The organist’s wife and Jagna’s enmity

The enmity between the organist’s wife and Jagna gives personal hostility a public reach: the organist’s wife first threatens and humiliates Jagna directly, then helps make rumor a weapon against her. Their conflict is not an equal contest. Jagna tries to comfort Jasio and later asks what she has done, while the organist’s wife claims the authority to judge her conduct, exclude her from a home, and enlist the village against her.

The confrontation over Jasio

The conflict becomes explicit when Jagna runs after Jasio, who is grieving and distraught. She wipes his tear-stained face as he clings to her, seeking comfort. The organist’s wife enters, sees the scene, and reacts with anger. She mocks Jagna as though she were an unwanted nurse and treats her tenderness toward Jasio as evidence of improper intimacy, rather than hearing either of them out.

Jagna begins to explain that an old woman has died, and Jasio tries to tell his mother what has happened to him. The organist’s wife silences him with an insult and a threat of a beating. She then flings the door open and orders Jagna out, threatening to set the dogs on her if she returns. When Jagna asks what she has done, the organist’s wife escalates the humiliation, calling her a hussy and accusing her of romancing. The exchange leaves Jagna in tears as she runs from the house, while Jasio remains stunned. The scene shows the organist’s wife converting an ambiguous act of care into a sexual accusation and using her control of the household to enforce it.

From exclusion to physical aggression

The hostility persists beyond the first expulsion. When the organist’s wife takes Jasio by the hand and pulls him home, Jagna follows, apparently spellbound. The organist’s wife picks up a stone from the road and hurls it at her, ordering her away with a degrading animal insult. Jagna does not understand at first whom the insult is meant for; after the others disappear, she wanders along the lanes for a long time. She returns home only after nightfall and sits beside the cottage wall until daybreak.

This second encounter makes the consequences of the first unmistakable. The organist’s wife does not merely object to Jagna’s presence in her home: she pursues the exclusion into public space, where a stone replaces the earlier threat of dogs. Jagna’s bewilderment and long vigil mark the encounter as an injury she cannot easily answer. Her silence is not evidence that the accusation has been established; it records the narrow space available to her when an older woman can define the scene and command the response.

Gossip and the Voyt scandal

Later, the organist’s wife appears in village talk about the disgraced Voyt’s household. She seems to arrive by chance, listens to the women discussing the Voyt’s spending, and asks whether they know what he spent so much money on. As the women press her to explain, she presents her story as confidential information: the Voyt, she says, bought Jagna gold rings, silk shawls, fine linens, beads, and cash. The account is described as containing inventions, yet the women accept it as though it were unquestionable truth.

Jagustynka challenges the organist’s wife to say whether she actually saw these things. The answer is not substantiation: the organist’s wife insists that she would swear in church that Jagna was the one for whom the Voyt stole, and adds the further allegation that Jagna had tried to entice her son, Jasio. She claims Jasio ran away from Jagna and told her everything. The episode establishes that these are the organist’s wife’s accusations, not independently confirmed facts. Her earlier anger toward Jagna now supplies a personal edge to her role as a source of public scandal.

Enmity as social power

The organist’s wife’s accusation does more than damage Jagna’s reputation. The women, already inflamed by the tale, call for Jagna to be driven from the village and head to the Voyt’s home. They initially embrace and console the Voyt’s wife, who is crying and visibly miserable; only after the organist’s wife brings Jagna into the discussion does the Voyt’s wife turn her grief into blame, declaring Jagna responsible for her shame and unhappiness. The shift shows how the accusation redirects a household’s suffering toward a woman cast as its cause.

The broader village atmosphere makes that redirection legible. Jagustynka objects that men can pursue affairs with little reproach while women are made to answer for what both partners did. The organist’s wife’s conduct participates in precisely this unequal scrutiny: she treats Jagna’s closeness to Jasio and alleged connection to the Voyt as grounds for condemnation, while the men at the center of these stories are not subjected to the same kind of collective sexual judgment in this scene. Her enmity therefore operates both as personal vendetta and as a force within the village’s moral policing. By combining direct intimidation with unverified claims, she helps turn suspicion into collective action against Jagna.