Eliza Ozheshko was a trailblazing Polish novelist and a leading writer of the Positivist period. In the early 1900s, she was twice nominated for a Noble Prize in literature.
Background
Eliza Ozheshko, née Eliza Pawłowska, was born to a noble Pawlowski family on June 6, 1841 in Milkowszczyzna village. She was the younger daughter of the advocate Benedykt Pawlowski and his second wife Franciszka. Her father had a large library, full of works by Enlightenment writers and collection of art works. He died when Eliza was 3 years old. The family moved to Grodno. Since that time, she was brought up only by women: her mother, grandmother, older sister Klementyna and a nurse. Eliza read a lot and wrote stories.
Education
From 1852 to 1857 she studied at Warsaw classical gymnasium.
Career
In May 1857, Eliza returned to Milkowszczyzna where she met her first husband Piotr Ozheshko, a Polish nobleman twice her own age. Together with her husband’s younger brother Florian she organized a school for boys at Ludwinowa. Her marriage was unsuccessful, largely because Orzeszko not only was passionately and actively pro-independence but also sought the emancipation of the serfs.
During the January Uprising of 1863, Ozhesko became liaison person of the Traugut’s unit on the territory of the Belarusian Polesia. She helped the rebels with medicine and food, created “women’s small legion”, the participants of which backed bread, did the washing and constantly kept in touch with the rebels.
After the uprising, she settled in Grodno, where in 1879 she opened a bookshop and publishing house. In 1878 she had published Meir Ezofowicz (the name of the protagonist), a novel that presented a lurid picture of Jewish life in a small town in Belarus and preached not so much tolerance as the assimilation of the Jewish community. The Russian authorities closed down her business in 1882, placing her under police surveillance for five years.
Eliza Ozhesko was actively engaged in cultural, educational and charitable activities in Grodno. She gave lectures on literature, organized literary evenings and special Christmas meetings for orphans. She created a free reading room in her house. Many representatives of the well-known scientists and public figures frequently visited her. After the great fire in Grodno of 1885, she organized help to the fire victims. She remarried in 1894, but her second husband died two years later.
Orzeszko’s well-known peasant novels include Dziurdziowie ("The Dziurdzia Family", 1885); which presented a shocking picture of the ignorance and superstition of poor farmers, and Cham ("The Boor", 1888) the tragic story of a humble fisherman’s love for a neurotic and sophisticated city girl. Considered Orzeszko’s masterpiece, Nad Niemnen ("On the Banks of the Niemen", 1888) depicts Polish society in Lithuania. Bene nati ("Wellborn"1892) describes the impoverished gentry of small villages.
Her literary works comprise around 30 novels, 120 sketches and short stories, a few dramas and dozens of articles on literary and social issues. She was repeatedly a top contender, with Leo Tolstoy, for Nobel Prize in literature.
Supported participants of the January Uprising of 1863.
Views
Ozheshko was passionately and actively pro-independence and sought the emancipation of the serfs.
Interests
Writers
Comte, Mill, Spencer and Darwin
Connections
She married at age 17 to a landowner Piotr Ozheshko, a Polish nobleman twice her own age. He was exiled to Siberia after the January Uprising of 1863. They were divorced in 1869. She married again in 1894, after a 30-year-long loving relationship with Stanislaw Nahorski who died 2 years later.
Eliza Ozheshko encouraged Jodkowski’s activities and allowed to use her personal library. She send him to Warsaw together with the recommendation letter.
