CHAPTER TWO

THE THEMES OF MELANCHOLY

AND THE BODY IN PAIN

My suffering
is useful to me
It gives me the privilege
to write on the suffering of others
My suffering is a pencil
with which I write
(Swir, Talking to My Body, 1996, 53)1

The feminist denigration of traditional female roles and duties (such as

those related to marriage, family, the tyranny of beauty, and realization of
idealistic romantic love) may seem a well-worn gesture. Decades after the
publication of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and the second
wave of feminism with its canonical texts such as The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan (1963), repetition of the feminist deconstruction of
traditional women may no longer seem an important issue in Europe.
Following the post-1989 transition, however, Polish women writers,
alongside women activists, journalists and academics, repeated the
arguments and rhetoric of second-wave feminism in order to dismantle the
long-standing patriarchal tradition in Poland which had not been
sufficiently contested during communism.2 It is worth noting here the
1

As a motto to this chapter I have chosen a poem by one of the most stimulating
Polish post-war authors, Anna wirszczy ska, pseud. Anna Swir, from her
collection Talking to My Body, translated by Czes aw Mi osz & Leonard Nathan,
Washington: Copper Canyon Press in 1996. The works of Anna Swir are not
discussed here (see, for example, Ingbrant 2007).
2
As I stated it in my article Feminist Theory in Poland: Between Politics and
Literature (Chowaniec and Phillips 2012), the influence of feminist theories,
mainly from Western Europe and the USA, and their reception in so-called postcommunist countries, has been elaborated in many texts e.g. Peggy Watson, 1993;

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Chapter Two

story of the translation of Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex into

Polish.3 This timely text was originally translated in 1972, but its
publication was a unique event in communist-era Poland, since
communism was considered to be already free of oppressive capitalist
structures, and thus of sexist and patriarchal ideology. Not unpredictably
then, the 1972 translation met with a limited readership and had no actual
impact on scholarly interests. Likewise, when in 1982 Teresa Ho wka
published a collection of feminist articles entitled One is Not Born a
Woman (Nikt nie rodzi si kobiet ),4 making direct reference to Beauvoir,
it had no real effect on shaping feminist consciousness among either
scholars or activists. Ho wka intended to introduce the Womens
Liberation Movement to Polish academic circles of the time. This
interesting volume includes articles by Margaret Mead, Kate Millett,
Sherry B. Ortner, Sally Macintyre and Christine Delphy, as well as a
valuable afterword by Aleksandra Jasi ska. Again, it met with no interest
among academics and social organizations. A vital and open feminist
debate was initiated only at the beginning of the 1990s. Following the
democratic transition, women started to gather themselves and organize
within associations, circles and social projects. The first Polish feminist
magazine, With Full Voice (Pe nym G osem), appeared in Krakw in 1993
and was later transformed into Splinter (Zadra, from 1999). It was also a
time of dialogue between women of various countries from the West and
from other so-called post-communist countries. Indeed, the beginning of
the 1990s saw the first wave of feminist publications in magazines, and
translations of feminist canonical texts. Western feminist scholarship
became an auxiliary in re-reading and re-inventing womens traditions not
only in literature but in other spheres as well.
Consequently, following the transition from communism, women
writers talked with great intensity about their experiences of growing up,
rediscovering lost connections with their bodies, their mothers and their
lost home(land)s. It was in a way a gesture of reclaiming ones voice and
right to talk about previously unexplored topics. Today, a representative
body of scholarship now exists on this writing, trying to recapture its
Andrea Coyle, 2003; also Joanna Z. Mishtal, The Challenges of Feminist
Activism in Transition Politics: The Case of Poland, 2006.
3
The story of translating Simone de Beauvoir and also the further development of
feminist scholarship in Poland, I elaborated in Chowaniec and Phillips 2012
4
Beauvoirs famous quotation from the The Second Sex: One is not born, but
rather becomes, a woman is seen as the introduction to the first deep elaboration
of the distinction between sex and gender. See: Moi 1999 as well as Judith Butlers
article: Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoirs Second Sex in Butler (1986).

