Eliza Orzeszkowa

Eliza Orzeszkowa (Eliza Ozheshkova, Eliza Orzheshko, Polish: Eliza Orzeszkowa, Belarusian: Эліза Ажэшка) was a Polish writer of Belarusian origin and a public figure.

Born Elżbieta Paławska, she was the daughter of a wealthy landowner and lawyer. She received her education at a boarding school in Warsaw. At the age of 17, she was married to Peter Orzeszko, a landowner from Kobryn Uyezd, and lived on his estate in Ludwinowo. She supported participants in the uprising of 1863. Because of his involvement in the uprising, her husband was exiled to Perm Governorate in 1865, and the estate was confiscated. At her initiative, Eliza’s marriage to Peter Orzeszko was declared invalid in 1869. Settling in Grodno, Orzeszko sold the Milkovshchina estate in 1870 and lived by her literary work. In 1894 she remarried, to Stanisław Nagórski. She was involved in charitable and patriotic public activity.

She made her debut in print with the novella A Picture from the Famine Years (“Obrazek z lat głodowych”) in 1866. She used the pseudonyms E. O., Bąk (z Wa-Lit-No), Li…ka, and Gabriela Litwinka.

Her early novels and novellas, including Pan Graba (“Pan Graba”, 1869) and Marta (“Marta”, 1873), and others, dealt with the social emancipation and the struggle of women for human dignity. The disintegration of the patriarchal landowning order and the rise of the bourgeoisie are the subject of the novels Eli Makower (“Eli Makower”, 1874–1875), The Brochwicz Family (“Rodzina Brochwiczów”, 1876), and others. Orzeszkowa’s work of the 1860s and 1870s is characterized by tendentious genres such as the “novel with a thesis” and the “story with a thesis.” Show full Collapse