‘Woman, Awake!’ Women of the Polish Countryside in the Epoch of Enlightenment
Historical documents of the 18th century indicate clearly that in the epoch of the Enlighten-ment, Polish women had no legal standing. No radical efforts were undertaken at that time to attain them political rights as we understand them today. However, there were emancipatory efforts aimed at educating women and broadening their economic capabilities.
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Scene from a Masonic Rite, from a print titled ‘L’Ordre des Francs-Maçons Trahi, et le Secret des Mopses Révélé’ by by G.L. Pérau, Amsterdam, 1763, photo: National Library Polona
Before women gained the legal capacity to take part in the public sphere as fully fledged citizens and to help decide on the nation’s fate, they first focused on gaining the right to have equal opportunities to function in other social settings hitherto limited only to men. A good example of this might be their entrance into freemasonry: the first women’s masonic lodges were established precisely during the Enlightenment.
Women’s entry into other spheres of male activity might create the impression that, in the 18th century, women merely imitated what men were doing. But history shows that equality in the area of political rights also led to the creation of a discrete female path on which women did not need to compete with men for social recognition. As such, they could realise their own dreams in a separate, complementary fashion. The 18th century, then, constitutes a sort of prologue to what in the 19th century we would call an emancipatory awareness, which Bolesław Prus describes in excellent fashion in his tale ‘The Emancipated’ (1890-1893).
On the other hand, it is impossible to speak of suffragettes or activists fighting for the legal equality of women and men during the Polish Enlightenment. That was not yet possible. Nevertheless, from today’s perspective, we can see how actions taken at the time did eventually lead to changes in the entire legal and political system. Key to all this was, of course, the education of women in all strata of society.
It used to be thought that the roots of emancipation lay in the desire of Enlightenment women to achieve financial independence. But that desire didn’t lead to lobbying for legal equality. In this context, outstanding figures included, amongst others, Anna Sanguszko Radziwiłłowa (1676-1746) – ‘Queen of the Sarmatians’, Grand Chancellor of Lithuania and, above all, a businesswoman from the first half of the 18th century – who established both a glass foundry and a textile factory. Another type of public service was rendered by Polish women authors of the 18th and 19th centuries: Anna Krajewska Nakwaska (1781-1851), Maria Czartoryska Wirtemberska (1768-1854) and Klementyna Tańska Hoffmanowa (1798-1845). They were responsible for creating the profession of women who write and who support themselves by doing so.
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‘Princess Izabela Czartoryska’ by Alexander Roslin, 1774, oil on canvas, photo: National Museum in Kraków
As a matter of course, in speaking of the 18th century, a number of famous noblewomen play a central role, amongst them Izabela Fleming Czartoryska (1746-1835), Izabela Czartoryska Lubomirska (1736-1816) or Helena Przeździecka Radziwiłlowa (1735-1821). Notably, although they were all well-known in the international arena and could have lived in any of the capitals of Europe, they all chose to tie their lives to small outlying Polish towns: the first to Pulawy, the second to Łańcut and the third to Nieborów or Arkadia near Łowicz.
There were, however, significantly greater numbers of remarkable women living in the Polish Republic’s countryside. It is also edifying to take a look at some less prominent women: enlightened women in the countryside who do not fit the common schematic image of the 18th-century noblewoman. The three women I have selected for consideration here go well beyond the stereotypical social role of women in their times: the first is a physician and adventurer from Nowogródek, the second a politician and economist from Siemiatycze, and the third a manager from Siedlce. The biographies of these women prove that it was indeed possible to step beyond the schematic female role laid out by the patriarchal social system of the Polish Enlightenment.
A remarkable trio
One fascinating, but sadly unrecognised, historical figure is Regina Salomea Pilsztynowa Radziwiłłowa (1718-after 1763). While she never had a formal medical education, she is generally considered the first Polish woman doctor. She was born in Nowogródek (as was Adam Mickiewicz, only 80 years earlier), and, at the early age of 14, she married a physician. We learn from her diaries that she assisted him in his work, especially in treating female patients. Their marriage didn’t last long, however, and she decided they should divorce. She then went off traveling through the Ottoman Empire, and her story could easily have ended there had it not been for the fact that the most surprising part of her life story still lay ahead of her.
