THE VIEW FROM ZABEL YESAYAN’S THE GARDENS OF SILIHDAR, PART I
Jennifer Manoukian
ianyan Magazine
March 20 2012
The second half of the 19th century marks a period of cultural
reawakening for Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. As measures were put
into place to liberalize Ottoman society and more freedoms were granted
to religious minorities, the Armenian community gradually emerged from
centuries of cultural stagnation. Due to more widespread access to
secular education and reforms that strove to standardize the Armenian
language, writing and literature flourished during this period.
Despite its intellectual vibrancy, Armenian society in Constantinople
was not entirely hospitable to all those who sought to contribute their
literary talents. In her autobiography, The Gardens of Silihdar, writer
Zabel Yesayan alludes to the obstacles that she encountered, both as a
young woman and as an aspiring writer, in the early years of her life.
Although during this period it was common for affluent young Armenians
to be sent to Europe to finish their schooling, a close reading of
Yessayan’s autobiography reveals a motivation other than a mere wish to
follow social convention: her move to Paris represents a physical and
symbolic dissociation from the various elements of Armenian society
in Constantinople that would have prevented her from leading the
contemplative life of a writer that she had envisioned for herself.
It would, however, be misleading to create a rigid dichotomy between
Armenian and French societies at the end of the 19th century, by
exaggerating the subjugation of Armenian women in the Ottoman Empire
and extolling the freedom of women in France. These extremes were
not universally applicable in either society and the obstacles that
prevented acceptance into the intellectual sphere for both French
and Armenian women were in fact remarkably similar.
The inaccessibility of higher education proved to be the most
significant barrier for young Armenian and French women who sought
careers outside the home. In the Constantinople of Yessayan’s youth,
the majority of her contemporaries, both male and female, were not
formally educated; research shows that 10 percent of Armenian men
were literate in Constantinople at the end of the nineteenth century
and points to a much smaller figure for women.
Primary and secondary education was initially reserved for children
of only the most affluent members of society who chose among the
various French and American missionary schools in Constantinople;
the existence of these schools, however, quickly prompted the Armenian
community to establish ones of its own.
During Yesayan’s childhood in the 1880s and 1890s, Armenian educational
activists drew inspiration from these missionary schools to found
Armenian schools, both in the capital and in the provinces, where
pride in an Armenian identity could be instilled and cultivated; by
1883, there were eleven schools for Armenian girls in Constantinople.
Despite dramatic transformations at the grassroots level, the Armenian
popular press was nevertheless marked by a series of heated debates
that brought the issue of girls’ education to the forefront. There
was a large spectrum of opinions: certain writers argued that girls
simply did not have the mental capacity to grasp the abstract ideas
taught in the classroom, while others proposed reform to the current
state of instruction for girls-typically composed of French, music
and dance lessons-after criticizing its failure to produce adults
capable of functioning in the real world.
Undoubtedly oblivious to the contention surrounding her education,
Yesayan was educated informally through her father and formally at
Sourp Khatch, the neighborhood Armenian school. At Sourp Khatch, she
studied history, French, Armenian and arithmetic. After graduating
in 1892, at the age of fourteen, Yesayan laments in her autobiography:
“If I had been a boy, it would have been simple. I would have attended
the well renowned Getronagan High School. Alas, nothing of the sort
existed for girls.”
The absence of higher education for girls in Constantinople did not
dishearten the young writer or cause her to question her goals, but
instead propelled her forward and engendered an intense commitment to
the pursuit of her ambitions. Her commitment was resolute. Although she
was familiar with the critical reception of women writers who defied
social conventions by entering Armenian literary circles, she did not
voice concern that she may be received similarly, but rather expressed
an unyielding determination to write professionally, whether respected
or condemned. Even the forewarning of Serpouhi Dussap, a novelist who
in the 1880s was the subject of harsh criticism by the same literary
circles that Yesayan sought to penetrate, did not dissuade her:
Learning that I envisioned a literary career, Mrs. Dussap tried to
warn me. For a woman, she said, there were more traps to fear than
laurels to glean in literature. She said that Armenian society as
it is now is not yet ready for a woman for make a name and place for
herself. To overcome these obstacles, you must overcome mediocrity:
a man can be mediocre, a woman cannot.
Yesayan accepts these words of caution as a challenge; after discussing
her meeting with Dussap with some like-minded friends, they conclude
that continuing their education abroad is essential to ensure that
their writing will not be unfairly dismissed as mediocre. But the
threat of future accusations of banality was far from Yesayan’s
primary concern; in her autobiography, she emphasizes that public
opinion never had any effect on her behavior or on her writing.
She was more concerned with what would become of her if she were
forced to abandon her studies at such a young age. What would happen
to her passion for writing? Would other responsibilities prevent her
from immersing herself in her craft? She had perhaps asked herself
these kinds of questions upon remembering the literary-minded women
she had known as a child, who, because of various external pressures,
did not have the opportunity to nurture their talents.
In her autobiography, she recalls one of these lost literary
minds-Miss Ashjian. Ashjian was Yesayan’s kindergarten teacher,
who had published a poem in the Armenian press, but obliged to teach
rather than devote herself entirely to her writing, appears to Yesayan
as a woman wistfully yearning for a literary career that never was.
Throughout the school day, Yesayan notices that Miss Ashjian “often
took a pencil and quickly wrote something down in a notebook, then
stared into space dreamily.” The solemn, almost mournful tone of this
anecdote-the tale of a young woman condemned to live a life that she
had have imagined differently-reveals the importance that Yesayan
attributed to continuing her education, in part to protect herself
from a similar fate.
Despite the prevailing Orientalist idea that European women were
inherently superior to their Middle Eastern counterparts, the
trajectories of Armenian and French women in education were in fact
quite similar in the late nineteenth century. In France, it was not
until 1882 with the implementation of the Ferry Laws that primary
education was opened to girls. Before this mandate, if parents were
inclined to give their daughters a formal education, the only option
available to them were schools under the auspices of the Church.
Juxtaposing the educational experiences of French and Armenian
girls in the late nineteenth century reveals that the objective for
both was the same: in both cases, education was first and foremost
a means to train women to be good wives and mothers-educated just
enough to raise a new generation of children for the prosperity of
the nation. It was certainly not intended to stimulate intellectual
curiosity or to encourage their participation in the intellectual or
professional spheres.
Under the reign of Napoleon III, thanks to the efforts of his wife
Eugenie, women were granted the right to study in French universities
alongside their male peers. Yet, at the time when Yesayan attended the
Sorbonne in the mid-1890s, foreign women greatly outnumbered French
women in the university system. It was not until 1924 that programs
on the national scale were created for young women interested in
sitting for university entrance exams.
For Yesayan, as for many other idealistic young Armenians of her time,
France was a symbol of freedom and equality; in reality, however,
these grandiose philosophical ideals did not enact visible social
changes in the lives of women until well into the twentieth century.
This essay is part of a series written in honor of International
Women’s Day and Month. Stay tuned for Part II.
Jennifer Manoukian is a recent graduate of Rutgers University where she
received her B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and French. Her interests
lie in Western Armenian literature and issues of identity and cultural
production in the Armenian diaspora. She also enjoys translating and
has had her translations of writer Zabel Yessayan featured in Ararat
Magazine. She can be reached at [email protected]
From: A. Papazian
http://www.ianyanmag.com/2012/03/20/the-view-from-zabel-yesayan%E2%80%99s-the-gardens-of-silihdar-part-i/