Polish woman

“ The Polish language being forbidden in the schools, every noble Polish woman becomes a schoolmistress of her language at home, not only for her children, but also for her servants and those who are drawn under her sway. ”

“ The Polish poet's loves, adduced by Brandes, are different from all the others: they are ardent and wild, but never sensual; they are repressed or chastened by the constant emotions of sorrow for their country, their own condition, the desperate future. So are also their poetic creations: Polish women are either heroic amazons struggling for the holy cause of the fatherland (ojczyzna) , or they are angelic beings belonging to another world. Nor is the motherhood of a Polish woman sweet or idyllic ”

“ Brandes is quite right when he quotes the opinion of an Italian author: "Among Germanic races the men are more gifted than the women; among the Latin races they stand on the same level; among the Poles, the most characteristic Slavic race, woman is decidedly superior to man as to intellectual qualities, passion, courage, wit, patriotism. Polish history is pervaded as with a red thread with heroic deeds of women. They have aroused whole districts to rebellion against foreign oppressors, fought in battles, endured the hardships of camp and march, and died on the battlefield." ”

“ No! an unknown spy will accuse him; he must defend himself before a perjured court; his battlefield will be a dungeon underground, and an all-powerful enemy his judge. The blasted wood of the gallows will be the monument of his grave; a few woman's tears, soon dried, and the long talks of his countrymen in the night-time will be his sole honor and memorial after death." (Transl. Brandes, Poland.)
Such is the character of Polish womanhood, in reality and in poetic fiction. Inexhaustible riches dwell in its type. The sins of past centuries have been avenged bitterly upon them and their children ”

“ In regard to education, the Polish woman is not so well off. In the primary schools alone does she enjoy equal rights; in secondary education she has far fewer advantages than the boy; while as for university instruction, she is forced to seek it in Russia or in foreign lands, the Polish universities being absolutely closed against her. In the Polish provinces under direct Russian authority, the State does nothing whatever for woman's instruction ”

“ She became a secret police agent, and soon was one of their most valuable members. In addition to the proverbial charms and wit of a Polish woman, she also possessed high linguistic attainments, and she spoke Polish, Russian, French, German, English and Italian, almost equally fluently and correctly; then she had also that encyclopædic polish, which impresses most people much more than the most profound learning of a specialist. She was very attractive in appearance, and she knew how to set off her good looks by all the arts of dress and coquetry. ”

“ I think one sees more pretty women in five minutes in Warsaw than in half-an-hour in any other European capital, London thrown in. An ill-dressed Warsaw woman is an anomaly. Even the lower orders seemed to know how to put their clothes on, for the Polish woman has a cachet of her own ”

“ However, they were uncovered, but none of their faces excited my desires.
As a rule, the Polish women are ugly; a beauty is a miracle, and a pretty woman a rare exception. At the end of a week of feasting and weariness, I returned to Warsaw. ”

“ Polish women of the higher class once had the reputation of being frivolous; if so, they have become chastened by the one absorbing idea of patriotism and the restoration of Poland. They are elegant grandes dames in a higher degree than German ladies of their class with their substantial virtues, and more self-controlled and faithful than their French sisters, though their hearts and heads are surely not colder. Of course, woman's nature is as complex and as unclassifiable in Poland as elsewhere, and generalization will therefore always remain onesided ”

“ In short, this great Polish woman strove to raise her sisters to a higher plane of responsibility, of wifehood and of motherhood, in order to produce a new and better generation of men of Polish men withal. She was an opponent to the virago type of advocates of the emancipation of women who desired to arrogate to themselves what is by natural laws the domain of man. ”

“ And the woman worship of the "Sarmats ruled by women," as Pliny has it, still remains; gallantry to their women is a trait ingrained in Polish men; the word "for a lady" has still a magic charm. Their beauty, the proverbial perfection of their hands, and the smallness of their feet, do the rest in the subjection of men.
Georg Brandes, the aforementioned sharp observer, rightly calls Polish women of rank patriarchal and active only on their country estates, while at Warsaw they appear immersed in social duties ”

“ An asylum for women teachers, a loan-fund for women teachers, and a commission for industrial women are the external evidences of the activities of the Polish woman’s rights movement in Warsaw.
The field of labor for the educated woman is especially limited in Poland. Excluded from government service, many educated Polish women flock into the teaching profession; there they have restricted advantages. The University of Warsaw has been opened to women.
THE SLOVENE WOMAN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT [107]
The Slovene woman’s rights movement is still incipient ”

“ One day, at Polonga, I wanted to buy a cheese in the market from a Samogitian woman; we could not agree about the price, and my respectable countrywoman, strong in lungs as any woman of la Halle, delivered herself of a sentiment about ‘dogs of Muscovites,’ which was certainly not of a highly Christian description. Had I even been ignorant of the meaning of her words, their sense was sufficiently explained by gestures, patent even to a moujik, and I was obliged forsooth to pretend to uphold [Pg 198] the honour of Muscovy against the outrages of a Polish woman...! ”

“ To scrape lint and nurse the wounded was proper woman’s employment down in Poland yonder. As for the other things you value so much,—the power of thinking, and reasoning, and all that,—where is 52the Polish woman that would not now be better without it?”
“In the same way, I suppose, as their husbands and brothers would be better without either thoughts or feelings. Polish men would be happier now as savages than as enslaved heroes, and, in like manner, women would be better as mere animals than as rational beings ”

“ Elise Orzeszko, the distinguished Polish novelist, tells me:
We have confidence in the efforts of the men who are leading society and who are sacrificing their talents and earnestly toiling to advance liberal ideas. In the meanwhile our duty is to awaken thought on the question of woman's rights, so that when a better day does come to Poland, women may be ready to participate in the common welfare. ”

