Jagna Pacześ

Jagna Pacześ is Maciej Boryna’s young bride, whose marriage brings her into a household where she briefly finds dignity and authority before becoming the object of her husband’s suspicion and control. Her story in these scenes is marked by sharp reversals: she is dressed and celebrated as the beautiful center of a wedding, then treated as a subordinate; she takes command of the house, then finds herself watched at every turn; and the desire she shares with Antek Boryna becomes a secret that reorganizes her daily life.

The Bride and the Land Settlement

On the morning of the wedding, Jagna is still asleep beneath the bedclothes while her mother, Dominikowa, moves quietly around the room. Dominikowa’s tenderness is inseparable from fear. She has wanted this marriage, believes Maciej Boryna will respect Jagna, and expects her daughter to have influence over him. Yet she worries about the stepchildren, especially the family Boryna has driven from the house, and fears that their grievance may turn into vengeance. The settlement is already in the chest, the banns have been announced, the hog slaughtered, and the guests invited; the arrangements leave little room to retreat. Dominikowa resolves that, while she lives, no harm will come to Jagna, and her prayer steadies her for the day ahead.

The land arrangement is present not merely as a practical detail but as a source of conflict surrounding Jagna’s marriage. When Dominikowa tells her that Antek had spoken most fiercely against her and wanted to take the land away, Jagna refuses to believe it. Her indignant denial exposes a painful gap between what her mother has heard and what Jagna can accept about Antek. The dispute over property therefore enters the marriage before the wedding celebration has settled: Jagna’s place in the household is bound to a settlement that has already deepened the division between Boryna and his son.

At the wedding, the guests are chiefly prosperous farmers and the Boryna and Pacześ families’ kin, in-laws, and friends, including people from distant villages. The poorer one-morgen farmers and hired laborers are conspicuously absent. Jagna emerges from the storeroom in white, velvet, feathers, ribbons, silver, and gold, surrounded by bridesmaids. Her appearance brings the crowded room to a sudden hush; the narration presents her as the ceremony’s visual center, almost like a sacred image carried in procession. The contrast between the affluent guest list and those left outside places her public elevation within the village’s existing social hierarchy.

A Brief Household Authority

After the wedding, Jagna’s position changes from celebrated bride to active housekeeper. She moves through the rooms, directs the work, and sees to the household’s needs with an ease that surprises even her. At one point she sends Boryna to toast two guests who are sitting sullenly, and he obeys. In that moment she feels herself to be the mistress of the house: its governance seems natural in her hands, and with it comes a calm, commanding dignity. The new authority is practical, expressed through decisions and movement around the home rather than through a formal declaration of power.

That authority is real but fragile. Jagna’s ability to direct the household depends on Boryna’s willingness to yield, and others already question whether it will last. The contrast between her confident management and the prediction that she may tire of her husband foreshadows the instability of her position. She has entered the house as its mistress, but she has not gained secure independence within it.

Antek and the Secret Meetings

Jagna’s encounter with Antek in the byre reveals the force of their attraction through its effects on her body and attention. At the sound of his name, she freezes and loses her strength; while milking, she pulls distractedly at the cow’s udders until milk spills over her skirt and onto the ground. Antek tells her he has watched for her since Yuletide, waiting by the hayrick each evening, but she had not come. His words make clear that his pursuit has persisted through the winter and that the meeting is charged by an earlier, frustrated expectation.

He then comes up behind her, puts his arms around her, turns her head, and kisses her so intensely that she loses her breath and drops the pail. The scene ends with Antek slipping away into the night while Jagna remains in the byre, overwhelmed by the encounter and still feeling its force after he has gone. The cows continue chewing their fodder around her, an ordinary farm setting against which the meeting becomes a rupture in routine. Her longing is not presented as a settled plan: it is a sudden, consuming response that leaves her imagining she would follow him anywhere.

The attraction is also displayed in public, though not openly acknowledged. At the inn, Jagna stands by the bar while the young men ask her to dance. She refuses them, talks cheerfully, and searches the crowd with her eyes. Antek watches her closely. The narration sets her finely dressed figure against the other young women at the gathering and makes her beauty the focus of the room’s gaze. When she sees Antek, she blushes and turns away from Boryna, who is being led into a private room. Her attention gives the public gathering a private meaning: even amid the crowd, she and Antek are oriented toward one another.

Surveillance, Resentment, and Constrained Freedom

Boryna’s response to suspicion is to reassert control over both the farm and Jagna. Once recovered, he works for whole days with Pietrek, keeps close to the farmstead, and spends evenings repairing harnesses or whittling tools. He watches Jagna so intently that she cannot take a step without his notice; he even locks away her Sunday clothes and keeps the key. He also gives Józka Boryna instructions and entrusts her with watching over household affairs, leaving Jagna sidelined in the very home where she had begun to feel like its mistress.

The restriction is not only physical. Boryna shouts at Jagna over disorder, gives her no kind words, and treats her as if she were a serving girl rather than the woman of the house. He discusses matters with Józka instead of with her. Jagna spends her days spinning, wandering without purpose, or going to her mother to complain. The contrast with her earlier confident direction of the household makes the change in her standing concrete: the title of mistress has not secured her a voice in its decisions.

Distrust persists even when it seems to have eased. Boryna cannot give up watching her, while Jagna remembers his temper and harsh words and seethes with resentment. The narrative links his surveillance to the intensification of her desire for Antek: the more closely Boryna guards her, the more powerfully she craves the man she is forbidden to meet. She arranges to see Antek every few days at the hayrick, with Witek and Jagustynka helping them evade Boryna’s attention. Witek’s assistance is tied to his attachment to Jagna and to the better suppers and small payments he receives; Jagustynka serves as their intermediary and protects them from interruption.

Jagna’s position thus shifts repeatedly without becoming secure. Marriage gives her a household to govern, but not lasting authority over its work or her own movement. Her relationship with Antek develops in the spaces created by surveillance and secrecy, while the land settlement and the displaced family remain an unresolved source of tension around the marriage. In these scenes, Jagna’s beauty and status make her conspicuous, but they do not protect her from being controlled; the brief confidence of the housekeeper gives way to a life divided between enforced watchfulness and clandestine desire.