Olympe De Gouges

The champion of women’s rights

Olympe De Gouges

"Women have never had enemies greater than themselves. Rarely do we see women applauding a beautiful action, the work of a woman."

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AFTER THE REVOLUTION

HER ROLE DURING THE REVOLUTION

the context

She takes to heart the causes she feels closest to, such as divorce, the management of the maternity ward of hospitals, slavery, the rights of orphans and single mothers. She opposes prison for debt and forced nunnery for girls without dowry. Her fame is due to the text "Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne" published in 1791. This is a response to the text adopted by the National Assembly two years earlier, which states that women and men have equal rights and that children born out of wedlock must be treated in the same way as legitimate heirs.

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Marie Gouze was born on 7 May 1748 in Montauban, daughter of Pierre Gouze and Anne-Olympe Mouisse, and soon learned that she was the natural daughter of the godfather of her mother.Her mother’s godfather immediately tries to take care of her upbringing, but for personal reasons Anne Olympe refuses any help. Marie married at the age of 16, but the marriage lasted only a year, leaving her the mother of a son, Pierre Aubry, and a widow at the age of twenty. She decided very quickly that provincial life did not suit her and in 1770 she moved to Paris to her sister’s house. She chooses a pseudonym becoming Olympe de Gouges and she finds a new partner, Jacques Bietrix de Rozières, a naval officer and transport entrepreneur in the army. With the right knowledge he passes to her an annual pension and allows her to support herself and her son. Being almost illiterate creates huge problems for her: she tries to remedy it by reading and writing with great will. She became passionate about theater, so much so that she created his own traveling company and began to compose original works, based on her sensibility and ideas.

After the Revolution, in 1792 the Republic was proclaimed and the trial of Louis XVI officially began. Olympe publicly sides with the Girondins defending the former ruler. She signs a manifest "Les trois urnes", calling for a federal government. She publicly denounced the more extremist tendencies of the new government, printing pamphlets against Marat. Olympe de Gouges was arrested on 20 July and imprisoned for three months; tried in the Revolutionary Tribunal, she was guillotined on 3 November.

The French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of social, political and cultural upheaval, and mainly violent, which occurred in France between 1789 and 1799, marking the watershed between the modern and contemporary ages. It was a very complex event and its main immediate consequences were: the abolition of the absolute monarchy and the rapid proclamation of the republic with a constitution based on the separation of powers; the elimination of the Ancien Régime, found guilty of the inequality and poverty of its subjects; and the drafting of the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights an Enlightenment document that was based on principles of freedom and equality. Women, on the other hand, during the French Revolution are not recognized political and civil rights, therefore they cannot claim anything, because they are not considered autonomous subjects, full citizens but simply members of the "family group" which is why Olympe de Gouges will demand equality of rights between men and women.