Polish women

“ 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. ”

“ But what gives Polish character, and especially Polish patriotism in this century, its special stamp, is the preponderance of the feminine elements over the masculine.
That the relations between man and woman are very different in Poland and in France is quickly perceived in daily conversation. While the tone among Frenchmen, whenever conversation turns on women, is always extremely free, sometimes to a foreigner repulsive, and generally lascivious, the Poles as a rule in discussing women manifest warmth, often tenderness or indulgence, but, so far as I could judge, seldom frivolity. ”

“ The medallion contained the portrait of a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, a refined, lovely mouth, a fragile, delicate being with countenance at the same time sweet and sad, the face of an angel, but an angel who had lived and suffered.
“What an exquisite face!” cried Mlle. Moriaz.
Truly it was exquisite. Some one has asserted that a Polish woman is like punch made with holy-water. One may like neither the punch nor the holy-water, and yet be very fond of Polish women. They form one of the best chapters in the great book of the Creator. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Superior Polish women began to aid strongly the patriots in revivifying the slumbering forces of the masses of the lowly people who had so long been kept in servitude, prevented from participating in the national progress, and deprived of education and incentives to patriotism, the lack of which latter in the common people had been so bitterly avenged on the entire nation. Princess Czartoryska, of the illustrious house of Polish magnates, undertook to diffuse a universal culture and national consciousness among the people. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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." ”

“ Again the manor-house is alive with brilliant lights and many faces. The owners of adjoining estates, with their wives and grown-up sons and daughters, friends of the family, from quite remote parts even, are gathered together for one week of holidays. It is a pleasure to see such wit and beauty gathered together under one roof; for Polish women are almost all handsome, with their soft eyes, their beautiful complexions and their glossy, dark hair. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A gaily colored cloth, artistically wound around the head, was always worn by the Polish girl of the lower classes; a white veil, which, however, must not cover the face, as with Mohammedan women, covered the heads of the maidens of the higher classes. Since the partition of Poland the gay national costume of the Poles is prohibited in Russia, but it is still worn, especially on festal occasions in Austria and Prussia.
The charm and beauty of Polish women is the constant theme of the national poets. ”

“ Polish women have felt that the welfare of the group as a whole is largely dependent upon the fitness of the women to meet the new situation. They have recognized the fact that, because of the national attitude toward women, Polish women of the class represented by the bulk of the immigration are very backward. They have therefore sought to inaugurate a campaign for the education of women on a national scale. ”

“ 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.] ”

“ We are forced to treat superficially so great a theme, for the women of Poland crowd the history of their country, especially since its fall. We cannot give the gallery of eminent Polish women, for this task belongs to the painter and to the historian of Polish literature and culture. But whenever a great man came under a Polish woman's spell, he succumbed to it: Napoleon the Great for once became a romantic lover under the influence of the beautiful Countess Walewska; the first German emperor felt his heart bleed when dynastic reasons forced him to give up a union with Countess Radziwil ”

“ The Polish women have hot heads, but their senses are under control.
Now and then a great irregularity happens: a lady leaves her husband and lives with her lover; a young girl marries her father's valet, and the like. They are the rare exceptions. When you meet an accomplished coquette in society, she is almost always of foreign descent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is very much restricted, as the University of Warsaw does not admit women, though the stirring events after the Japanese war, the constitutional conflict throughout Russia, and the struggle for autonomy in Poland may change all this in the near future. The Austro-Polish universities of Cracow and Lemberg have recently opened their doors to them, a fact which drew the many earnest and studious Russian-Polish women to those centres of learning, as they had previously been attracted by the liberality of the Swiss universities and the University of Paris. ”

“ The great work of the czar-liberator, Alexander II., who released the Russian peasantry from servitude, also revolutionized the problems of economic sustenance in Poland: the struggle for existence under the changed conditions. Poland, placed as she is between Russia and her powerful western neighbors, quickly became an industrial centre. Polish women came forward with their legitimate claims to participate in this material movement. They had no easy victory. The Russian government, as such, excluded Polish women ipso facto, even more rigidly than Polish men. ”

“ The sons of Germans who have settled in Poland under the protection of the commission often marry Polish women. The invariable result of these mixed marriages is that the children are Catholics and Poles. Polish deputies voting as Poles sit in the Prussian legislature and in the Reichstag, and if a portion of the old Kingdom of Poland is made a separate country at the end of this war, it will have the effect of making the Poles in Prussia more restless and more aggressive than ever. ”

“ It is true that it was not always thus with Polish women, and certainly not with those of the poorer classes. In early times the education of woman consisted in prayer and work. Learning was not a womanly requisite; the domestic and agricultural work in the fields belonged to women, while the tavern was too frequently the abode of the man (chlop) . Piety is a most genuine reality with Polish women; they were at all times a rock of the Catholic Church. Chastity was the most common virtue, and was strictly enforced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another interesting development has been the growth of national organizations for women alone. One of the earliest and best known of these is the Polish Women's Alliance, an example of organized effort of women to deal with their own problems on a national scale. The leaders in this enterprise were women who, through their own experiences as immigrants, and through contact [208] with those who came later, had come to realize both the nature of the problems women were called upon to meet and the different position of women in America. ”