"What have women gained from the French Revolution? Nothing."
- Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges was born Marie Gouze in 1748. She was born to a butcher father and a servant mother. She penned her pseudonym, Olympe de Gouges, when she began writing. She married Louis Aubry in 1765 and had two children with him. He died shortly after.
Olympe de Gouges was not only a playwright, but she was also a feminist, activist, and abolitionist. Her first play, Slavery of the Negroes, was written in protest of the government wanting to abolish slavery in France but not abolish slavery in its colonies. Fist fights between abolitionists and colonialism supporters broke out at the premiere of the production and the play was cancelled.
Olympe’s activism continued in other areas, such as the proposal she submitted to the King regarding poverty. She discussed how poverty could be eradicated if the King enacted a taxation plan that would allow wealth to be fairly divided.
The French Revolution furthered Olympe’s activism. Along with Sophie de Condorcet, Olympe’s friend and a fellow women’s rights advocate, Olympe encouraged women to fight for equal rights. In reaction to France’s 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen," Olympe wrote the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.” The Declaration explained how the oppression of women and their rights resulted in public misfortune and a corrupt government.
In 1793, Olympe was arrested after she was accused of writing and publishing a political poster, where she was accused of seditious behavior. She spent three months in prison, where she continued to write political pieces. The judge over the case denied Olympe her legal right to a lawyer because he said she was capable of representing herself. Olympe was therefore forced to defend herself.
Her unfinished play, France Saved or The Tyrant Dethroned (1792), was found in her home when the authorities searched her house after her arrest. Due to its content relating to the storming of Tuileries palace, the manuscript was used against her in her trial, as they accused her of not being a committed republican.
On November 3, 1793, Olympe was sent to the guillotine and executed. She was called a counterrevolutionary and an “unnatural” woman. (Ironically, amongst the many topics Olympe wrote throughout her life, she had written against the death penalty). Olympe truly was a feminist and quite ahead of her time.
Below are more plays that Olympe de Gouges wrote throughout her life.
The Unexpected Marriage of Cherubin (1786) - “A young bride is threatened by an aristocratic roué.”
The Slavery of Negroes, or The Happy Shipwreck (1792) - The revised version of Zamore et Mirza
Works Cited
Aran, Sue. “The Crest of the Wave: Olympe De Gouges and Early Feminism | French History.” Bonjour Paris, 17 Mar. 2017, bonjourparis.com/history/olympe-de-gouges/.
Palmer, Clarissa. “Olympe De Gouges.” Olympe De Gouges, 2017, www.olympedegouges.eu/outlines_plays.php.
“Olympe De Gouges .”Olympe De Gouges, 2015, www.olympedegouges.paris/biography.
“Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (September 1791),” Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, accessed January 14, 2019, http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/293.
Images
Comments