Skrytki w sercach : o jednej powieści Zofii Romanowiczowej

Abstract

The novel by Zofia Romanowiczowa Skrytki represents the trend of psychological prose, in particular, the study of a family breaking-up. The author of the sketch analyses the attitudes and behaviours of the couple of main characters, parents of a boy suffering from the disease of a mental isolation from the environment. The very analysis reveals the pathology of relations both between parents and the boy, and between the husband and wife. The latter “relationship”, only allegedly sealed by the shared misery, is in fact the coexistence driven by the force of inertia, like the parental relationship, restricting itself to the actions providing their son’s welfare. The interpretation takes into account a symbolic layer of the work (a multidimensionality of the novel’s title) and a narration type as formal factors co‑creating the meaning of the text and the atmosphere of a game of appearances as characteristic of the novel in question.