Olympe de gouges biography 1789-1797

The voice of Olympe de Gouges, however, was never silenced, and her vision of equal rights for women has provided inspiration for those working to establish a more just and humane world. Levy, D. Applewhite, and M. Women in Revolutionary Paris, — Chicago: University of Illinois Press, Gutwirth, Madelyn. Landes, Joan. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

January 8, Retrieved January 08, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Women Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps Gouges, Olympe de — Gouges, Olympe de — gale.

Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. More From encyclopedia. About this article Gouges, Olympe de — Updated About encyclopedia. Gougar, Helen — Gouel, Eva d. Goudy, William Charles — Goudvis, Bertha — Goudsouzian, Aram Goudsmit, Samuel Abraham. Goudsmit, Joel Emanuel. Goudreau, Hector, B. Goudin, Antoine. Goudimel, Claude.

Goudie, Kathy Humber Valley. Goudie, Andrew Goudge, Elizabeth Goudge, Elizabeth — Goudeket, Maurits. Goudchaux, Michel. Goudal, Jetta — Goucher College: Tabular Data. Gouges, Olympe de d. Kings who are just do not want slaves; they know that they have submissive subjects. Her stance against slavery in the French colonies made her the target of threats.

Every woman author is in a false position, regardless of her talent. But the play closed after three performances; the lobby had paid hecklers to sabotage the performances. In , influenced and inspired by John Locke 's treatises on natural rights, de Gouges became part of the Society of the Friends of Truth, also known as the "Social Club," which was an association with the goal of establishing equal political and legal rights for women.

Members sometimes gathered at the home of the well-known women's rights advocate, Sophie de Condorcet. In that pamphlet 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. This was followed by her Contrat Social " Social Contract ," named after a famous work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , proposing marriage based upon gender equality.

In and , in the French colony of Saint-Domingue present-day Haiti , free people of color and African slaves revolted in response to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In Paris, de Gouges was accused by the mayor of Paris of having incited the insurrection in Saint-Domingue with the play. De Gouges opposed the execution of Louis XVI January 21, , partly from her opposition to capital punishment and partly because she favored constitutional monarchy.

This earned her the ire of many of the radical republicans, even into the next generation—such as the ninteenth-century historian Jules Michelet, a fierce apologist for the Revolution. He wrote, "She allowed herself to act and write about more than one affair that her weak head did not understand. In her letter she argued that he had been duped—that he was guilty as a king, but innocent as a man, and that he should be exiled rather than executed.

Olympe de Gouges was associated with the Gironde faction , which ultimately led to her execution. She did not go to the guillotine for her feminism. Her crime was spreading Federalism as a replacement for Montagnard revolutionary central rule. Revolutionary rule during the Reign of Terror was accompanied by emphasis on masculine public political authority that resulted, for example, in the expulsion of women from Jacobin clubs.

She supported the Gironde faction, which lost favor after the execution of the king. They were targeted by the more radical Montagnard faction. She became wary of Robespierre and the Montagnard faction, criticizing them in open letters for their violence and summary killings. As the Revolution progressed, she became more and more vehement in her writings.

On June 2, , the Jacobins of the Montagnard faction imprisoned prominent Girondins; they were sent to the guillotine in October. Olympe decreed in this publication that. Let everyone examine their consciences; let them see the incalculable harm caused by such a long-lasting division The majority must carry the day. It is time for death to rest and for anarchy to return to the underworld.

She also called for an end to the bloodshed of the Revolution saying "It is time to put a stop to this cruel war that has only swallowed up your treasure and harvested the most brilliant of your young. Blood, alas, has flowed far too freely! The problem was that the law of the revolution made it a capital offense for anyone to publish a book or pamphlet that encouraged reestablishing the monarchy.

Marie-Olympe de Gouges was arrested on July 20, Although she was arrested in July she would not meet the end of her life until November of that year. After her arrest, the commissioners searched her house for evidence. When they could not find any in her home, she voluntarily led them to the storehouse where she kept her papers.

In the first act only the first act and a half remain , Marie-Antoinette is planning defense strategies to retain the crumbling monarchy and is confronted by revolutionary forces, including de Gouges herself. The first act ends with de Gouges reproving the queen for having seditious intentions and lecturing her about how she should lead her people.

Both de Gouges and her prosecutor used this play as evidence in her trial. The prosecutor claimed that de Gouges's depictions of the queen threatened to stir up sympathy and support for the Royalists, whereas de Gouges stated that the play showed that she had always been a supporter of the Revolution. She spent three months in jail without an attorney as the presiding judge had denied de Gouges her legal right to a lawyer on the grounds that she was more than capable of representing herself.

It is likely that the judge based this argument on de Gouges's tendency to represent herself in her writings. De Gouges had acquired for her son, Pierre Aubry, a position as a vice-general and head of battalion in exchange for a payment of 1, livres. He was suspended from this office after her arrest. Under the specious mask of republicanism, her enemies have brought me remorselessly to the scaffold.

On November 3, the Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced her to death. She was executed for seditious behavior and attempting to reinstate the monarchy. The majority must carry the day. It is time for death to rest and for anarchy to return to the underworld. Blood, alas, has flowed far too freely! The problem was that the law of the revolution made it a capital offense for anyone to publish a book or pamphlet that encouraged reestablishing the monarchy.

Marie-Olympe de Gouges was arrested on 20 July Although she was arrested in July, she would not meet the end of her life until November of that year. When they could not find any in her home, she voluntarily led them to the storehouse where she kept her papers. In the first act only the first act and a half remain , Marie Antoinette is planning defense strategies to retain the crumbling monarchy and is confronted by revolutionary forces, including de Gouges herself.

