Kallirroi Parren

Kalliroi Parren                                    ΚΑΛΛΙΡΡΟΗ ΠΑΡΡΕΝ

 Born 1861                                           Died 1940

In the large square after the entrance to the First Cemetery is a modest bust of a woman placed there in 1991 although she died in 1940.  It is not at all grand compared to the other monuments that surround it in this section for the rich and famous.  And yet, the woman it honours was once the most impressive woman in Athens. From the time she  published her Ladies Journal in 1887 until her death in 1940, Kallirroi Parren was a force to be reckoned with – journalist, playwright,  novelist, philanthropist and tireless activist for women’s rights – all at a time when  Greek letters and Greek  politics were the exclusive purview  of men. 

She raised hackles as often as she garnered praise but, using the platform her Journal offered and, as they came into being, other women’s organizations (some of which she founded), she never wavered from her goal:  a woman’s right to education, better working conditions, and the right to be included in the national dialogue.  

Her Life

Kalliroi Siganos’ middle class family moved from Ottoman controlled Crete to Greece when she was six years old.  After graduating from the French School in Piraeus she went on to study at the Arsakeion (2), the best teachers training school in Athens from which she graduated in 1878. She was invited to Odessa by the Greek Community School and stayed for two years before going on to Adrianopolis where she headed the Zappeion School(3) for the Greek community.

Her Marriage

She was already a very accomplished woman when she met and married Jean Parren, an Anglo-French journalist who had established a press agency in Constantinople. It was a marriage of true minds. The couple settled in Athens at 27 Panapistimiou Street opposite the Sinaea  Academy, (now the Athens Academy ).(4)   Ioannis founded the Athenian Press Agency  (Αθηναϊκού Πρακτορείου ) thus placing them in the perfect position to mix with writers, politicians, and the other movers and shakers who made up the elite of Athens.

This era has been called Athens’ “Belle Epoque” and with good reason. Charilaos Trikoupis was in power (most of the time); the city was increasingly cosmopolitan: architects like Ernst Ziller were hard at work, financiers like Andreas Syngros were reshaping the city, and Heinrich Schliemann  was already basking in the glory of his Mycenaean finds. In fact, the city was buzzing with ideas and enquiring minds.  But, in the public sphere, those minds belonged solely to men. For Kalliroi, that was not good enough, and her husband concurred. (5)

The Ladies Journal (Εφημερίς των Κυριών)

In February 1887, they rented an office on Mouson Street (now Karagiorgi Servias)  and Voulis streets. Along with other women, she worked to create the first weekly issue. In its eight pages, articles relating to motherhood, economy, education, religion, and a section dealing with local and foreign politics were to be included.   

The first issue coming off the press On March 8, 1887 was a huge success.

Between 7000 and 10000 copies were sold in a city of 65000. Ironically, 90 percent of buyers were men, curious (maybe apprehensive too) to see what this journal was all about.  In this way, copies of the journal gravitated into most homes in the city –assuring that it would be picked up and read by the very ladies who had avoided buying it as perhaps being too avant garde. 

EmmanuelRoidis, then the doyen of letters in the capital, was horrified.  Women journalists were laughable, he wrote, and those wanting to take up ‘men’s professions’ such as medicine, or law, were ‘beyond laughable’. His quarrel with Kalliroi was very public. He would label her a “faiseuse d’embarras’ and, in turn, Kalliroi would dismiss him as the ‘guardian angel of the past’ and a man who knew nothing about women. 

As the journal gained readership among women, Kalliroi used it as a vehicle to promote women’s rights, women’s education, and her own novels which dealt with social issues and were serialized in the Journal.  They were popular. Three novels, collected as The Books of Dawn (Ta Vivlia tis Avyis), concerned the struggle of Greek women towards self-accomplishment and emancipation, and by 1907 were so popular that they became a stage play called New Women (Nea Yineka) starring Marika Kotopouli.  Kalliroi gained admirers among the more progressive males in the city as well. Costis Palamas wrote a poem in praise. (6) Her Journal along with the regular “Literary Saturdays” held at her home kept her conversant with all Athenian trends.

 

Her Accomplishments

She spoke Russian, French, Italian, and English and this made her well placed to work with European and American women’s movements. She attended international conferences held in Paris in the years 1888, 1889, 1896, 1900 and in 1893-4 in Chicago while, at home sponsoring many welfare organizations.

