Hanka—Jagna Borynowa

Hanka the Farmstead Keeper’s relationship with Jagna Borynowa shifts from resentment to a hard-won solidarity: Hanka acknowledges Jagna’s wrongdoing but refuses to let the village make her the sole object of blame. Her care is both private and public, expressed first in a quiet act of tending and later in outspoken criticism of the unequal judgment directed at Jagna and the Voyt.

From anger to care

The change begins after Hanka’s friends have gone. The shame of the scandal had still been choking her, and anger at Jagna had held her in its grip; now that anger vanishes. Hanka goes to look in on the other side of the house, ostensibly to see Maciej Boryna, and finds Jagna asleep without having undressed. Rather than wake or rebuke her, Hanka closes the door and carefully undresses her by touch. The gesture is small and private, but it marks a decisive change: Hanka responds to Jagna’s exposed helplessness with care instead of punishment.

Later, Hanka thinks of the fate that might have befallen Jagna with strange pity and checks on her several more times that evening. Her compassion does not require her to declare Jagna innocent. It arises alongside the knowledge that Jagna is frightened, shamed, and without dependable support. Hanka’s attention is practical as well as emotional: in a household and community where an abandoned woman can be left to face danger alone, she makes sure Jagna is not entirely unattended.

Shared judgment of the Voyt

The conversation with Jagustynka gives Hanka’s change a public dimension. Jagustynka says that Jagna is not without sin but that the Voyt is most guilty. Hanka agrees fiercely, adding that he should be made to pay for everything. Pietrek looks at her gratefully. Her agreement redirects anger away from the woman whose scandal is visible and toward the man whom the women consider more culpable.

Jagna’s own understanding of the encounter makes the stakes of Hanka’s defense clearer. In her distressed thoughts, she believes the Voyt got her drunk until she lost her sense of the world and tempted or forced her into sin. She feels that the whole village is shunning her, that doors will be closed against her, and that even her mother has chased her away despite her pleas. The account presents this as Jagna’s perception of what happened and of her abandonment; Hanka’s response does not erase Jagna’s sin, but it refuses to treat that sin as the whole story or as grounds for leaving her without help.

Defending Jagna against public shame

Hanka’s defense becomes explicit after the sermon. She is troubled that Jagna was rebuked from the pulpit almost by name, with the priest shaking his fists, while the Voyt was not mentioned despite being, in her view, guiltier. Hanka accepts that Jagna has sinned and may be scolded, yet objects to the public exposure: Jagna is Boryna’s wife, not a woman to be singled out as a wanton. What happened between the spouses, Hanka thinks, is their affair, and others should mind their own business.

Her argument is not a simple rejection of the village’s moral standards. Rather, she objects to the way those standards are enforced selectively and made into public humiliation. The pulpit’s attention fixes on Jagna, while the Voyt escapes the same denunciation. Hanka therefore distinguishes between acknowledging wrongdoing and sanctioning the crowd’s right to make one woman an example. The distinction matters because the sermon intensifies a social punishment already under way: Jagna is not merely ashamed of the incident but experiences herself as excluded by the whole village.

Selective morality and the limits of solidarity

Hanka sharpens her criticism by naming other cases that the sermon leaves untouched. Magda and the miller’s girls are known, she says, for their conduct, yet the priest does not bring them up; nor does he denounce the manor’s maids. She also points to the Squire at Głuchowo, whose treatment of his farmhands is widely known, and observes that the priest does not raise his voice against him. The examples widen her complaint from Jagna’s immediate predicament to a pattern: public rebuke falls conspicuously on certain women, while men and people with power remain outside its reach.

Hanka’s support is not presented as a complete reconciliation or as proof that she has forgotten the shame and conflict surrounding Jagna. It is a more specific refusal: she offers care when Jagna is asleep and vulnerable, defends her against being singled out, and insists that the Voyt’s responsibility must not be obscured. In this relationship, solidarity does not depend on declaring Jagna blameless. It consists in resisting the conversion of her fault into permission for abandonment, humiliation, and unequal judgment.