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

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СКАЧАТЬ ethnic-less neighborhood of what William Chafe characterizes as identical “‘ticky-tacky’ houses.”¹⁷ The story’s deployment of ethnic markers is minimal, as it lacks references to any Polish or Polish American traditions, religious or family holidays, or, most importantly, the Polish language, even though several characters are identified as born and brought up in Poland. The paucity of ethnic markers, Kosturbala’s careful description of the suburban setting, as well as her character construction of Anya’s husband and her brother-in-law as professionals in positions of authority all speak to her awareness of the crucial differences between the mainstream middle and the ethnic working class. In line with Cynthia Levine-Rasky’s clear definition of class distinctions through disparity in educational levels, lifestyle choices, and the pursuit of positions of authority,¹⁸ Kosturbala’s characters are well assimilated and firmly situated within the American middle class.

      As would be expected of a young middle-class wife living in a white suburb at midcentury, Anya Krystof exists only within a domestic setting, her domain, of which she is exceedingly proud. She is completely committed to and never tires of admiring her home: “Her mind responded, for the thousandth time, to the pleasure she felt when her eyes roamed around the panelled room with its beamed ceiling and gleaming parquet floor.”¹⁹ She embraces the new consumerism of the 1950s, when, in Chafe’s words, “consumer housewives outdid each other in trying to purchase the latest cookout gadgetry,”²⁰ and translates many of her possessions into socioeconomic class markers. She treasures her Limoges china, her sterling silver, “the lovely cherry wood furniture, the smooth expanse of carpeting, the charming blend of colors, the informality and warmth.”²¹ Her class-conscious acquisitiveness recognizes not only the importance of quality but also of brand names for the construction of the class-appropriate lifestyle. However, it seems that Anya has paid a high price for the easy life in her “charming and comfortable home” with a loving husband and two beautiful and “well mannered” children.²² The narrative matter-of-factly lists some hardships that have left their mark on Anya: her son’s serious illness while her husband was deployed overseas during World War II, the death of her brother who was shot down over France, and, finally, the fact that “she had gone through the difficult postwar adjustment period as thousands of American wives had done.”²³ Anya, like many other women pressured to abandon the public sphere after the war, has to surrender any economic independence and authority she held within the family during her husband’s absence, accept that her “aspirations were systematically circumscribed to domestic life,”²⁴ and find “true feminine fulfillment”²⁵ in the passive and subservient role of a housewife. She is now directed by her husband to reach self-fulfillment through her service to the family and through consumerism—her delight in acquisition of pretty objects, not so much for herself, but for the home and the family.

      Anya’s tenuous hold on self-esteem is shaken by a visit from her husband’s cousin, Jadwiga, a woman scarred psychologically and physically by the horrors of war. Kosturbala employs Jadwiga’s character to provide an alternative to and a critique of the white middle-class suburban gender construct represented by Anya. Jadwiga defies the traditional expectations of feminine behavior and attitudes. She smokes like a man and shows absolutely no interest in housework or Anya’s children. Anya’s early attempts to impress Jadwiga with the wealth and comfort of her home fail as Jadwiga’s old-world aesthetic does not recognize the beauty or value of the mass-produced consumer goods. She offends Anya by finding the American décor quaint, while at the same time waxing lyrical about a pair of carved chairs and an old tattered oriental rug she and her late husband purchased at an auction before the war. Since the aesthetic appeal of antiques, actually of anything old, is beyond Anya’s understanding, she does not recognize Jadwiga’s yearning for reminders of the past destroyed by the war, nor Jadwiga’s old-world views on social class. Yet Jadwiga, like many of the Polish World War II émigrés, arrives in the United States with a firm conviction of her own middle-class status. For the Polish woman, upward class mobility cannot be achieved by moving to the suburbs and buying expensive items, because social class is something one inherits from a long line of ancestors, just as one might inherit a pair of old carved chairs or an oriental rug. Anya, brought up on the ideology of the American Dream with upward mobility at its center, resents that Jadwiga’s comments somehow diminish the desirability of her home and her life.

      Kosturbala repeatedly deploys the commonly accepted gender stereotypes of midcentury America to demonstrate Anya’s total disempowerment and outline the barriers she faces in constructing her identity. This adult woman, a mother of two children who worked and supported her small family while her husband was fighting overseas, suddenly is incapable of thinking critically, and she constantly defers to her husband, who patiently explains Jadwiga’s attitude. Mark’s diagnosis is simple: Jadwiga is just overwhelmed by their wealth of consumer goods, which fills her with envy and malice born of privation. Mark’s judgment exemplifies the attitude prevailing in the 1950s that the life of an American housewife was “the envy . . . of women all over the world.”²⁶ Anya’s brother-in-law reacts even more strongly to her complaints about Jadwiga’s attitudes. In cautioning Anya not to be bullied into “apologizing for being an American,”²⁷ he imbues their domestic conflict with cultural and national significance. After all, at midcentury, consumerism becomes intertwined with expressions of patriotism and American exceptionalism.²⁸

      The most unnerving thing to Anya are Jadwiga’s war stories. The World Council of Churches has sponsored Jadwiga’s travel to the United States, where she undergoes reconstructive surgery on her legs to reverse the damage she sustained during the inhuman medical experiments performed on her in a concentration camp. With vivid details, she describes her suffering in Auschwitz: “They opened the long bones in our right legs. Zosia, Hela, and I had slivers of wood, crawling with staph germs, implanted in the marrow. . . . They injected us with germ-killing drugs and tried bone transplants.”²⁹ She tells about the death of her first husband in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II in Poland, and about losing her unborn child after being kicked in the belly by a German soldier. These stories frighten Anya and she does not know how to react or how to comfort Jadwiga. They bring the reality of suffering, human endurance, and courage to the artificial environment of her suburban home. They also remind Anya of the past—of her family’s ethnic roots in Poland and of her old assertive self of the war years. Thus, in spite of herself, Anya is drawn to Jadwiga. However, Anya must medicalize³⁰ Jadwiga’s behavior in order to neutralize this disquieting presence in her own “perfect” family, home, and neighborhood and to dismiss Jadwiga’s scorn of what the Polish woman sees as meaningless social success. Doubtless, Jadwiga must be mentally ill and should be admitted to a hospital where an accurate diagnosis and successful treatment can restore her feminine qualities. Thus, Jadwiga’s struggle to have her suffering acknowledged and the enormity of the crimes committed against her understood—crimes which deprived her of motherhood, her athletic abilities as a champion skier, and her physical beauty and left her to a life of pain—becomes dismissed as unfeminine and therefore an obvious symptom of mental illness. Her victimization becomes offensive to those around her because it brings ugliness and reality into a household where that ugliness of reality is denied. Until Jadwiga’s arrival, any imperfection could have been smoothed over with just a few purchases.

      While Anya identifies Jadwiga’s behavior as symptomatic of disease, her diagnosis is ridiculed by Joe, her brother-in-law, and a medical doctor whose advice she seeks. According to him, Jadwiga simply lacks self-control and indulges in female hysterics instead of moving on with her life and taking responsibility for her own well-being. After all, it has been ten years since the end of the war. He even questions Jadwiga’s claims of victimhood by citing his experiences with postwar refugees: “I know these refugees, there are ten of them on the staff at the hospital. Every one of them was a hero in the underground or an escapee from a concentration camp, to hear them tell it. They come in with great big chips on their shoulders.”³¹ Joe attempts to characterize the whole cohort of postwar immigrants who, as Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann suggests, defined themselves as “political immigrants” even though their motives for emigration might have been more complex.³² Joe firmly believes that Jadwiga’s self-indulgent СКАЧАТЬ