Polish manor house – the tragic protagonist of the prose written after the January Uprising

The inscription “I am the Polish manor house, which fights bravely and guards faithfully”, placed above the entry to the manor houses in the 19th century, suggested that in the face of the catastrophe of the state, the house has become a shelter of tradition. This belief was verified by writers creating their works after the January Uprising, such as Michał Bałucki; but it was Eliza Orzeszkowa who presented the motif of the annihilation of a family seat most perfectly in her novella Śmierć domu [Death of the House]. In her poetic description, the author showed the transformation of the house into a grave. It is worth to recall Orzeszkowa’s last literary idea in this context. She shared it with Eugenia Żmijewska, who edited it as a novella Dwa spotkania [Two Meetings]. The romantic plot starts near a devastated, sealed Polish manor house. Theoretically speaking, the love between a Russian aristocrat and an insurgent’s widow could save the house, but it is also in this case that the destruction becomes unavoidable. The process of destruction was also described by Maria Rodziewiczówna in her novel Pożary i zgliszcza [Fires and Smoking Ruins]. Numerous images of the endangered or lost manor house express the [Poles’] awareness of the end of a certain form of Polish identity after 1864