The first act ends with de Gouges reproving the queen for having seditious intentions and lecturing her about how she should lead her people. Both de Gouges and her prosecutor used this play as evidence in her trial. The prosecutor claimed that de Gouges's depictions of the queen threatened to stir up sympathy and support for the Royalists, whereas de Gouges stated that the play showed that she had always been a supporter of the Revolution.

She spent three months in jail without an attorney as the presiding judge had denied de Gouges her legal right to a lawyer on the grounds that she was more than capable of representing herself. It is likely that the judge based this argument on de Gouges's tendency to represent herself in her writings. De Gouges had acquired for her son, Pierre Aubry, a position as a vice-general and head of battalion in exchange for a payment of 1, livres, and he was suspended from this office after her arrest.

Under the specious mask of republicanism, her enemies have brought me remorselessly to the scaffold. On 3 November , the Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced her to death, and she was executed for seditious behavior and attempting to reinstate the monarchy. Her body was disposed of in the Madeleine Cemetery. Yesterday, at seven o'clock in the evening, a most extraordinary person called Olympe de Gouges who held the imposing title of woman of letters, was taken to the scaffold, while all of Paris, while admiring her beauty, knew that she didn't even know her alphabet She approached the scaffold with a calm and serene expression on her face, and forced the guillotine's furies, which had driven her to this place of torture, to admit that such courage and beauty had never been seen before That woman But having quickly perceived how atrocious the system adopted by the Jacobins was, she chose to retrace her steps.

She attempted to unmask the villains through the literary productions which she had printed and put up. They never forgave her, and she paid for her carelessness with her head. Her execution was used as a warning to other politically active women. At the 15 November meeting of the Commune, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette cautioned a group of women wearing Phrygian bonnets , reminding them of "the impudent Olympe de Gouges, who was the first woman to start up women's political clubs, who abandoned the cares of her home, to meddle in the affairs of the Republic, and whose head fell under avenging blade of the law".

This posthumous characterisation of de Gouges by the political establishment was misleading, as de Gouges had no role in founding the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.

Olympe de gouges biography 1789-1797

In her political writings de Gouges had not called for women to abandon their homes, but she was cast by the politicians as an enemy of the natural order, and thus enemy of the ruling Jacobin party. The year has been described as a watershed for the construction of women's place in revolutionary France, and the deconstruction of the Girondins' Marianne.

That year a number of women with a public role in politics were executed, including Madame Roland and Marie-Antoinette. During this time the Convention banned all women's political associations and executed many politically active women. De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen had been widely reproduced and influenced the writings of women's advocates in the Atlantic world.

The experience of French women during the revolution entered the collective consciousness. American women began to refer to themselves as citess or citizeness and took to the streets to achieve equality and freedom. After her execution her son Pierre Aubry signed a letter in which he denied his endorsement for her political legacy. All of Olympe de Gouges's plays and novels convey the overarching theme of her life's work: indignation at social injustices.

In addition to women's rights, de Gouges engaged contested topics including the slave trade , divorce , marriage , debtors' prisons , children's rights , and government work schemes for the unemployed. Much of her work foregrounded the troubling intersections of two or more issues. In she published an epistolary novel inspired by Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Her novel claimed to consist of authentic letters exchanged with her father the Marquis de Pompignan, with the names changed. As a playwright, she charged into the contemporary political controversies and was often in the vanguard. Drawing both praise from abolitionists and attacks from pro-slavery traders, it is the first French play to focus not only on the inhumanity of slavery but also the first to feature the first-person perspective of an enslaved individual.

In the final act of L'Esclavage des Noirs de Gouges lets the French colonial master, not the slave, utter a prayer for freedom: "Let our common rejoicings be a happy portent of liberty". She drew a parallel between colonial slavery and political oppression in France. One of the slave protagonists explains that the French must gain their own freedom, before they can deal with slavery.

De Gouges also openly attacked the notion that human rights were a reality in revolutionary France. The slave protagonist comments on the situation in France "The power of one Master alone is in the hands of a thousand Tyrants who trample the People under foot. The People will one day burst their chains and will claim all its rights under Natural law.

It will teach the Tyrants just what a people united by long oppression and enlightened by sound philosophy can do". While it was common in France to equate political oppression to slavery, this was an analogy and not an abolitionist sentiment. Over the course of her career, de Gouges published 68 pamphlets. In early she published Remarques Patriotiques setting out her proposals for social security , care for the elderly, institutions for homeless children, hostels for the unemployed, and the introduction of a jury system.

Parliament is demanding the Estates-General and the Nation cannot come to an agreement. There is no consensus on electing these assemblies The Third Estate, with reason, claims a voice equal to that of the Clergy and Nobility The same year she wrote a series of pamphlets on a range of social concerns, such as illegitimate children. In these pamphlets she advanced the public debate on issues that would later be picked up by feminists, such as Flora Tristan.

She continued to publish political essays between and The French Constitution marked the birth of the short-lived constitutional monarchy and implemented a status based citizenship. Citizens were defined as men over 25 who were "independent" and who had paid the poll tax. These citizens had the right to vote. Furthermore, active citizenship was two-tiered, with those who could vote and those who were fit for public office.

A passionate advocate of human rights, de Gouges welcomed the outbreak of the Revolution, but soon became disillusioned when equal rights were not extended to women. By far her most well-known feminist work, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman was written as a response to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , the preamble to the French Constitution.

As the Revolution progressed, she became more and more radical in her writings until she was arrested for her political opinions in Back to the Directory.