The Themes of Melancholy and the Body in Pain

47

patterns and main roles within the whole literary scene, for example many
of the chapters in the collective volume Nowe dwudziestolecie (1989
2009): rozpoznania, hierarchie, perspektywy (The New Twenty Years:
Recognitions, Hierarchies, Perspectives, Gosk 2010) or Agnieszka
Mroziks Midwives of Transformation (Akuszerki transformacji, 2012).
Examining all the frequently reoccurring topics and tracing the ways in
which womens writing has become melancholic through its fixation on
describing longing, or showing various forms of depression or a sense of
unbearable loss, are not intended however to offer a decadent, pessimistic
view of womens lives and situations, but to actively take part in the
discussion about the contemporary position of women in Poland, on
gender relations, and on the role of the family and the human body in the
new post-communist reality. Melancholy here may take the form of
traditional melancholy, understood as the Saturnine mood, but it is quite
separate from the form of melancholy generally assigned to men, which I
will elaborate further below. Here, suffice it to say that melancholy is more
of a moment than a constant state, and not an individuals state but a social
position, a social melancholy (Oliver 2002), and its main role is to reengage literature within the dialogue about contemporaneity.
Shame, a sense of guilt, of disgust, desolation and physical anguish
these kinds of feelings have featured strongly in womens writing of the
last two decades. Contemporary women writers, concerned with their
femininity and its status in Polish society over the past twenty years, have
exposed Polish patriarchy, taken it apart in order to contest it, ridiculed
and rebelled against it, eventually going on to deconstruct it. In this
fashion, their writing began to approach the political assumptions of
feminism. Studying their output, one may have the impression that their
work represents the melancholy of the conquered, or the clinically
depressed state of those who have lost any hope of a better tomorrow. Yet,
contemporary womens writing can be read as the beginning of a new
programme that is based not only on their own despair. There is a
particular difficulty in reading melancholic writing, since a specific trap
lurks in it: it is traditionally read as an expression of an individualistic
inability to comply with the social order, and as an oppressive in relation
to the individuals freedom. To gain the social dimension of the
melancholy in womens writing one has to see it as a gendered
phenomenon. The female aspect of this womens prose can be identified
through this very melancholy, through its pessimistic mood, since
according, for example, to Julia Kristevaecstasy and melancholy are the
two extreme ways for women to gain access to channels of social order (to
a symbolic form of order, to power and knowledge) within the economy of

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Chapter Two

a monotheistic society, in which the Father, the Law and God is a Man
(Kristeva 1986, 148). From this perspective, women adopt two extreme
means of expression in order to participate in societal life. Yet, writing
about melancholy is also a struggle against it, an attempt to describe it and
expose it. Viewed from such a perspective, the texts themselves are the
ultimate results of the struggle against the melancholy that threatens
women.

Melancholy and Womens Writing

As I showed in the previous chapter, in the Polish literature of the past
twenty years, womenas writers and protagonists or as subjects of
literary explorationshave played a key role. The blossoming of female
pens in the 1990s has often been compared to the interwar period in
Polish culture (19181939). These periods can indeed be compared and
matched, for two reasons. Firstly, because womens writing began to
permeate the mainstream (by which I mean the literature debated in the
most influential literary magazines, reviewed by the most important
critics, nominated for the most significant awards), and secondly, because
of the heated debate which raged around the very topic of womens
writing. It is also important to consider that the themes covered by women
writers are not only limited to concerns about gender, they are not simply
about inter-sex relations, but are above all a revision of social and political
frameworks. We are not so much concerned here with the old feminist
manifestothat which is private is politicalas with the oppositethat
which is political is also private. Politics sneaks into our homes and
defines them, directing where and who we are. Even our language is social
and hence political, although not everyone is given an equal opportunity to
speak. Arguments around this disparity regarding the right to speak and
express ones desires, constraints and needs have been a major concern of
womens writing in the past two decades. The disparity does not manifest
itself in active rebellion, but rather through critical referencing: there is
much anger expressed here (as in Total Amnesia by Izabela Filipiak, Tabu
[Taboo] by Kinga Dunin or Katoniela [The Catholic Anielai] by Ewa
Madeyska), along with the depressive states of those who cannot find their
place (Clam by Marta Dzido or Cleaning Lady by Joanna Pawlu kiewicz).
Without doubt, womens writing falls into the trap of melancholy
states. At this stage, I would rather not concern myself with theories of