Early life

Stanisławska was born in 1651 to Michal Stanisławski, a military commander and one-time governor of Kiev Province, and Krystyna Borkowa Szyszkowska (née Niszczycka).^[2]

Stanisławska was a member of the szlachta, the noble class, and her family bore the Piława coat of arms, connecting them to the powerful Potocki and Zebrzydowski families.^[3]

Following the death of her mother when she was three, Stanisławska was sent to a cloister near Kraków to be educated by Dominican nuns.^[4] Her maternal great aunt, Gryzelda Dominika Zebrzydowska, was the prioress there until she died of the bubonic plague, at which point Stanisławska was placed in the guardianship of her maternal grandfather.^[5]

"Aesop" episode

Stanisławska's young brother Piotr died in 1667, prompting her father to bring her back home. He had remarried in 1663, to Anna Potocka Kazanowska-Sluszka, and under pressure from his new wife, he arranged his daughter's marriage to Jan Kazimierz Warszycki. Warszycki had powerful connections, being the son of Stanislaw Warszycki, a senator and Castellan of Kraków, but he was also mentally disabled, physically abusive, and completely uninterested in Stanisławska sexually.^[6] In Transaction Stanisławska refers to him almost exclusively as "Aesop" for his ugly appearance,^[7][8] but ultimately she takes pity on him as the "slave" of his conniving and "tyrannical" father.^[9] Much of the piece recounts her misery in her marriage to Warszycki and her attempts to secure a divorce from him. Shortly before their wedding she became deathly ill, and the marriage ceremony was conducted in her home rather than in the church, as was traditional.^[10]

After her father's death in 1669, Stanisławska gained ownership of the family's estate. Her great uncle John III Sobieski, who would become king of Poland in 1674, became her new guardian.^[11] With his assistance, Stanisławska repaired her relationship with her stepmother and fled to a convent, claiming sanctuary from her husband and his family.^[12] She sought an annulment in court, which was finally granted around 1670.^[13] Her stepmother's testimony, in which she claimed that she and Stanislawska's father had forced the girl into marriage against her will, was crucial in securing the annulment.^[14]

Later life

Once divorced, Stanisławska swiftly married a distant relative, Jan Zbigniev Oleśnicki.^[15] According to Transaction, they were happily married until Oleśnicki's death from cholera in 1675 while on a military expedition during the Second Polish–Ottoman War. In 1677 she married again, to Jan Boguslaw Zbąski. In 1683, Zbąski died from an injury he sustained at the Battle of Vienna during the Third Polish–Ottoman War.^[16] It was at this point that Stanisławska began writing Transaction. Little is known of Stanisławska's life after 1685. At some point in the 1690s, she was sued in court after leading a group of servants and villagers against the new owners of a neighboring estate, which had been seized due to unpaid debts. She donated much of her wealth to various missionary groups and to the Piarist monks at Dunajgrod, leaving her estate to the latter in her will. She died on 2 June 1701, in Kurów.^[17]

Criticism

In her introduction to Transaction, Ida Kotowa heavily critiqued Stanisławska's clarity and imagination, writing that the marginal notes often had to be relied upon for the "true sense of a stanza" and that her rhymes were "usually … strained, and sometimes simply forced".^[28] Brückner agreed, repeatedly calling the poetry "poor" or even "terrible", but going on to praise Stanisławska's "feminine wit".^[27] Though later scholars were more forgiving, calling Transaction "a sincere and artistically valuable confession" as well as "detailed and lifelike", ultimately the work has been celebrated more for its social implications than for its style.^[29] It was the "first strictly personal woman's memoir for the readers' enlightenment and admonition" in the region,^[2] and one of many recently discovered "'other' and certainly 'forgotten' voices of the Baroque era".^[30]