It was at this point in her story that this young Polish woman took up a new field: human trafficking! This was not just a financial investment. Yes, she did make money from it, but, at the same time, she set herself to buying back Christian slaves out of Turkish Muslim captivity. Slaves returned to their wealthy Polish families eagerly demonstrated their gratitude to their liberator in concrete monetary form. It was in the course of this activity that Regina Salomea came into possession of an Austrian officer and prisoner of war, Józef Fortunat von Pichelstein (Pilsztyn), who soon became her husband. (Apparently, his family didn’t agree to pay the ransom for him.) This, however, did not prevent her from returning to Poland and marrying Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł in order to gain the status of a Polish officer’s wife.
But one couldn’t say that she then just settled down quietly on her estate. Instead, she traveled to Petersburg and to Vienna, all the time maintaining ownership of a pharmacy back in Przemyśl. In the last years of her life, she traveled far from her homeland once again: she became the resident physician in the harem of Sultan Mustafa III of the Ottoman Empire. In 1763, she decided to return to Poland, but our last word of her comes from her visit to Bakhchisaray – and then all trace of her disappears... There can be no question that her life was like an adventure novel with an open ending. Her diaries, entitled My Life’s Travels and Adventures, were only published for the first time in the year 1957!
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Duchess Anna Jabłonowska née Sapieha, from ‘Rozmią Wieki’ (The Ages Speak), no. 2/1989, photo: Wikimedia.org; monument to Anna Jabłonowska in Siemiatycze, photo: Kirsan / Wikipedia
A different personality was Princess Anna Sapieha Jabłonowska (1728-1800), an economist and politician connected with the town of Siemiatycze. When her husband, Jan Kajetan Jabłonowski, died in 1764, the world opened up before the 36-year-old widow. First, she engaged in politics and became passionately involved in improving the material situation of the residents of the villages and towns belonging to her estate. She revoked the feudal system and introduced rent. But she didn’t stop there. Thanks to her, hospitals and factories were built, intended to improve the health and welfare of her subjects. She was not only a princess who oversaw her own estate, but one who actually managed her properties. She wrote the eight-volume General Management Regulations for My Stewards (Warsaw, 1786), and her book A System for a Gardener’s Monthly Tasks Written for the Whole Year and Divided by Months was reprinted many times (first edition, Siemiatycze 1786).
Princess Jabłonowska, known as the Lady of Siemiatycze, transformed the village into a thriving town that prospered economically and grew culturally. She brought about the construction in Siemiatycze of a town hall and a printing press. She opened a school for midwives and an aid-and-loan fund for the residents. She also made her rich library and museum collections available to the public. Her collection of natural specimens was studied by the renowned Polish naturalist Krzysztof Kluk. Her interests were broad in scope. And while one can’t say that Princess Anna Jabłonowska was the Polish equivalent of the French Émilie du Châtelet (who was one of the most outstanding women scientists of the 18th century and a friend of Voltaire), but a certain type of deep engagement in exploring the world was surely common to them both.
A third exceptional, but little-known woman of the Enlightenment was Aleksandra Czartoryska Sapieha Ogińska (1730-1798), who, in 1775, inherited the town of Siedlce from her father and ruled it for the next 23 years. It’s worth noting her impressive pedigree: her great-grandfather was the Baroque poet Andrzej Morsztyn, and her cousin was King Stanisław August Poniatowski. At age 18, she was given in marriage to 59-year-old Michał Antoni Sapieha and became his third wife. The marriage lasted 13 years until the death of Sapieha. The princess was then 31 years old, and that same year, she married the composer Michał Kazimierz Ogiński. This choice proved to be neither exceptionally happy nor was it tragic.
