He took the scarf off her head. A married woman without a kerchief is a disgraceful sight [FRAGMENT]

In the early 1920s, when city ladies shed their corsets and shorten their dresses, rural women took off their stockings – wide strips of linen, part of the folk costume, which in some regions they wore on religious holidays. Rańtuch goes to churches, and in the east to the Orthodox church, and from then on they serve as liturgical tablecloths. Women put on ordinary scarves in their place, which they have not parted with for generations.

A peasant woman’s scarf is much more than just a head covering. In the field, it protects its owner from wind, sun and cold; when milking a cow, it protects the milk, in the kitchen it allows you to cook without the risk of hair falling into the food. Finally – it can be used to cover rarely washed, often matted hair. However, for married women it is also a symbol of their modesty and humility and they wear them not only outside, but also at home and necessarily in church. This is the canon law of the Catholic Church from 1917: while a woman must cover her head, a man, on the contrary, should remove his head covering. (“A man should not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, and a woman is the glory of man” – says the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians).

For many women, a headscarf is the most desired gift. Every day smooth, linen, in the shape of a square, patterned, cashmere on holidays. The most ornate cost as much as a cow.

At the beginning of the 1920s, factory production of women’s kerchiefs was just beginning, so far hand-made ones were worn. Large, woolen, checkered – called window, ash or kramarka – are used to cover, instead of a coat. When a factory of the so-called Polish Tibet, i.e. worsted wool of Tibetan sheep or goats, is built in Łódź, colorful scarves with intense colors, usually with rose motifs, are sent to Poland, called Tibettes, Saline scarves or Merino scarves. Business is going great, every village woman has at least a few scarves on her head and at least one to cover on colder days.

In Jurgów in Spisz, long after the Second World War, the inhabitants told each other about one such woman who went to spinners, and there she played with a different man each time. One day her husband caught her doing it. He suddenly appeared in a house where women were spinning while his wife was dancing with her boyfriend. Before he beat her, he knocked the scarf off her head. The village remembered well exactly how the peasant punished his wife, because the kerchief is a stamp and to deprive her of a woman is to exclude her, that is, to humiliate and reject her. A married woman without a kerchief is a disgraceful sight. She should not leave the house without it and must tie it properly – in some regions under the chin and in other regions in the back, under the hair.

Kashubian youth in staged situations National Digital Archive

How important it is, a girl from the village of Błażowa found out when going to church, she tied a scarf at the back, contrary to the local tradition. During a mass in the local church, another woman pulled the kerchief off her head. And the whole village was buzzing about her crime. Don’t break the rules. They all have to bind the same.

The mother of Michał Sobków, a doctor from Wrocław, when shortly after the war, as part of the so-called repatriation, their family came from Podolia to the suburbs of Wrocław, could not accept the fact that married women showed up in the street without a headscarf. “How can that be! Have they no shame?” – she asked and threatened her daughter that “if she also dares to do the same, there is nothing to look for in their house.” She had already been outraged that married women wore kerchiefs in an illegal way – that is, they tie bows under their chins, just like girls. In their place, in Koropiec, in Podolia, a married woman had to make a knot in the back and this way of tying was not negotiable. “It was sacred, on the level of a religious cult – recalled Dr. Michał Sobków. – The arrangement of the kerchief was well thought out. From the front it covered the forehead up to the eyebrows, and therefore perhaps the shameless bone in anatomical nomenclature is also sometimes called os iferecundum, which means the shameless bone. the garment that the sinner took off before going to her husband’s bed, and only after the lamp was turned off, was the handkerchief, and the first thing she did in the morning, before her husband awoke, was putting it on her head.

Until 1928, a Polish woman taking her marriage vows* in front of the altar of the Catholic Church still utters a different version than the one uttered by her husband. Her oath is: “I, …, take you, …, as my spouse, and I swear to you love, faith, honesty and marital obedience, and that I will not leave you until death. So help me, Lord God almighty in Trinity, one and all saints.

Revolutionary change is coming. Since 1929, a woman and a man in Poland have vowed the same vow. The Primate of Poland, Archbishop August Hlond, in the decree of March 1929, explains: “In the wedding formula, the oath of obedience on the part of the young lady was omitted. It happened to adapt to the Roman Ritual, which does not know this ritual, assuming that both parties upon marriage assume the same matrimonial obligations.

It doesn’t change anything, the power in the Polish family still belongs to the man and no one announces its end. “This does not mean that the wife ceases to be submissive to her husband. St. Paul’s Mulieresviris suis sub ditaesint** (in Ephesians 5:22) remains in force. But the Church of St. Paul sees no reason why wives should vow this submission.” – explains the primate.