“ The first woman's industrial school was founded in 1874 at Warsaw, and during the first six years, to 1880, it had 743 scholars. Establishments of this kind are now quite numerous in the kingdom, but, for political reasons, they have not been founded in the Polish provinces of Russia. The unfortunate political situation of Poland, which robs even men of their rights, is an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the emancipation of women. ”

“ NIEMA IAK POLKI! "Nothing equals the Polish women!" [Footnote: The custom formerly in use of drinking, in her own shoe, the health of the woman they loved, is one of the most original traditions of the enthusiastic gallantry if the Poles.] ”

“ According to the Polish idea, man belongs on the horse, woman to the hearth; in which respect the otherwise antagonistic Germans and Poles do not differ essentially, if we may accept Emperor William's formulated four K's: Kirche (church) , Kuche (kitchen) , Kinder (children) , Kleider (clothing) , as typical of German ideals.
Nevertheless, there were not wanting intellectual women who contributed to the brilliancy of the Polish genius during the golden era of their nation's literature. ”

“ There is a Polish countess here, who likes me much. She has been very handsome, still is, in the style of the full-blown rose. She is a widow, very rich, one of the emancipated women, naturally vivacious, and with talent. This woman envies me; she says, "How happy you are; so free, so serene, so attractive, so self-possessed!" I say not a word, but I do not look on myself as particularly enviable. A little money would have made me much more so; a little money would have enabled me to come here long ago, and find those that belong to me, or at least try my experiments; ”

“ My taste is all the other way—I dote upon caviar; golden-haired women are to me just a little more attractive than the angels. But, of course, that does not speak for their tempers."
He laughed at the candor of it, and looking round the brilliant restaurant where they dined to-night, he began to speak in a low tone of Russian and Polish women generally.
"The Polish ladies are old-fashioned enough to love one man at a time—in their own country, at any rate. The Russians, on the contrary, are less selfish. A Russian woman is often the victim of three centuries, of suppressed female ambitions. ”

“ They are very cleanly and industrious, and in the absence of their husbands, supply their places by taking charge of all their usual occupations, in addition to their own. It is rare for a Cossack woman not to know some trade, such as dyeing cloth, tanning leather, &c.
The condition of Polish and Russian serfs in modern times is about the same. The Polish women have scarcely clothing enough for decency, and they are subjected to great hardships and privations. 'In Russia, women have been seen paving the streets, and performing other similar drudgery. ”

“ There was many another Polish heroine as brave though not so famous as the female Adjutant. When national liberty is at stake, there will always be found women as well as men ready to arm in its defence; and the women of Poland have ever been remarked for more than ordinary patriotism. ”

“ Polish women resemble the French in gayety and love of pleasure, and the Italians in ardor of passion and vividness of imagination. Their manners are [Pg 163] said to be a seductive mixture of languid voluptuousness and sprightly coquetry. The state of public opinion is not favorable to female virtue; a circumstance which at once indicates corruption, and increases it. The Poles are fond of pageantry and splendor, but are charged with sluttishness in the interior arrangement of their houses. I presume there is no nation, whose ladies are so universally acknowledged to be pre-eminent in beauty. ”

“ The opposition between Poland and Russia is never out of the mind of the women. This is constantly noticeable in daily life. A young girl was deserted by her lover. It was always cited as a detail which made the perfidy and cruelty more bitter, that it was for the sake of a Russian dancer he left her. A young girl, not twenty years old, rebuked a group of half-grown Polish schoolboys in the Saxon Park because they were speaking Russian to each other. Such little traits teach every one who resides for any time in Russian Poland that it is the women who keep the national passion at white heat. ”

“ The Polish women, whom you mention as nationally agreeable, have all the ease and adroitness acquired by living constantly in a crowd, and having no pursuit but dissipation, and very little restraint from principle. There is, however, much tinsel and frippery in their manners. The colours are gay, but roughly laid on; and in a short time those persons of good taste who have been accustomed to that beautiful union of refinement and simplicity (the perfection of female grace) which is found amongst English women, are annoyed by a certain mixture of coarseness and finesse. ”

“ Deaths on the battlefield, wholesale exiles to Siberia, political flight and emigration en masse, deprived Poland of numbers of her noblest sons. Those who remained behind were cowed, and reduced to servile obedience: no wonder that Poland's women lost much of their former admiration for, and dependence upon, the strong sex. They began to realize that they must become independent, and wage the campaign of nationalism for themselves, if the Polish language, literature, and genius were to be saved, or a regeneration of the aftergrowth was to be possible. ”

“ No wonder that such women attained, in the course of time, a moral supremacy over their men, and that nowhere in Europe such a genuine deference was offered to women as in Poland. The almost supreme rule of the Polish mother over her sons is proverbial. With all her tenderness for her children, it is the Polish mother who drove the youth of the land to an almost hopeless struggle against the foreign conqueror, and to death on the altar of the fatherland. ”

“ In spite of all class distinctions, which were stronger in Poland than in any other country of western civilization, the Polish type of womanhood was nevertheless more recognizable throughout all the classes than anywhere else. In spite of all their modesty and womanly beauty, Polish women were at all times political enthusiasts; at all epochs we find among them commanding natures, resolute and manly patriots. Patriotic motives governed their loves, their marriages, their motherhood, and at no time more than since the partition of their beloved country. ”

“ I am tired and do not wish for any war, and least of all to end it like Henry VII. by a marriage. On the other hand,—I dare not tell my aunt, but may confess it to myself,—I do not like Polish women. I am thirty-five, and like other men that live much in society, I had my sentimental passages, among others, with Polish women, and from these encounters I carried away the impression that they are the most impossible and most wearying women in the world. ”