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Ogińśka at the time was madly in love with her husband and was ready to do anything for him […] Ogiński, however, remained steadfastly dedicated to his favourite hobby which – aside from music – was the fairer sex. Numerous social gatherings […] which both of them attended or organised in their own residences were famed throughout the Republic and gave the princess chances to realise her social ambitions, while her hus-band enjoyed the opportunities to pursue his ‘hobby’.
Author
From ‘Aleksandra Ogińska i Siedlce w Trzech Pamiętnikach z XIX Wieku’, p. 17-18, trans. YR
After 14 years, the couple entered an official state of separation and divided up their possessions. They were not, however, a conflicted couple: until their deaths, they never caused harm to one another, and one might even say that they lived in harmony.
Portraits of Princess Ogińska depict a slim, rather svelte woman. We have her image in mind whenever we talk about the remarkable physical strength she had. One testament to that strength comes to us from Izabela Czartoryska:
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She was so strong that, picking up a handful of hazelnuts, she readily and without exertion crushed them so hard that you could see their oil running through her fingers. She could snap a horseshoe in half and, sitting at a table and chatting with a neighbour, she could curl silver plates into cylinders. She also had an appetite befitting her strength. For breakfast, she would eat 60 hardboiled eggs and two capons and would drink three bottles of wine. Lunch was even more robust, and she didn’t pass on an evening meal either. And she couldn’t sleep if she hadn’t eaten a pot of barley soup and a half-bowl of pierogi for supper.
Author
From ‘Pani na Puławach: Opowieść o Izabeli z Flemingów Czartoryskiej’, p. 226, trans. YR
Even allowing for a certain amount of hyperbole in the above description, something to which Princess Czartoryska was not often prone, one has to admit that Aleksandra Ogińska’s physical prowess was impressive. Also impressive were her achievements as a regional manager, as we would call her today. Not only was she a resourceful woman, but she was also exceptionally entrepreneurial. Thanks to her, the palace in Siedlce was built along with its surrounding English-style park. The park to this day bears the name Aleksandria in her honour.
Until about the end of the 1870s, the princess hosted a literary salon. A frequent guest at those evenings was the sentimental poet Franciszek Karpiński. One of his poems was even inscribed on the steeple of the town hall. That building, incidentally, deserves special attention as it supported one of Poland’s first lightning rods. At the time, that was a specially novel invention, based on the earliest research on electricity conducted by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in the mid-18th century. So Princess Ogińska transferred this science from Philadelphia to Siedlce – a fact that further underscores the innovative and vigourous nature of her activities.
Women & the French Revolution
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‘Women Going to Versailles’, unidentified engraving, 1789, watercolour-coloured etching, Inv.zb.d. 9744, photo from the exhibition ‘What is Enlightenment? 200 Years of the Print Room of the University of Warsaw Library’, 2018, Muzeum Nad Wislą – Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, photo: MSN
Despite the fact that there wasn’t yet a readiness in Poland to enter into public debate about changing the legal and political situation of women during the Enlightenment period, one must remember that the end of the 18th century was also the time of the French Revolution. The social transformation of the time addressed the issue of legal equality for women and men. For those readers who love history and perhaps also a frisson of revolutionary emotion, I recommend two publications that accessibly address the question of women’s rights in revolutionary France: Tomasz Wysłobocki’s book Obywatelki: Kobiety w Przestrzeni Publicznej we Francji Przełomu Wieków XVIII i XIX (Women Citizens: Women in the Public Arena in France at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries [Kraków 2014]) and the article by Jarosław Ślęzak, ‘Walka o Podmiotowość Prawną Kobiet w Epoce Oświecenia’ (‘The Struggle for the Legal Status of Women in the Enlightenment Epoch’ [in Cywilizacja i Polityka 2015, nr 13]).
