Jagna and Hanka’s confrontation and Jagna’s expulsion

Jagna and Hanka’s confrontation and Jagna’s expulsion mark the moment when a long-running marital betrayal becomes an open contest over truth, dignity, and a place in the household. Hanka’s accusation brings Antek’s affair into the room; Jagna answers with a counterclaim that he pursued and loved her. After the exchange breaks Hanka’s composure, she recovers enough to order Jagna out. Jagna’s contemptuous rejection of the settlement paper, followed by her departure with her mother, makes the rupture both personal and material.

The confrontation

Hanka first challenges Jagna to face what she has done, while Jagna insists that she has committed no crime that warrants the hostility. Hanka names the relationship directly, asking what Jagna did with her husband and warning that God will punish her. Her accusation is not delivered as a calm accounting: as she recalls Antek’s betrayals, she sobs so violently that she struggles to breathe. The charge that Jagna pursued him is tangled with Hanka’s own hurt and the religious language through which she imagines judgment.

Jagna meets that accusation with a denial of its terms, not of the affair. She insists that she tried to drive Antek away and portrays him as the one who came after her. She claims he loved her intensely, had grown disgusted with Hanka, and would abandon his wife if Jagna chose to leave with him. These are Jagna’s assertions in the heat of the quarrel, not an independent confirmation of Antek’s feelings. Their force in the scene lies partly in how deliberately they are aimed: Jagna turns Hanka’s accusation back on her, asserting not only that Antek desired her but that Hanka could not compete with her for him.

The exchange changes the balance between them. Hanka’s grief leaves her collapsed and nearly without consciousness, while Jagna, after her outburst, appears newly composed and defiant. Her mother listens with astonishment and fear at this transformation. The narration renders the dispute as a bodily shock as well as a verbal one: Hanka’s breathing fails under the pain of Jagna’s words, and the argument leaves her unable to respond in kind.

Hanka’s decision

When alone, Hanka considers what has been said. She can set aside the insult to herself, but not the wound to her pride; thoughts of revenge come and then pass. She steadies herself with a different account of her position: she is Antek’s wife and the mother of his children, and she believes he will return even if he runs after Jagna. Her conclusion that he cannot marry Jagna gives her a foothold, but it does not erase what the confrontation has revealed about the marriage.

The decision to expel Jagna comes at midday. The heat is searing the earth; people are returning from the fields, and cattle move along the poplar road through dust. Against this ordinary rhythm of work and homecoming, Hanka leans against the wall and pauses for another Hail Mary before crossing to Jagna’s room. She orders Jagna to leave at once. The short command is the practical outcome of the earlier emotional collapse: Hanka has regained control, but she uses it to end Jagna’s presence in the house rather than continue the argument.

The settlement and departure

Jagna’s mother tries to remonstrate and explain, but Jagna tells her not to speak to Hanka. She takes a paper from the bottom of the chest—the settlement document—and throws it at Hanka, contemptuously telling her to take the morgen and gorge herself on it. Jagna’s words reject the land arrangement as an insult or an inadequate consolation; her gesture makes the document itself part of the quarrel. Instead of keeping the paper as a claim on the household, she casts it toward the person ordering her out.

Jagna then hurries to tie up her bundles and carry them into the yard, ignoring her mother’s protests. Hanka, though shaken, turns to the immediate handling of property: she says that when Witek drives back the cattle he will bring Jagna’s cow over, and that someone can come in the evening to gather the rest. The expulsion thus involves more than a personal separation. It requires the household to arrange the transfer of Jagna’s animal and the collection of her other belongings.

Jagna and her mother leave in silence, taking the road around the edge of the pond; for a moment, both are reflected in its water. Hanka watches them go, vexed and gloomy, but the returning hired hands and the work of preparing dinner draw her back to the household. She puts the settlement paper back in the chest, locks it, closes the door to her father’s side, and turns to the meal. The outward routine resumes, though she remains ill at ease throughout the afternoon and does not even listen to Jagustynka’s flattering approval.

Significance

The scene gives each woman a different claim to authority. Jagna claims the power of desire, insisting that Antek’s love makes her more than the object of Hanka’s accusation. Hanka claims the standing of wife and mother, then acts through control of the house and its arrangements. Neither claim resolves the underlying betrayal: Jagna’s words intensify Hanka’s humiliation, while Hanka’s order converts emotional injury into exclusion.

The settlement paper and the cow keep that conflict grounded in material life. The paper represents a land arrangement that Jagna refuses to accept on Hanka’s terms; the cow and bundles are the concrete possessions that must be moved when she leaves. At the end, the reflected figures disappear down the road, but Hanka remains inside the household, locking the document away and returning to domestic labor. The departure is decisive, yet its aftermath is not triumphant: silence, unease, and unfinished injury take the place of reconciliation.