This is a comparative study of three literary works of the 19th century, Eliza Orzeszkowa's novel Marta, Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, and Henrik Ibsen's drama Nora. The common analytical frame is the metaphor of the doll's house, which seems to provide an apt description (diagnosis) of the condition of each heroine, the space they inhabit, and their attitude to the economy of their everyday lives and their husbands. It also defines the situation in which each of them decides, or is compelled by circumstances, to move out of their sheltered place. In each of the three fictional cases the attention is focused on the growing self‑awareness of women, who would not have gained a mature knowledge of the world and of themselves if they had not been forced to abandon their doll's house existence.

The thread that runs through this article is made of silk, a fabric with a fascinating history of origins in China and a long record of projects aimed at organizing and mechanizing its production in Europe. The silk motif recurs throughout 19th century literature. As an object of realist description it gives the writer the opportunity to explore its sensuous material appeal and, also, to create around it a web of additional references and associations. For Honoré de Balzac and Bolesław Prus silk carries connotations of elegance, social status and social aspirations. In the fiction of Eliza Orzeszkowa it is one of the regularly recurring elements of descriptions of outward appearance of characters. It can interpreted as a mechanical repetition or, perhaps, the foregrounding of the stereotype meaning of silk intended as an invitation to the moral judgment of characters furnished with that mark.

Don Quichotte, an opera by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Cain first performed in 1910, is one of the most suggestive examples of a transposition of a literary theme to musical theatre and of a creative adaptation of a literary source-text into an operatic libretto. This article explores the manner in which the opera creates a musical portrait of the main character and presents an interpretation of the opera’s narrative. The analysis is conducted on two levels, textual (the libretto) and musical (the score). The conclusion, apart from its summarizing function, offers an answer to the question about the attractiveness of the Don Quixote theme for musical adaptations.