What happened to Marie-Olympe de Gouges two years after she wrote ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen’?
Subject: Women’s Rights - Marie-Olympe de Gouges’ Declaration
Event: The execution of Marie-Olympe de Gouges, 1793
Woman, wake up! The tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe. Discover your rights! The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. -Marie-Olympe de Gouges
A major achievement of the French Revolution occurred on August 26, 1789 when The Declaration of The Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted. This document failed, however, to recognize the equality of women, an important detail that was not overlooked by writer and playwright Marie-Olympe de Gouges. In response to the Rights of Man, Gouges published The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791. Gouges minced no words in her Declaration, saying, “This revolution will only take effect when all women become fully aware of their deplorable condition, and of the rights they have lost in society.”
Gouges challenging the male sex to live up to the ideals of the Revolution and of the Enlightenment. She also challenged conventional views. She argued that just as nature manifests the harmonious cooperation of the sexes, so too should the laws of the state. In an incredulous tone, she berates the male sex for his irrationality:
Bizarre, blind, boated with science and degenerate -- in a century of enlightenment and wisdom -- into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties.
In words that eerily foreshadow her fate, Gouges demanded the same rights to free speech that men had: “No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order.”
For having the audacity to demand equality and for speaking out, Gouges was silenced. Arrested in July 1793, she was sent to the guillotine and was executed on November 3, 1793. Her influence and spirit lived on, inspiring Mary Wolstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, which was signed in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Women in France were granted the right to vote as equal citizens in 1944.
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: How do the long term consequences of Marie-Olympe de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791) compare with Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Declaration of Rights and Sentiments (1848)?
Challenge - Rushmore of Women: If there were a Mount Rushmore featuring the four most influential women in history, which four women would you select and why?
Sources:
1-Marie-Olympe de Gouges. The Rights of Woman, 1791.
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