Mavi Boncuk | Srpouhi Dussap
(née Vahanian) Սրբուհի Տիւսաբ
Armenian feminist and a very succsesful novelist. One of the first Armenians to write about gender equality in her books.
Dussap was born during a period of cultural reawakening for Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, during which women began to carve out a place for themselves in the public sphere. One of these pioneering women was Dussap’s mother, Nazli Vahan, a staunch advocate for women’s education and the founder of charitable and educational organizations to help Armenian girls.
Nazli’s great concern for girls’ education drove her to give her own daughter an excellent education: Srpouhi was educated first at a local French school until the age of 10, and then at home with her older brother, who tutored her in French, Greek, Italian, classical literature, science, and history.
Sprouhi was born in Constantinople in 1842 to a upper class Armenian family, Constantly traveling in Western Europe and recieving her education there made her loose interest for her Armenian heritage. However after being tutored by the famous Armenian poet Mkrtich Beshiktashlian, She began to show a deep affection for her language and culture. Her first writings were written in Classical Armenian.
n 1870, she married a French musician named Paul Dussap. He fully supported her literary goals, and together they ran a salon where French and Armenian intellectuals met to discuss literature and the social issues of the day. Dussap was also involved in Armenian community life in Constantinople; in 1879, she became the head of the Philomathic Armenian Women’s Association, which trained Armenian women to teach in Armenian girls’ schools in Anatolia. Her experiences in this organization led her to write a series of articles on women’s rights, specifically on rights to education, employment, and social autonomy.