By 1890 she had successfully lobbied for women's admittance to the University of Athens.(7)

 

In 1894 she founded the Union for the Emancipation of Women with a somewhat different agenda than what that word suggests today. For example, she had abandoned the cause of women’s suffrage in 1894 after trying unsuccessfully, to convince Charilaos Trikoupis to give women the vote. She believed that in the culture of the day, the inclusion of women in higher education and better working conditions were more achievable goals.(8)

 

In 1896 the Union of Greek Women was formed, collecting funds, and sewing uniforms for soldiers fighting in the disastrous 30 day Greco-Turkish war of 1897 –a war which Greece lost.  But their participation marked an important milestone: through the Union’s work, women became part of the national dialogue.  

By 1900 she achieved state protection for children and women’s working conditions through an appeal to TheodorosDeligiannis and by 1908, the National Council of Greek Women ( Ethniko Symvoulio ton Ellinidon ) was founded and affiliated with the International Council of Women.

In 1911, she inaugurated the influential Lyceum of Greek Women (still going strong), and by 1923 she had also helped found the Little Entente of Woman, an organization created to unite women in the Balkan Peninsula. 

Her Journal ran continuously until 1908 when it changed to a bi-monthly and finally stopped in 1917 when Parren was exiled to Hydra for several months by the administration of  Eleftherios Venizelos. She was an avid royalist and had opposed Greece’s involvement in World War One on the side of the entente.

Kalliroi, Maternal Patriotism, and the ‘Pure Hellenic Tradition’

No movement can be separated from the politics of the day. Her belief that one reason Greece lost wars like that of 1897 could be attributed to the failure of Greek women to raise their boys to be “patriots worthy of their glorious national heritage”.  The Lyceum of Greek Women would remedy that by promoting a very specific and very nationalist feminine ideal (labelled ‘maternal patriotism’ by historians ), an ideal that dovetailed nicely into the Megali Idea, and the  nationalistic fervor that was so much a part of the political dialogue during this period.  Perhaps this particular vision of emancipated women made the men (who all had mothers of their own) more comfortable as well. Her Utopian ideal: women as society’s ‘moral compass’, their newly acquired rights harnessed to help achieve a greater Greece.

  An annual festival was proposed for the Olympic stadium which would consist of a ‘highly respectable’ parade of maidens from the ’best’ families. This parade, tableaux vivants, and more, all promoted the patriotic theme and a return to the ‘Hellenic’ values (ancient, Byzantine, and contemporary) which had been so recently laid out and defined by the historian Constantine Paparrigopoulos. This model included a revival of  Greek folk traditions, a concept very much in vogue at the time.

Several such extravaganzas involving hundreds of young ‘maidens’ were presented and very well received. Feminists today might cringe but they have to be understood in the perspective of the times.

The End

Kalliroi had a long career with many firsts: she was the first woman to receive the Silver and Golden Crosses of the Saviour, the Silver medal of the Athens Academy, and the Silver Medal of the Red Cross. She outlived Roidis, her greatest critic, by some 36 years and became a ‘doyenne’  and trend setter herself. By 1940, she had become a part of the establishment. In a way, wasn’t that the whole point?

Parren in later years

She lived with Jean Parren until her death when she achieved her final ‘first’. She was the first woman to be buried in the First Cemetery at the city’s expense

Her Grave

Section 4, Number 221

Footnotes

(1) Or 1859 or 60.

(2)  In 1836  Ioannis Kokkonis, Georgios Gennadios and Michail Apostolidis had created a school where young girls could be educated. It was endowed by Apotolos Arsakis; hence its name. 

(3)  Evangelos Zappas, was the great benefactor of this school and many others in Ottoman territory.

(4) The Athens Academy, as we know it, was formed in 1926. The building, by Hansen and Ziller was originally called the "Sinaean Academy" after its benefactor.

(5) I can find nothing on the internet about Jean Parren, nothing except his role as Kalliroi’s husband and not much about that either.And yet, he must have been a fascinating character. It is interesting too that, in her novels, her heroines and sometimes her heroes reject rich cosmopolitans from outside of the bounderies of Greece, instead choosing home’ boys or girls – something she did not do herself. It is hard to see her having succeeded if her husband had been a home boy from the Peloponnese.

(6)  «Χαίρε γυναίκα της Αθήνας, Μαρία, Ελένη, Εύα.
Να η ώρα σου. Τα ωραία σου φτερά δοκίμασε και ανέβα
και καθώς είσαι ανάλαφρη και πια δεν είσαι σκλάβα
προς τη μελλούμενη άγια γη πρωτύτερα εσύ τράβα
και ετοίμασε τη νέα ζωή, μιας νέας χαράς υφάντρα
και ύστερα αγκάλιασε, ύψωσε και φέρε εκεί τον άντρα».

(7) Ioanna Stephanopoli was admitted to the department of Philology in 1890. In 1892, two women were accepted in Medicine, and one in Mathematics.

(8)  This was the gist of her remarks at a woman’s conference in 1894 ( See Women and the Vote by Jad Adams)