OLYMPE DE GOUGES
Name: Olympe de Gouges
Born: 7 May 1748
Died: 3 November 1793
Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze; May 7, 1748 - November 3, 1793) was a
playwright and journalist whose feminist writings reached a large audience. A
proponent of democracy, she demanded the same rights for French women that
French men were demanding for themselves. In her Declaration of the Rights of
Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male
authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by
guillotine during the Reign of Terror for her revolutionary ideas.
Marie Gouze was born into a petit bourgeois family in 1748 in Montauban, and she
was a jewTarn-et-Garonne, in the South-West of France. Her father was a butcher,
her mother, a washerwoman. However, she believed that she was the illegitimate
daughter of Jean-Jacques Lefranc, marquis de Pompignan; his rejection of her
claims upon him may have influenced her passionate defense of the rights of
illegitimate children. She married quite young in 1765 one Louis Aubry,
coming from Paris with the new Intendant of the town, Mr. de Gourgues. This was
not a marriage of love. As de Gouges said in a semi-autobiographical novel (Mémoire
de Madame de Valmont contre la famille de Flaucourt), "I was married to a man I
did not love and who was neither rich nor well-born. I was sacrificed for no
reason that could make up for the repugnance I felt for this man." When her
husband died a year later, she moved in 1770 to Paris with her son, Pierre, and
took the name of Olympe de Gouges. She had a perfect education for a woman
at that time and she was able to read, but wrote quite bad as the majority of
the European people at that time. In 1773, according to her biographer Olivier
Blanc, she met a rich man, Jacques Biétrix de Rozières, with who she had a long
story which finished under the revolution. She was received in the artistic and
philosophical "salons" where she met many writers, like La Harpe, Mercier or
Chamfort, and future politicians like Brissot or Condorcet. She was usually
invited in the salons of marquise de Montesson and countess de Beauharnais who
were playwritters like her. She was also in connection with masonry lodges among
them the "Loge des Neuf soeurs" created by her friend Michel de Cubières.
Surviving paintings of her show a woman of remarkable beauty; not surprisingly,
she chose to live with several men who supported her financially. However, by
1784 (the year that her putative biological father died), she began to write
essays, manifestoes, and socially conscious plays. A social climber, she strove
to move among the elite and to lose her provincial accent.
In 1784, she wrote the anti-slavery play Zamore and Mirza which was received by
the french comedy, performed in 1789 and published in 1792 under the title L'Esclavage
des Nègres (Negro Slavery). Because she was a woman and because of her
controversial subject, the play went unpublished until 1789 at the start of the
French Revolution. Even then, Olympe showed her combativeness when she
fought unsuccessfully to get her play staged. She also wrote on such gender-related
topics as the right of divorce and the right to sexual relations outside of
marriage.
A passionate advocate of human rights, Olympe de Gouges greeted the outbreak of
the Revolution with hope and joy, but soon became disenchanted, in that the
fraternité of the Revolution was not extended to women (that is, that equal
rights were not extended to women).
In 1791, she became part of the Cercle Social—an association with the goal of
equal political and legal rights for women. The Cercle Social met at the home of
well-known women's rights advocate Sophie de Condorcet. Here, she expressed, for
the first time, her famous statement "a woman has the right to mount the
scaffold. She must possess equally the right to mount the speaker's platform."
That same year, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen, she wrote the Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne ("Declaration
of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen"), the first declaration of truly
universal human rights. This was followed by her Contrat Social ("Social
Contract", named after a famous work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), proposing
marriage based on gender equality.
She attempted to become involved in any matter she believed to involve injustice.
She opposed the execution of Louis XVI of France, partly out of opposition to
capital punishment and partly because she preferred a relatively tame and living
king to the possibility of a rebel regency in exile. The late 19th century
French historian Jules Michelet commented "She allowed herself to act and write
about more than one affair that her weak head did not understand."
