Religious prohibition on adultery as a grave sin

The religious prohibition on adultery as a grave sin shapes Jagna’s struggle between her longing for Antek and her identity as Maciej Boryna’s wife. Learned in confession and reinforced by the threat of divine punishment, the rule makes desire feel spiritually dangerous before any action is taken. Its force is visible in Jagna’s fear, self-restraint, and anguish: she stays inside, avoids the farmyard, and throws herself into work, yet cannot quiet her longing.

The Rule and Jagna’s Conscience

Jagna understands the prohibition in absolute terms. She recalls that the priest explained in confession that adultery would be a mortal sin. The distinction between desire and action does not bring her comfort: even the possibility of speaking with the man she longs for seems to approach a boundary she believes she must not cross. She imagines that a single conversation, provided there were witnesses, might be possible, but concludes that it will never happen because she is Maciej Boryna’s wife.

The rule therefore operates inside her as both a religious command and a limit imposed by marriage. Jagna’s thought that she is Boryna’s wife forever turns her marital status into an enduring obligation, not merely a circumstance of the household. Her distress comes from the collision between that obligation and a desire she experiences as powerful and difficult to govern; the evidence shows her resisting the desire, not carrying out adultery.

Fear, Restraint, and Desire

The threat of judgment becomes vivid when Jagna hears in memory the priest’s denunciation of those who sin and sees his threatening gestures. Fear gives the prohibition immediate force: she grows pale with guilt, repeats to herself that it would be mortal sin, and resolves not to go out. Her restraint is practical as well as inward. She is afraid to enter the farmyard in case Antek is waiting there and calls to her, because she doubts she could resist answering him.

Avoidance does not end the struggle. Jagna tries to occupy herself with work, but Józka has already taken charge of the household tasks, while Maciej Boryna keeps her from doing much. With little work to absorb her attention, the effort to forget Antek leaves her alone with the desire she is trying to suppress. The prohibition thus produces a painful division: it checks her movement, but it cannot make her longing disappear.

Marriage and Communal Religious Life

The novel places Jagna’s marriage within visible religious and communal forms. Before the wedding procession sets out for the church, Maciej Boryna takes her hand and kneels with her. Her mother blesses them with a picture, the sign of the cross, and holy water; Jagna then asks forgiveness of those present and takes leave of them. The scene presents marriage as a public transition surrounded by blessing and communal participation, the very bond that later sharpens Jagna’s sense of what her forbidden desire would violate.

The wedding festivities also mark that transition through custom: women lead Jagna from the storeroom veiled in a white sheet and seat her on a kneading trough, while the young people enact a mock struggle over her and sing a plaintive song. These rituals do not themselves state the prohibition on adultery, but they show how marriage is embedded in shared village practice rather than treated as a private arrangement alone.

Religious Order Beyond the Private Struggle

Religious observance recurs in Lipce as a collective practice. On Christmas Eve, the village is already active from daybreak against a landscape of deepening frost and snow. When imprisoned men return, the villagers kneel together before Christ on the cross; the priest prays and sprinkles the bowed heads with water before greeting the men. At another service, the people follow the priest in procession beneath a red baldachin as he carries the monstrance, with bells, banners, candles, and communal singing accompanying the rite.

These scenes establish the public presence of religious ritual around Jagna’s private moral conflict. They do not describe a formal punishment for adultery, nor do they show the village judging Jagna in these moments. Rather, they place her fear of sin within a community whose religious life is expressed through confession, blessing, prayer, and procession. The prohibition matters because it has been absorbed into conscience and marriage, while the surrounding rituals make faith a shared structure of everyday and communal life.