EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL ISSUES AND ELIZA ORZESZKOWA’S ARTISTIC CRAFTSMANSHIP

Abstract

The article examines the specific features of the artistic representation of social issues in the works of the Polish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa. Particular attention is paid to the dynamics of interpreting social phenomena and the transformation of the ways in which they are artistically represented at different stages of the author’s creative development. The study traces how the expansion of the thematic range of Orzeszkowa’s prose – from the issues of gender inequality and the crisis of the aristocratic and landed-gentry milieu to the situation of the peasantry, the urban poor, the Jewish community, and emerging social movements – was accompanied by an increasing complexity of the writer’s poetics.

Particular emphasis is placed on the transition from early didacticism, ideological tendency, and schematic contrasts between characters to mature realist writing, characterized by social typification, psychologism, satirical generalization, and a multifaceted representation of social contradictions. The study analyzes the representation of the woman question in «Pan Graba», «Marta», «The Fourteenth Part», «The Sylph» and «The Good Lady», where women’s social dependence is associated with the lack of economic independence, education, and opportunities for professional self-realization. The article also examines the artistic interpretation of interethnic relations and the relationship between tradition and social progress in «Meir Ezofowicz», «Eli Makower», «Strong Samson» and «Mirtala».

Another important aspect of the study is the representation of the lower social strata and the peasantry. Based on the cycle From Different Spheres and the peasant novels The Lowlands, Dziurdziowie, On the Niemen, and The Boor, the article demonstrates the gradual combination of broad social generalization with the individualized portrayal of characters.

The study establishes that Е. Orzeszkowa’s artistic evolution was not a simple transition from Positivism to Realism but rather a gradual complication of the ways in which reality was artistically understood and interpreted.