Vow or unvow, a woman’s submission should be her middle name. The life of a peasant woman is marked by fatalism. She learns very early that she is not the master of her fate, that she should not expect too much, because she was called into this world for heavy duties, which she actually experiences as a child, and marriage brings her more.

“Marriage does not give personal freedom, but binds two people with common interests for a hard and arduous way of life – Antoszek instructs in the popular textbook Przy Kądziela. – To be a mother and housewife is a great vocation in the world; the more plentiful crops he reaps, the deeper is his inner satisfaction that he does not live in God’s world for nothing. A man has the whole economy on his mind, various interests to deal with, he needs a lot of space for his activities. A woman’s state is her home and if she wants, can turn it into paradise. It depends on her as the priestess of the hearth whether the fire will burn with a bright flame.

The doctor Maria Kołaczyńska, in the brochure “Rural Mother” published in 1938, also leaves no illusions that the woman’s fate is devoid of hope for improvement and her child is also born to toil and poverty: “In the future you will not provide him with wealth, but as long as he is young, you can provide him with a royal upbringing, the doctor comforts, showing the woman the advantages of being raised in the countryside: [T]your child can enjoy the sun, flowers, run in the woods, wade in the stream, it costs others dearly, and you get it all for free.

A woman only needs to understand what her duty is and simply fulfill it, because a good mother and housewife not only organizes the house, but is also responsible for the atmosphere that prevails in it. “She should do her best to make the family’s stay in the cottage more pleasant. Do not nag, do not nag all day about anything,” Antoszka admonishes. Don’t complain, don’t protest, nod. The language of the village women betrays their attitude towards these teachings. “My husband didn’t make me go to the fields” – they say, happy that he is such a good man. “He didn’t chase me in the field” – they boast, appreciating the goodness of his character. And if, in addition, the peasant does not drink and does not use violence, he comes close to the ideal.

The rural woman is surrounded by the special care of Catholic ideologues. Still pure and innocent, not like those from the city who scream “We want all life”***, that is, the right to sex and to give up motherhood. Country girls still know where they belong. “The rural woman, even more than the man, was defined by the historical and folk tradition as a non-autonomous domestic creature, whose life was supposed to take place on a dead-end street connecting a cottage with a parish church” – writes Józef Chałasiński, an outstanding sociologist, in 1934.

Rural population in the market square in Gródek Jagielloński. In the foreground a peasant in a russet coat is visible National Digital Archive

The Catholic Church is well aware that this lane is no longer dead end and that it is getting longer and longer, especially as more and more girls go to work in the city and make breweries there. This madness has to stop. “Girls serve Jews. Later, they return to the countryside demoralized, stupefied, discouraged from living and working, with a past and an even brighter future in the form of offspring and venereal diseases” – warns Jur Leżeński in the study “Wieś o się”, which is an analysis of youth surveys Catholic on rural life.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of sensible girls, such as the one who, when asked what future she dreams of, explains in a survey why she wants to stay in the country: “Nature has the greatest influence on me, when in spring the trees turn green, the fields take on a fresh robe, meadows colored with flowers, there again you can see a proud dark forest, where so much greenery, smell, birdsong, such healthy and fresh air, such is the charm of life, that I would not give it up for anything in the world for this terrible, saturated city traffic, trumpets, roaring cars, gray street walls again. The countryside never witnessed as many crimes, crimes, suicides and brawls as the city. It gives a moderate, calmer life. My dream is to be married to a good man who would he fell in love with life in the countryside, because my desire is to live among the peasants, to share their joys and worries.

Jur Leżeński has similar feelings about the moral superiority of the rural people and is glad that in the countryside, apart from various plagues, such as money laundering, blood feuds and theft, family virtues are still observed: modesty, diligence, frugality, piety. “Especially peasant women excel in these virtues, who can be a model of a Polish matron. Unfortunately, the last years of rural emigration to cities and the influence of urban life in the countryside are slowly corrupting the model of women. Nevertheless, probably for a long time, as the late priest Bilczewski used to say, heaven will filled with country housewives. And they will be the moral backbone of our village for a long time to come.”

Leżeński was not mistaken. The more a country housewife suffers from fatigue, violence, loneliness, untreated diseases, the more she seeks relief in religion and the less she rebels. Catholic formatting programs her to be patient, persistent and trusting that her pain and effort will be rewarded in eternal life. The peasant woman is required to be a martyr. When she marries and moves in with her husband, it is said: she has gone to the side. For her, this means that now she will be subject not only to her husband’s authority, but also to his parents, so if relations with her husband’s family go badly, the loneliness that a woman usually experiences in an arranged marriage turns into hell.

* Civil weddings could only be concluded in the area of ​​the former Prussian partition.

** Let women be submissive to their husbands (Latin).

*** We want all life! – password used by the writer Zofia Nałkowska

Peasants – cover promotional materials – Margins