Writing the Polish American Woman in Postwar Ethnic Fiction. Grażyna J. Kozaczka

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СКАЧАТЬ barely noticed in their home, has found a buyer. “It was a pretty rug. Like a big picture with its wreath of bright red poppies and green vine. ‘Yes, it does look pretty,’ Kowalek said. And he had never even noticed it in the house!”³⁶ When a wealthy collector from the city offers to buy it at any price, the rug acquires a different value. Suddenly, Kasia’s talent, unnoticed and unappreciated by her husband just like her unpaid and unvalued work within the home, becomes validated and assigned a monetary value, which challenges the economic relationship between husband and wife in this traditional marriage. Yet, Kasia’s triumph is short-lived. Not surprisingly, Kowalek refuses his permission to sell the rug. His overt reason seems to be pride in his wife’s accomplishment and the fact that she made the rug for their home. But, since the same rug has not mattered to him before, his decision represents an attempt to reestablish his male power and economic control, undermined temporarily by the external validation of the tangible value of woman’s talents and work within the domestic sphere.

      In all three stories featuring the Kowalek family, Krawczyk endows Kasia with a steadfast persistence in overriding Kowalek’s decisions, especially his refusal to accept his son’s choice of a bride because Edith is an American and a city girl. Kowalek’s resistance to his son’s marriage outside of the ethnic community illustrates field research conducted by Eugene E. Obidinski and Helen Stankiewicz Zand, who found that “the parents as a rule were unhappy over such an event . . . [and] the community . . . in general, did not look kindly upon a marriage outside the fold.”³⁷ Contrary to her husband, Kasia perceives the relationship between her son and Edith as both inevitable and positive, a sure sign of the family’s assimilation into American society. Still quite aware of her own limited opportunities, Kasia openly admires the independent womanhood represented by Edith, who is college educated and moves easily between the domestic and the public spheres. She holds a job outside the home even after her marriage to young Kowalek and takes on publicly visible leadership positions within their farming community. Krawczyk again advocates a model of womanhood in contrast to the expectations of the mainstream culture, where professional women were discouraged from continuing their careers after marriage because, after all, “marriage and family were all that really mattered”³⁸ and they should seek self-realization as “‘professional’ housewives.”³⁹ The marriage of Edith and young Kowalek represents a new type of a relationship built on consensus where both partners compromise: the wife sacrifices her city life so the husband can return to the beloved farm, while the husband sacrifices his expectations of a traditional stay-at-home wife so the wife can continue her thriving professional career. Gently, Krawczyk introduces a possibility of new aspirations for young women as well as a path for assimilation of Polish American families into the dominant society. As Eric Schocket suggests, “the working class will not be forever excluded from the political and social prerogatives of . . . white skin privilege.”⁴⁰

      “No Man Alone” occupies a unique place in Krawczyk’s oeuvre as it articulates a strong social message about overcoming political and social exclusion: the inevitable assimilation, or at least acculturation, of Polish immigrants into the dominant society can run smoothly in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding. Through her female characters, Krawczyk clearly identifies Polish immigrant women as agents in this process of claiming white privilege. Able to ignore the age difference, Kasia is ready to learn all about the American way of managing her household from her young daughter-in-law and to use her as a mentor in the process of acculturation, while Edith and her wealthy American parents are sensitive to and accepting of the Kowaleks’ ethnic culture. The optimistic vision of a harmonious, multicultural, yet unified society which celebrates the richness of its diversity, even if firmly rooted within the white Eurocentric tradition, is emphasized by the story’s final scene, when Kasia and her husband attend a concert featuring the musical heritage of all the different ethnic groups represented in their farming community.⁴¹

      Krawczyk’s immigrant women strain against the bonds of masculinist culture not only by seeking self-fulfillment through the arts, but also by struggling to find educational opportunities denied them both in the old and in the new worlds. Without ambiguity, Krawczyk contends that through internalizing male configurations of power, women themselves become guardians of the oppressive system. She asserts that women’s passivity and the total focus on the domestic sphere are reinforced by their mothers who buy into the oppressive system. Assertiveness and experimentation with new ideas and patterns of living are immediately perceived as a threat to the comfortable, male-dominated status quo. Antosia, the heroine of “For Dimes and Quarters,” finds herself in such a predicament. Since her childhood in Poland, she has always been admonished by her mother to curb her curiosity and her desire to learn and know. Her mother attempts to correct Antosia’s attitude because the older woman has internalized the discriminatory practices against women rooted in religious beliefs. She understands the hardships faced by the rebellious under the threat of social ostracism, since, as William H. Chafe suggests, “clearly defined gender roles provided comfort and security for many, but . . . also discouraged deviancy.”⁴² Antosia’s mother’s favorite cautionary tale for her daughter has always been the biblical story of Eve: “Antosia, be not too bold, for curiosity is the first step to hell.” And when the daughter, a young woman now, with her husband and two small children decides to emigrate to America, “her mother warned her with a threat in her voice, ‘Antosia, you are such a crazy one to see . . . to know everything. Just stay home and take care of your man and your children.’” But how can this bright young woman heed her mother’s warning while “her big blue eyes sparkled with every new idea, every new thing that came to her”?⁴³

      Even though Antosia Milewski is a part of a strong ethnic community, she becomes aware of the subtle influence of the new culture on her immigrant friends when one of them abandons the customary kerchief for a beautiful hat purchased downtown. Thaddeus C. Radzilowski posits that American fashion became a strong “lure of modern life”⁴⁴ for immigrant women. Antosia herself interacts with a couple of American women who offer different patterns of behavior, represent diverse values, and suggest new aspirations. She likes nothing better than visiting her children’s school and talking, in her broken English, to Miss Cook, the children’s teacher. Through Miss Cook, she also receives her first paid position, as a cleaning woman, which strengthens her self-esteem as a wage earner. However, her great desire to learn is repeatedly thwarted by her husband, who, although attending a night school himself, consistently refuses to allow her to join him. His answer is always the same: “A woman’s place is in the home. . . . With everything you want to get mixed up. . . . Better you just watch the kettles on the stove.”⁴⁵ He even withholds his textbooks from her when she wants to study at night. Restrictions placed on Antosia’s educational goals bring to mind Tillie Olsen’s poignant novella, “Tell Me a Riddle,” where Eva, a young immigrant wife and mother, struggles to assert her right to intellectual stimulation against her husband’s indifference and self-absorption. He never relinquishes his social activities so she might leave the house full of their small children to join her friends in an evening discussion circle, and often when he returns home late at night “stimulated and ardent, sniffing her skin” as she is reading and nursing a baby, he orders her to go to bed, to “put the book away, don’t read, don’t read.”⁴⁶ Contrary to Krawczyk’s Mrs. Kulpek, who chooses her quilt over her husband’s lovemaking, and Antosia, who does not capitulate in the face of adversity, Eva’s spirit is crushed and even in dying she is denied, in Mary Ann Ferguson’s phrase, “personal fruition.”⁴⁷

      In Krawczyk’s “For Dimes and Quarters,” Antosia continuously changes her tactics to find a way of crossing the boundaries set by her husband. If she cannot go to school, she studies at home; if she cannot share her husband’s books openly, she searches through all his belongings clandestinely to locate the precious objects and attempts to make sense of the lessons alone while he is at work. All these small acts of resistance culminate in her big decision to purchase a thirty-six-volume set of encyclopedias from a traveling salesman. Unquestionably, Antosia’s choice has been determined and empowered by her economic circumstances, by the fact that however small her earnings as a cleaning woman have been, she has her own money, which she keeps separate from the family budget.

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