The best-known legal document of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, does not mention women. To this day, it remains striking that the idea of ‘human’ was then limited to the male portion of the population. However, even then, there were times when that situation provoked a certain sense of injustice. That indignation led to the publication two years later of a text entitled A Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen. Its author was the French author Olimpia de Gouges. The document was structured along the lines of its famous predecessor, and it contained 17 paragraphs, preceded by a clearly stated axiom: ‘Mothers, daughters, sisters, representatives of the nation demand to be included in the National Assembly’. In its subsequent points, it declared:
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A woman is born as a free being and remains equal to men in all her rights. Social differences can only be based on the common good. […] All Citizens, male and female, should take part personally or through their representatives in creating laws that should be the same for all citizens, regardless of gender, are equal from birth and should have equal access to all public posts and offices commensurate with their capabilities and based only on their personal merits and talents.
Author
From ‘Ośka’, 2000, nr 11, trans. YR
It is worth noting that, in contrast to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the women’s Declaration included both the female as well as the male segment of the population – thus emphasising that the author’s intent was to broaden the range of subjects of the law and not to reduce the scope of hitherto existing regulations. The closing of the women’s Declaration proves that 43-year-old Olimpia de Gouges had a deeply realistic awareness of her limited possibilities. She wrote to that effect:
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Woman, awake! Reason is sounding the alarm throughout the entire universe. My at-tempt to bring about a stable, dignified and just situation is treated today as a paradox and as a desire to achieve the impossible. I leave to humanity in the future the honour of resolving these issues; in the meantime, we can prepare for the arrival of that future through nationwide education and a rethinking of marriage customs and contracts.
Author
From ‘Ośka’, 2000, nr 11, trans. YR
Two years later, in the fall of 1793, Olimpia de Gouges was guillotined on Paris’ Place de la Révolution, becoming yet another victim of the authoritarian regime of Maximilian Robespierre.
Finally, it is also worth recalling that the French Revolution and the issue of women’s equal rights have a slender Polish thread running through them whose protagonist is Rozalia Chodkiewicz Lubomirska (1768-1794). That Polish princess ended her life in Paris under the blade of a guillotine, as described by Alina Zerling-Konopka in her tale ‘Rozalia Lubomirska, the Flower of Podolia’. Zerling-Konopka was the author of many historical books telling of the lives of outstanding Polish women.
Lubomirska was accused by the revolutionaries of conspiring with Marie Antoinette and planning a counter-revolution. She spent the last months of her life in prisons, and even an intervention on her behalf by no less than Tadeusz Kościuszko proved to no avail. Her defence that she only maintained diverse social contacts in order to be part of the social scene, not the political universe, was rejected. Lubomirska entered into history as the only Polish woman guillotined during the French Revolution, and her beauty – not her innocence – prompted widespread calls for her to be spared the cruelty of revolutionary justice. This curious fact tells us much today about the gradually growing demands for the political equality of women and men at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is joining the 230th anniversary celebrations of the Constitution of May 3rd by organizing an exhibition at the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius. It will include unique exhibits, such as the manuscript of the Government Act of 1791 and the Jan Matejko painting The Constitution of May 3rd from 1871. In Vilnius, portraits of prominent participants of the Four Years’ Sejm and numerous works of art related to the Stanisław era will also be shown. The opening of the exhibition is planned for October 20th this year in connection with the anniversary of the Mutual Assertion of Both Nations on that day – the detailed regulations implementing the Constitution of May 3rd, adopted by the Four-Year Sejm, concerning the relationship between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The exhibition, prepared in co-operation with the Royal Castle in Warsaw, can be admired in Vilnius until 16th January 2022.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Yale Reisner, Apr 2021
Sources: ‘Aleksandra Ogińska i Siedlce w Trzech Pamiętnikach z XIX Wieku’, ed. and introduction by R. Dmowski, A. Ziontek (Siedlce 2007); ‘Pani na Puławach. Opowieść o Izabeli z Flemingów Czartoryskiej’ by G. Pauszer-Klonowska (Warszawa 1980).
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