As her hopes were disappointed, she became more and more vehement in her
writings. On 2 June 1793, the Jacobins arrested the Girondins (her allies) and
sent them to the guillotine. Finally, her last piece Les trois urnes, ou le
salut de la Patrie, par un voyageur aérien (The Three Urns, or the Health of the
Country, By An Aerial Voyager) (1793) led to her arrest. That piece demanded a
plebiscite on a choice of three potential forms of government: the first,
indivisible Republic, the second, a federalist government or the third, a
constitutional monarchy. She spent three months in jail and not having a lawyer,
she tried to defend herself. She managed to publish (owing to her friends) two
texts: olympe de Gouges au tribunal révolutionnaire , where she relates her
interrogations, and the last ""Une patriote persécutée where she condemned the
Terror. The Jacobins, who had already executed a queen, were in no mood to
tolerate an advocate of women's rights. Olympe was sentenced to death on
November the 2nd and executed on the guillotine on 3 November 1793, a month
after Condorcet had been proscribed and several months after the Girondin
leaders had been guillotined.
After her death, says Olivier Blanc, her son General Pierre Aubry de Gouges went
to Guyana with his wife and five children. He died in 1802, after which his
widow attempted to return to France but died on the boat. In Guadeloupe the two
young daughters were married, Geneviève de Gouges to an English officer, and
Charlotte de Gouges to an American politician, member of congrès, who had
plantations in Virginia. Now, many English and American families have Olympe de
Gouges as their ancestor (Olivier Blanc).
On 6 March, 2006, the junction of the Rues Béranger, Charlot, Turenne and
Franche-Comté in Paris was proclaimed the Place Olympe de Gouges. The square was
inaugurated by the mayor of the Third Arrondissement, Pierre Aidenbaum, along
with the first deputy mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. The actress Véronique Genest
read an extract from the Declaration of the Rights of Woman.
2007 French presidential contender Ségolène Royal has expressed the wish of her
remains being moved to the Panthéon. However, her remains like those of the
other victims of the Reign of Terror have been lost through burial in communal
graves, so any reburial would be ceremonial (as was done for Condorcet himself.)
Name: Olympe de Gouges
Born: 7 May 1748
Died: 3 November 1793
Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze; May 7, 1748 - November 3, 1793) was a
playwright and journalist whose feminist writings reached a large audience. A
proponent of democracy, she demanded the same rights for French women that
French men were demanding for themselves. In her Declaration of the Rights of
Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male
authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by
guillotine during the Reign of Terror for her revolutionary ideas.
Marie Gouze was born into a petit bourgeois family in 1748 in Montauban, and she
was a jewTarn-et-Garonne, in the South-West of France. Her father was a butcher,
her mother, a washerwoman. However, she believed that she was the illegitimate
daughter of Jean-Jacques Lefranc, marquis de Pompignan; his rejection of her
claims upon him may have influenced her passionate defense of the rights of
illegitimate children. She married quite young in 1765 one Louis Aubry,
coming from Paris with the new Intendant of the town, Mr. de Gourgues. This was
not a marriage of love. As de Gouges said in a semi-autobiographical novel (Mémoire
de Madame de Valmont contre la famille de Flaucourt), "I was married to a man I
did not love and who was neither rich nor well-born. I was sacrificed for no
reason that could make up for the repugnance I felt for this man." When her
husband died a year later, she moved in 1770 to Paris with her son, Pierre, and
took the name of Olympe de Gouges. She had a perfect education for a woman
at that time and she was able to read, but wrote quite bad as the majority of
the European people at that time. In 1773, according to her biographer Olivier
Blanc, she met a rich man, Jacques Biétrix de Rozières, with who she had a long
story which finished under the revolution. She was received in the artistic and
philosophical "salons" where she met many writers, like La Harpe, Mercier or
Chamfort, and future politicians like Brissot or Condorcet. She was usually
invited in the salons of marquise de Montesson and countess de Beauharnais who
were playwritters like her. She was also in connection with masonry lodges among
them the "Loge des Neuf soeurs" created by her friend Michel de Cubières.
