Olympe de Gouges is a name you might remember from your history classes as another casualty of the French Revolution’s bloody Reign of Terror. It’s names like hers and Scarlet Corday that tend to be forgotten among those of Maximilien Robespierre and Jean-Paul Marat, which is a real shame because, pardon my French, they did some really cool shit.
Photo courtesy of Flickr.
In honor of Olympe de Gouges’ execution this week, Nov. 3, 1793, I’m going to discuss her work and what perhaps landed her on the wrong side of the guillotine.
Many consider de Gouges as one of the first feminists, her pamphlet “Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne” (“Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”) was published in 1791 in response to “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the [Male] Citizen” that was adopted by the National Assembly a few years prior. In her pamphlet, she outlined that not only should women have the same rights as men, but that illegitimate children should be treated as legitimate regarding inheritance.
Some of her ideas were extremely radical for the time, even declaring that women should have the same rights as men, such as “liberty, property, security, and above all resistance to oppression.” Her writing heavily influenced Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects,” which was published only a year later.
De Gouges was married at the age of 16 and after her husband died — putting an end to her brief unhappy marriage — she moved to Paris and began writing with the support of a wealthy benefactor. A prolific writer and passionate activist, de Gouges was able to voice her ideas through her pen. Being unafraid to broach difficult or taboo subjects was what ultimately led to her demise.
De Gouges sided with the moderate Girondins during the revolution, defended King Louis XVI and even called for a vote to allow the citizens to choose their own form of government, using her writing to spread these ideals. As you can see, this made her widely unpopular among the radical Montagnard party and led to her trial and execution.
In total, she wrote over 40 plays and other works of writing, some of which haven’t survived the test of time. Despite its sad ending, I cherish hearing about the life of Olympe de Gouges. She was a talented writer and able to speak her mind, something I’m sure we would all like to be. Despite progressive thinkers like de Gouges, French women did not have the right to vote until the 1940s, which, in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t quite that long ago.
We as a society have a lot to work on, especially as it seems that rights and governments are increasingly going back in time. Sometimes, I wonder how de Gouges would feel if she were alive today and given how outspoken she was, I am certain that we would all know.