‘Women have the right to mount the scaffold; they should have the right to mount the rostrum.’
Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, 1791.
Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) was a political activist during the French Revolution. She was a prominent writer, both as a playwright and a political commentator.
She attended the artistic and literary salons of the Paris elite where she discussed her political ideas. She published her writings, often as pamphlets addressed directly to politicians and circulated to civilians. She advocated for intersectional human rights, not only for women’s political citizenship during the revolution but also addressing class issues through social security proposals, legal restrictions affecting women in marriage and the abolition of slavery.
She disagreed with the execution of Louis XVI and was imprisoned for 3 months without the legal right to a lawyer for suggesting three possible constitutions.
She was eventually executed during Robespierre’s Terror in 1793 for speaking out about the inequalities and atrocities the revolution was descending into.
Teaching Themes
Female revolutionaries: de Gouges was an important activist voice in the French revolution.
Women in politics: de Gouges entered public debates through distributing printed pamphlets, with important contributions to political philosophy, state welfare, women’s rights and early constitutions.
Enlightenment art and society: the writings of de Gouges include several plays, she was an actress prior to the revolution and participated in salonièrre culture.
Silencing of women: de Gouges was executed for speaking out against the inequalities of the revolution, despite women playing an important role before and during establishment of the Republic.
Abolition of slavery: de Gouges was also one of the earliest abolitionists in France.
Early feminism and suffrage: Mary Wollstonecraft was inspired by de Gouges’ work to write Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Period & Place
National Curriculum Link
The French Revolutionary wars.
Exam Specification Links
GCSE Edexcel Paper 1 The French Revolution, c.1780-99
A level AQA Paper 2 France in Revolution, 1774–1815
OCR Paper 2 The French Revolution and the rule of Napoleon 1774–1815
Sources
The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen is the most frequently cited of de Gouges’ writings http://studymore.org.uk/xoly.htm It can be compared with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which is often taught exclusively without reference to the women who spoke out about its exclusions.
A smuggled final letter from de Gouges in prison was posted by sympathetic revolutionaries. https://www.olympedegouges.eu/docs/Olympe-de-Gouges-au-tribunal.pdf
The official notes of her trial and execution can also be compared and examined to consider purpose and voice of source authors https://revolution.chnm.org/d/488/
Scholarship
Levy, D.G., Applewhite, H.B., Johnson, M.D. (eds.) 1979 Women in Revolutionary Paris. 1789-1795. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Cole, J.R. 2011 Between the Queen and the Cabby: Olympe De Gouges’s Rights of Woman. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.