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ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of articles and novels written by four Armenian women, which appeared in the periodical press from 1880 to 1915, this text evaluates the ways in which the trajectories of the intellectual and cultural movement known as the Zartonk (Awakening) in Armenian history facilitated women writers' emergence into the public sphere and their creation of the language and formulation of a discourse of women's rights in the Armenian socio-political context. The article provides biographical information on four women writers and examines the secular cultural institutions-such as the salon, the periodical press, the school, and the philanthropic organisation-which emerged in Constantinople and were conducive to women's participation in the public sphere. The article then problematises Armenian women writers' formulation of a specific political discourse of women's rights in the socio-political context of the Armenian millet in the Ottoman state and suggests that Armenian women writers produced a type of feminism that may have been typical of nations without independence in the context of state-sanctioned violence.
KEYWORDS: Armenian Women's Movement, Feminism, Srpuhi Dussap, Zabel Yesayian, Sibyl, Marie Beylerian, Awakening
Armenian Women's Writing and the Awakening
Western Armenian women's writing developed in the urban centre of Constantinople in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire as an integral part of the Armenian intellectual movement known as the 'Awakening' (Zartonk in Armenian).1 The term 'Awakening' was used in the nineteenth century by Armenian intellectuals to describe their emergence from the slumber of centuries marked by Ottoman rule. In addition to rediscovering pre-Ottoman Armenian history through the publication of fifth-century Armenian texts, intellectuals of the Awakening paid particular attention to the development of contemporary Armenian society, language and culture.2 Most historians writing on the Awakening focus on male writers and do not perceive women's writing as a relevant part of this movement.3 Such an approach effectively ignores the emergence of a group of Armenian women writers during that period and overlooks the central position of gender in the social and political theories being formulated by intellectuals of both sexes in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Because discussion of these issues took place primarily in the realm of print culture, there is a close relationship between intellectuals and the writing of fiction and non-fiction, rendering writers a vital group for...