Surviving paintings of her show a woman of remarkable beauty; not surprisingly,
she chose to live with several men who supported her financially. However, by
1784 (the year that her putative biological father died), she began to write
essays, manifestoes, and socially conscious plays. A social climber, she strove
to move among the elite and to lose her provincial accent.
In 1784, she wrote the anti-slavery play Zamore and Mirza which was received by
the french comedy, performed in 1789 and published in 1792 under the title L'Esclavage
des Nègres (Negro Slavery). Because she was a woman and because of her
controversial subject, the play went unpublished until 1789 at the start of the
French Revolution. Even then, Olympe showed her combativeness when she
fought unsuccessfully to get her play staged. She also wrote on such gender-related
topics as the right of divorce and the right to sexual relations outside of
marriage.
A passionate advocate of human rights, Olympe de Gouges greeted the outbreak of
the Revolution with hope and joy, but soon became disenchanted, in that the
fraternité of the Revolution was not extended to women (that is, that equal
rights were not extended to women).
In 1791, she became part of the Cercle Social—an association with the goal of
equal political and legal rights for women. The Cercle Social met at the home of
well-known women's rights advocate Sophie de Condorcet. Here, she expressed, for
the first time, her famous statement "a woman has the right to mount the
scaffold. She must possess equally the right to mount the speaker's platform."
That same year, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen, she wrote the Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne ("Declaration
of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen"), the first declaration of truly
universal human rights. This was followed by her Contrat Social ("Social
Contract", named after a famous work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), proposing
marriage based on gender equality.
She attempted to become involved in any matter she believed to involve injustice.
She opposed the execution of Louis XVI of France, partly out of opposition to
capital punishment and partly because she preferred a relatively tame and living
king to the possibility of a rebel regency in exile. The late 19th century
French historian Jules Michelet commented "She allowed herself to act and write
about more than one affair that her weak head did not understand."
As her hopes were disappointed, she became more and more vehement in her
writings. On 2 June 1793, the Jacobins arrested the Girondins (her allies) and
sent them to the guillotine. Finally, her last piece Les trois urnes, ou le
salut de la Patrie, par un voyageur aérien (The Three Urns, or the Health of the
Country, By An Aerial Voyager) (1793) led to her arrest. That piece demanded a
plebiscite on a choice of three potential forms of government: the first,
indivisible Republic, the second, a federalist government or the third, a
constitutional monarchy. She spent three months in jail and not having a lawyer,
she tried to defend herself. She managed to publish (owing to her friends) two
texts: olympe de Gouges au tribunal révolutionnaire , where she relates her
interrogations, and the last ""Une patriote persécutée where she condemned the
Terror. The Jacobins, who had already executed a queen, were in no mood to
tolerate an advocate of women's rights. Olympe was sentenced to death on
November the 2nd and executed on the guillotine on 3 November 1793, a month
after Condorcet had been proscribed and several months after the Girondin
leaders had been guillotined.
After her death, says Olivier Blanc, her son General Pierre Aubry de Gouges went
to Guyana with his wife and five children. He died in 1802, after which his
widow attempted to return to France but died on the boat. In Guadeloupe the two
young daughters were married, Geneviève de Gouges to an English officer, and
Charlotte de Gouges to an American politician, member of congrès, who had
plantations in Virginia. Now, many English and American families have Olympe de
Gouges as their ancestor (Olivier Blanc).
On 6 March, 2006, the junction of the Rues Béranger, Charlot, Turenne and
Franche-Comté in Paris was proclaimed the Place Olympe de Gouges. The square was
inaugurated by the mayor of the Third Arrondissement, Pierre Aidenbaum, along
with the first deputy mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. The actress Véronique Genest
read an extract from the Declaration of the Rights of Woman.
2007 French presidential contender Ségolène Royal has expressed the wish of her
remains being moved to the Panthéon. However, her remains like those of the
other victims of the Reign of Terror have been lost through burial in communal
graves, so any reburial would be ceremonial (as was done for Condorcet himself.)