antek’s grave sins. Her religious response does not erase the betrayal or restore her former dependence on him; it gives her a way to express grief, remorse, and hope while she prepares to act.

When she visits Boryna, she is moved to tears by the sight of him and the memories attached to the old house. He has grown thin and stooped, though he remains stubborn in appearance. They speak for a long time without mentioning either Antek or Jagna, avoiding the painful subjects between them. Before Hanka leaves, Boryna has Józka prepare bundles of provisions and gives her coins for salt. He invites her to come often and asks her to keep an eye on the house. His welcome offers material help, but it also opens a path back into the household from which Hanka and her children have been separated.

Antek objects when he learns she has gone to his father and accepted what Boryna gave her. Hanka answers that Boryna offered the goods himself and that she will not let herself or the children go hungry simply because Antek is unconcerned. Her response marks a clear break with the expectation that she should defer to her husband even when he fails to provide. The children’s need, not Antek’s permission, determines what she will accept.

Guarding the Farm and Its Future

When Boryna is gravely incapacitated and Antek is absent, Hanka acts on the threat that the farm may pass into other hands. Bylica warns her that the old man may soon die, Antek is out of his mind, and the blacksmith could move into the household and secure the property. Hanka immediately gathers the children and nearby clothes, leaves the rest with Weronka, and moves into the cottage. She settles there for good while the village is still reeling from the forest conflict, taking up residence beside the dying Boryna and watching over the place.

Her claim is both familial and material: the land belongs to Antek too, and its future affects her children. Hanka understands that inheritance may favor whoever occupies and holds the property first, and that the law could support that person. She therefore refuses to be driven out by the blacksmith’s anger or threats. Rather than wait for protection from others, she guards the farm with the fierce attentiveness of a parent shielding young children. Her practical principle is that those who do not help themselves cannot expect God to do it for them.

The work of taking charge appears in small, concrete acts. Hanka gets the children up, gives them bread on the porch, calls for Łapa to keep them company, and then goes to see Boryna. She adjusts his bedding and gives him water, finding him motionless and unable to see. She is angry at the household’s disorder and at Jagna sleeping in the other bed, but continues to care for the old man as she protects the property. In spring, back on the farm and looking across the fields, she remembers the hunger, Antek’s infidelities, and the sorrows she has survived. Her return to the land is not simply a return to comfort: it is a hard-won foothold from which she can keep her children and defend their place in the family’s future.