The Peasants — Volume II: Winter

Chłopi: Zima · The Peasants: Winter · published 1904 · ISBN

Władysław Reymont — Władysław Reymont (1867 – 1925) — Poland, writing in Polish. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924.

“for his great national epic, The Peasants” — The Nobel Committee citation

About Władysław Reymont

Polish novelist born into a large village family near Kobiele Wielkie, where his father played the church organ. He had almost no formal schooling: he left home to apprentice as a tailor, joined a travelling theatre troupe, then worked as a gatekeeper on a remote stretch of railway — and those years among labouring people became his literary capital. Reymont wrote slowly and from direct observation rather than from books. The 1924 Nobel Prize went to him for The Peasants, over candidates such as Thomas Mann and Thomas Hardy; he died little more than a year later.

How it came to be

The second volume appeared in the same year as the first. Reymont uses winter as a social laboratory: with no work left to do, people are left with nothing but each other. The Catholic calendar — Advent, Christmas, the saints' days — gives this volume the frame that the farming year gave the last.

Summary of The Peasants — Volume II: Winter

The fields freeze, fieldwork stops, and the village is shut up indoors with itself for months. Everything the busy season kept hidden begins to surface: Antek and Jagna, the coldness inside the Boryna household, the debts, the talk. Winter is also the season of feast days — and of the lawsuit, when the whole village goes to court over the forest the manor wants to take.

Analysis & legacy

Winter shows most plainly that Lipce is no harmonious community. The same people who tear at each other over women and land close ranks the moment the manor touches the village forest — and fall apart again as soon as the threat passes. Reymont does not idealise that solidarity: it is real, but it only ignites against a common enemy. Running alongside is Jagna's story, the most contested thread in the cycle. She is drawn neither as a passive victim nor as a wanton; she simply cannot live inside the shape the village keeps for women, and it is that — not any particular act — which the village will not forgive.

Themes: Community and exclusion · Women inside the village mould · Village against manor · The church calendar · Gossip

Frequently asked questions

What is The Peasants — Volume II: Winter about?

The fields freeze, fieldwork stops, and the village is shut up indoors with itself for months. Everything the busy season kept hidden begins to surface: Antek and Jagna, the coldness inside the Boryna household, the debts, the talk. Winter is also the season of feast days — and of the lawsuit, when…

Is The Peasants — Volume II: Winter worth reading?

Winter shows most plainly that Lipce is no harmonious community. The same people who tear at each other over women and land close ranks the moment the manor touches the village forest — and fall apart again as soon as the threat passes. Reymont does not idealise that solidarity: it is real, but it…

When did Władysław Reymont win the Nobel Prize, and why?

Władysław Reymont won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924: “for his great national epic, The Peasants”

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