This link has been bookmarked by 9 people . It was first bookmarked on 09 Apr 2008, by Alberto Fernandez.
-
05 May 15
-
French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience.
-
Today she is perhaps best known as an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men.
-
She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her close relation with the Girondists.
-
She also wrote on such gender-related topics as the right of divorce and argued in favour of 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 when égalité (equal rights) was not extended to women.
-
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 Female Citizen"). This was followed by her Contrat Social ("Social Contract", named after a famous work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), proposing marriage based upon gender equality.
-
The Jacobins, who already had executed a King and Queen, were in no mood to tolerate any opposition from the intellectuals. De Gouges was sentenced to death on 2 November 1793, and executed the following day for seditious behaviour and attempting to reinstate the monarchy.
-
Olympe de Gouges wrote her famous Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen shortly after the French constitution of 1791 was created in the same year. She was alarmed that the constitution, which was to promote equal suffrage, did not address—nor even consider—women’s suffrage.
-
Article X contains the famous phrase: "Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum." If women have the right to be executed, they should have the right to speak.
-
-
27 Jan 09
evgeny yauhenioOlympe de Gouges (May 7, 1748 – November 3, 1793), born Marie Gouze, was a playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience.
A proponent of democracy, she demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. 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 attacking the regime of Maximilien Robespierre and for her close relation with the Girondists.
As her hopes were disappointed, she became more and more vehement in her writings. On June 2, 1793, the Jacobins arrested her allies, the Girondins, and sent them to the guillotine. Finally, her 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) of 1793, led to her arrest. That piece demanded a plebiscite for a choice among 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 an attorney, she tried to defend herself. Through her friends she managed to publish two texts: Olympe de Gouges au tribunal révolutionnaire, where she related her interrogations, and the last work, Une patriote persécutée, where she condemned the Terror. The Jacobins, who already had executed a King and Queen, were in no mood to tolerate any opposition from the intellectuals. Olympe was sentenced to death on November 2, 1793, and executed the following day, for 'opposition to the death penalty', a month after Condorcet had been proscribed and several months after the Girondin leaders had been guillotined. -
06 Oct 08
-
04 Oct 08
cody lucasduh, wikipedia
-
A proponent of democracy, she demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. 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 attacking the regime of Maximilien Robespierre and for her close relation with the Girondists.
-
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.
-
Olympe de Gouges wrote her famous Declaration on the Rights of Women shortly after the French constitution of 1791 was created in the same year.
-
She was alarmed that the constitution, which was to promote equal suffrage, did not address nor even consider woman’s suffrage. The Constitution gave that right only to men. It also did not address key issues like legal equality in marriage, the right for a woman to divorce her spouse, or a woman’s right to property. So she created a document that was to be, in her opinion, the missing part of the Constitution of 1791, in which women would be given the equal rights they deserve. Throughout the document, it is apparent to the reader that Gouges had been influenced by the Enlightenment way of thinking. Enlightened thinkers critically examined and criticized the traditional morals and institutions of the day, using “scientific reasoning.”
-
-
06 Jan 08
Alberto FernandezOlympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze; December 31, 1745 – 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 dema
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.