Zła macocha czy troskliwa opiekunka? Sytuacja osieroconych dzieci w środowisku XVIII-wiecznej magnaterii
A bad stepmother or a caring carer? The situation of orphaned children in the milieu of the 18-th magnates

Summary/Abstract: In our culture there is a deep-rooted myth of a bad stepmother, and the very word has clearly negative overtones. The relations between the stepmother and the stepdaughter or stepson are marked by ill-will, envy or even hate — one may only mention "Cinderella", "Snow White" or "Macocha/Stepmother" by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski in this context. This is hardly surprising — after all, the children of a man from his previous relationship constitute competitors and an unwanted burden for his new partner. The aim of the article is to attempt to answer the following questions: was the role of the stepmother negatively marked already in the 18th century; what were the relations in the families in which a stepmother appeared; what was the situation of orphans and half-orphans in the realities of the 18th century — on the basis of the selected examples of the representatives of the Polish and Lithuanian magnates of the Poland under the Saxon kings: Maria Zofia z Sieniawskich (Konstancja Denhoffówna’s stepmother), Leon Radziwiłł, who was orphaned at an early age and raised by Michał Kazimierz and Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowie, or Anna z Mycielskich, who married Prince Michał Kazimierz after Franciszka Urszula’s death, thus becoming a stepmother for his children. In the analysis various archive materials were used (ones from the Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych in Warsaw, Biblioteka Książąt Czartoryskich in Cracow, Biblioteka PAN in Kórnik and the Biblioteka Zakładu im. Ossolińskich in Wrocław), above all the private correspondence and the educational instructions. These materials contain both direct opinions about what a stepmother was or should be as well as the means to reconstruct the actual image of the relations between the stepmother, stepfather and the adopted children.

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