Agata Zawiszewska-Semeniuk

This article is a discussion of Dominika Niedźwiedź’s monograph entitled Jak Tadeusz Żeleński stworzył Boya. Strategie, autokreacje, wizerunki [How Tadeusz Żeleński created Boy. Strategies, autocreations, portraits], which analyses the pioneering literary marketing strategies applied by Tadeusz Żeleński (Boy) in Poland (such as building his own intellectual brand, creating and promoting texts as products tailored to the expectations of the audience, the commercialisation of talent and cooperation with other market players, e.g. the press, publishing houses and literary groups).

The article is about the friendship and social activity of two important female representatives of the Polish emancipation movement at the turn of the 19th century: Aleksandra Bąkowska, aristocrat and owner of the Gołotczyzna estate as well as translator of early American anthropological works, and Paulina Kuczalska- Reinschmit, impoverished noblewoman, leader of the suffragist movement in the Polish Kingdom. Both women were inspired by the ideas of Lewis Henry Morgan, the researcher of the Iroquois culture and the author of, among others, Ancient Society (1877), in which he described and compared different systems of kinship in pre- and non-Christian cultures. Bąkowska translated this book into Polish in 1887, which triggered a discussion among early Polish sociologists, anthropologists and cultural philosophers, most importantly about the issue of the historicity of the institution of monogamian marriage and patriarchal family. Bąkowska turned a part of the Gołotczyzna estate into a school for country girls founded on the principles resembling the communist community of rights and obligations as described by L.H. Morgan based on the observation of Indian tribes. Kuczalska-Reinschmit, on the other hand, established the Polish Women Emancipation Association in Warsaw, whose seat – with a reading room, a lending library, a lecture hall – was also organized as a community, mainly for women. Both initiatives led to the dissemination of emancipation ideas in the Polish Kingdom before WWI and contributed to the principle of equality of rights for men and women inscribed in the new Polish constitution of 1918.

The text investigates the history of the Polish Association of Equal Rights for Women (1907–1914) – one of the first legal feminist organisations in the Kingdom of Poland. The Association was the product of ideological and social clashes within the environment of the emancipationists gathered at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries around Paulina Kuczalska-Reinschmit, the leader of Polish suffragettes. The group was organised around the Women’s Labour Circle attached to The Society for Support of Industry and Trade (1894–1905), and then in the informal Polish Union of Equal Rights for Women. In 1907 the suffragettes formed the Union of Equal Rights for Polish Women, and the proponents of the integration of the fight for gender equality and Polish independence established the Polish Association of Equal Rights for Women. The relations between the Union and the Association were characterised by competition for succeeding in being the first to introduce new ideas into the mainstream and good practices inside the organization.

*Materiały do artykułu zostały zebrane w ramach grantu Narodowego Centrum Nauki OPUS 4 DEC–2012/07/B/HS2/00335 zrealizowanego w latach 2012–2017 na Uniwersytecie Szczecińskim.

"Translator of Tylor and Morgan" – Aleksandra Bąkowska and her Social Activity

The article is about the friendship and social activity of two important female representatives of the Polish emancipation movement at the turn of the 19th century: Aleksandra Bąkowska, aristocrat and owner of the Gołotczyzna estate as well as translator of early American anthropological works, and Paulina Kuczalska- Reinschmit, an impoverished noblewoman, the leader of the suffragette movement in the Polish Kingdom. Both women were inspired by the ideas of Lewis Henry Morgan, the researcher of the Iroquois culture and the author of, among others, Ancient Society (1877), in which he described and compared different systems of kinship in pre- and non-Christian cultures. A. Bąkowska translated this book into Polish in 1887 which triggered the discussion among early Polish sociologists, anthropologists and cultural philosophers in which the most important was the issue of the historicity of the institution of a monogamous marriage and a patriarchal family. A. Bąkowska turned a part of the Gołotczyzna estate into a school for country girls based on the principles resembling the communist community of rights and obligations which community was described by L.H. Morgan based on the observation of Indian tribes. P. Kuczalska-Reinschmit, on the other hand, established the Polish Women Emancipation Association in Warsaw, whose seat – with a reading room, a lending library, a lecture hall – was also organized as a community, mainly for women. Both initiatives led to the dissemination of emancipation ideas in the Polish Kingdom before WWI and contributed to the principle of equality of rights for men and women being inscribed in the new Polish constitution of 1918.