„Nieszczęśliwe niewolnice”. „Dziennik Serafiny” Józefa Ignacego Kraszewskiego jako opowieść o „handlu kobietami”
“Wretched Bondswomen”: Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s "Dziennik Serafiny" as a Story on ‘Trafficking in Women’

Summary/Abstract: This article interprets Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s novel "Dziennik Serafiny" using the dominant category of ‘trafficking in women’, elaborated by Claude Levi-Strauss and Luce Irigaray. As it turns out, although he did not apply the category as such, the novelist masterly sensed that it did exist, and described it. A young woman, a nubile, becomes a subject of a matrimonial transaction entered into by the parents (especially, the male ones). The role of boarding school ['pensja'] and gossip has been described, among other factors, in the reinforcement of the rules of trading/trafficking – and thereby, in the normativisation of the female lives. The (notion of) ‘patriarchal mother’ has an important function too. Kraszewski excellently characterises the ‘female lot’ which, essentially, becomes a history of her ‘debasements.’

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