Maciej Boryna the Patriarch

Maciej Boryna the Patriarch’s defining power is his command of land and household, but the novel shows that this authority is never secure from challenge. As father, husband, and village leader, he must negotiate competing claims: Antek Boryna’s inheritance, Jagna Borynowa’s independence, the family’s precarious material needs, and the villagers’ customary claims against the manor. His conduct shifts with the pressure on each front, from measured restraint to domination, and from confrontation to unexpected care.

Identity and Household Authority

Maciej Boryna is the older patriarch of a farm household whose property gives weight to his decisions. The division of land is not an abstract family matter: when he signs over six morgens to Jagna Borynowa, the transfer becomes a flashpoint for Antek Boryna and Hanka Borynowa, who fear that their labor and expected inheritance have been taken from them. Hanka’s grief focuses on the land and on the belongings from her mother that she believes have also been lost. The dispute reveals how Boryna’s control of property reaches into the security, status, and future of the younger generation.

The quarrel with Antek Boryna exposes the difference between the two men’s temperaments without softening the conflict. Antek rushes at his father, grabs him by the arm or collar, and repeatedly seems ready to strike. Boryna pushes him away and rarely answers the abuse, holding himself back because he does not want a brawl or a spectacle before the neighbors. The restraint is real, but it does not resolve the grievance: the women cry, the children scream, and the household’s accumulated injuries spill into open accusation. Boryna’s authority can contain violence for a moment; it cannot make the family agree about who is owed what.

Land Dispute and Village Politics

Boryna’s reading of village politics is wary and tactical. After Jagna recounts the arrival of Pan Jacek the violinist, Boryna reasons that The Squire sent him to discover what villagers thought about clearing the trees. He takes the apparent absence of questions about the wood not as proof of innocence but as a deliberate distraction. His suspicion leads directly to his own position on the dispute: he says he signed the complaint and will stand by it, and that not a single fir should be cut until The Squire reaches an agreement with the villagers and gives them what they consider theirs. His opposition is not merely a reaction to lost work; he frames the forest as a question of rights and settlement.

When the forest confrontation breaks out, Boryna’s authority becomes physical leadership. As the peasants scatter under the manor men’s attack, he calls them to stand together, takes up a wooden stake, and charges first. The villagers close ranks behind him with flails and pitchforks, and the manor men retreat amid the violence. Yet Boryna’s conduct is not simply a portrait of vengeance. When the steward is pulled from his horse and beaten, Boryna tries to shield him and drags the unconscious man to safety. He helps unleash the collective assault, then intervenes to protect a fallen opponent—a distinction that complicates his role as both forceful leader and man capable of restraint.

Marriage, Jealousy, and Control

Boryna’s marriage to Jagna Borynowa brings household authority into intimate life. At the inn, he sees her dancing at the head of the company with Antek Boryna, their closeness unmistakable to the watching villagers. He does not confront his son there. Instead, he pushes through the crowd, orders Jagna home, pulls her from Antek’s arms, and leads her out. The music stops and the company falls silent; Antek pursues them, turning a public dance into a visible family crisis.

Afterward, Boryna reasserts control over the farm and over Jagna’s movements. Once recovered, he spends his days threshing with Pietrek and working the wheat, rarely leaving the farmstead. He watches Jagna so closely that she cannot take a step without his notice, and he locks away her Sunday clothes, keeping the key himself. He also shifts household communication toward Józka of the Boryna Household, giving her instructions and consulting her while treating Jagna as though she were absent. Jagna’s distress is therefore not only the result of shouting or lost affection: Boryna’s actions strip her of the practical authority and recognition associated with being mistress of the house.

Care, Estrangement, and Character

Boryna’s treatment of Hanka Borynowa shows that his authority does not cancel his capacity for concern. In winter, after he has expelled her family from the paternal homestead, he helps her lift her load onto her back and quietly urges her to visit him. He fears that Antek will drink away what little they have and that Hanka and the children will go hungry. Hanka answers that she has no right to come after being thrown out. The exchange preserves both truths at once: Boryna has inflicted the separation, and he sees the danger of the family’s poverty and offers practical help despite the estrangement.

The episodes make Boryna a figure of concentrated but inconsistent power. He can resist striking his son, read a political maneuver, defend the villagers’ claim to the forest, and protect the defeated steward; he can also transfer family land in a way that devastates Antek’s household and police his wife’s clothing and movements. His authority is strongest when it is exercised through land, labor, and collective action, yet the consequences of that authority repeatedly return as family resentment and personal conflict. Through him, the novel binds the politics of property to the intimate life of the farm: control over fields and forest is also control over inheritance, work, and the people expected to live under his roof.