The appearance of the first volume of her _Ukrainian Sketches_ was the sensation of the year and they added to the overwhelming disgust at serfdom which was growing among all thinking classes of society. Their one theme was the abominable way in which the serfs were treated and she emphasized especially the hard lot of the women who were thwarted by the cruelty of the masters in their desires to lead a normal, decent existence. In this they agree in style with the _Memoirs of a Sportsman_ by Turgenev but they differ in that Marko Vovchok does not hesitate to present shocking examples of the abuse of the peasants by their masters, instead of merely indicating the humanity of the peasants. Thus in _Horpina_ the peasants are compelled to work three days on their master’s estates for him, two days for the poll tax, and the fifth and sixth days for grinding grain, and the young master drives his people harder than he does his cattle. In the same story the mother takes a sick child to work in the fields with her, because there is no one in the village to care for it, and the master orders the overseer to take the child back and leave it alone in her empty house, because she takes time from her labor to look after it. In order to stop the child from crying, while it is alone, she gives it an opiate. When the child dies as a result, the mother from a sense of guilt goes insane. Marko Vovchok does not hesitate to draw such stories of the callousness of the masters and to emphasize the differences between the small free proprietors and the serfs. Thus in the _Kozak Woman_, the girl Olesya is the daughter of a wealthy farmer but she falls in love with Ivan Zolotarenko, a serf. The leaders of the village express their opposition to this union of a free woman and a serf but she insists and submits to bondage for his sake. She spends all her money and sinks down to the level of her companions. Then her husband is taken away to the city by his master and dies there. At this moment she neglects to recover her freedom because of her children and almost at once her oldest son is taken away to serve as a companion and servant to the son of the master. He fails to make good and dies. When she too passes away, the master of the estate is even unwilling to bury her and the expense of this is left to the already over-burdened serfs, who have that sense of decency which is lacking in the master, a Russianized Pole.