In the Church and the Monastery: Religious Institutions in a Secularizing World of Emancypantka and Emancypantki by Bolesław Prus

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the institutions, places, and people associated with the Church in Bolesław Prus’s Emancypantki. This new interpretation of the novel begins with an analysis of the changes introduced in the second volume between the serialized edition from 1890–1893 (titled Emancypantka) and the final version of the novel from 1903. It turns out that in the first edition, the influence of religious culture on Magdalena Brzeska’s coming of age was much more pronounced – and not necessarily positive – as it bore the hallmarks of oppression and contributed to the protagonist’s crisis. Although Prus partially softened this criticism in the final version, his work still presents a story of secularization – the division of reality into the secular and the religious. The author of this article therefore considers Emancypantka to be a story about the Church attempting to maintain its position in the face of an onslaught of alternative ways of explaining the world.