Kobiety w rodzinnej biografii Hanny Malewskiej

Abstract

Hanna Malewska’s essay written in 1964 depicts genealogy of a “typical Polish representative of intelligentsia” starting from the Enlightenment to the 20th century. The writer presents lives of her predecessors against the historical background and social changes, especially in the 19th century. It was women who played a considerable role in those changes because they accepted the lowering of the social status of landed gentry much better than men as they did not have to maintain the illusion of “male honour” the way men did. The women showed great practical skills in household management and children’s education. In Malewska’s family essay several types of women can be found: a libertine in the Enlightenment, a religious patriot during the time of national resurrections, then a courageous positivist, a boarding school pupil, a matron, and finally a university student. The narration of Apocrypha... was based on the construction of “grafo-agrafo”, or “verbalised - nonverbalised”. Overt and covert senses, which are complementary towards each other, are transferred in anecdotes and micro stories, in which knowledge assumed is as valid as verbalised. Meta-textual commentary from the author constitutes a framework for the apocryphal story of a family history. Due to the genre category (apocrypha) adopted in the title such narrative devices as suggestion, guess, assumption, confabulation, pseudo-letter and pseudo-diary are justified.