She Spoke Up for Women's Rights and Was Executed for Treason
Olympe de Gouges is known for the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, but she was killed not for her feminist arguments — she was killed for opposing the king's execution and attacking Robespierre.
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The Declaration of the Rights of Woman answers the Declaration of the Rights of Man
Olympe de Gouges is most famous for the 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, a direct response to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The original used citoyen; she switched to the feminine citoyenne — it looks completely different but sounds nearly the same. Her writing and political activity went far beyond this one pamphlet, and her death sentence was not for calling for women's rights.
— Tracy V. WilsonBiographical truth is mixed with novelistic invention
The first English biography of de Gouges, Women's Rights in the French Revolution, leans heavily on her epistolary novel Memoirs of Madame de Valmont as factual evidence, but that book is highly fictional. Its protagonist is widely considered a stand-in for herself, while the Marquis de Flaucour represents her possible biological father, the Marquis de Pompignan. That parentage has never been confirmed.
— Holly FreyThe Comédie-Française crushed a woman playwright
Zamore et Mirza was written and submitted anonymously in 1784 and accepted the following year, but its staging was endlessly delayed. When de Gouges kept pressing, the theater revoked her admission rights and applied for a warrant for her arrest. Between 1761 and 1789 the theater accepted only nine plays by women, and she was the only author treated this way. She later wrote to the Duke of Richelieu, who helped restore her position.
— Tracy V. WilsonSlavery became the first abolitionist play
The play finally opened in 1789, but its setting moved from the East Indies to the Caribbean, its characters changed from Asians to Africans, and its title became Slavery of the Blacks. It is often considered France's first play to explicitly support abolition and to tell the story from the perspective of the enslaved. Abolitionists praised it; wealthy men with colonial interests hired hecklers to disrupt it, and actors refused to blacken their skin for the roles.
— Holly FreyThe article rewrites all 17 articles one by one
The Declaration of the Rights of Man granted rights to citizens while excluding women, and the 1791 constitution restricted the vote to taxpaying men. De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman copied the 17-article format and rewrote each article in turn. Where the original's Article 10 guaranteed freedom of speech, for instance, she added that a mother has the right to publicly declare the father of her child. The whole document was dedicated to Marie Antoinette, urging her to advance women's rights.
— Tracy V. WilsonDefending Louis XVI became the rope around her neck
Despite her revolutionary stance, de Gouges believed a constitutional monarchy suited France best, with the king as a symbol rather than a power. When Louis XVI was tried for treason in 1792, she volunteered to defend him, on the grounds that the monarchy had already been abolished and a republic could not try a former king for acts committed while he reigned. Her logic was called strained; the king was executed anyway, and she was seen as a royalist.
— Holly FreyHer federalist argument got her arrested
In July 1793, de Gouges proposed that France's provinces govern themselves rather than form a unified republic, which was taken as a direct provocation. She underestimated the ferocious political atmosphere of the Terror and brought investigators to her office herself, assuming her work would prove her loyalty. Instead, her unfinished play France Saved was used as evidence against her for sympathizing with Marie Antoinette. She was ultimately executed for opposing the republican constitution.
— Tracy V. WilsonIn their own words · checked verbatim
Man, are you capable of being fair? A woman is asking, at least you will allow her that right. Tell me, what gave you the sovereign right to oppress my sex?
Tracy V. Wilson24:35
The free expression of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of woman, given that this liberty ensures the legitimacy of fathers and their children.
Tracy V. Wilson25:36
Women have done more harm than good. Constraint and dissimulation have been their lot.
Tracy V. Wilson26:37
Marriage is the tomb of trust and love.
Tracy V. Wilson26:37
Olympe de Gouges was executed in Paris on November 3rd, 1793. And her last words were, children of the homeland, you will avenge my death.
Holly Frey33:50
Figures
| Date of birth | May 7, 1748 | 2:07 |
| She was only 57 when executed as an adult: 45 | 45 | 31:44 |
| Plays by women accepted by the Comédie-Française | 9 | 15:23 |
| Annual output required by royal regulation | 25 to 40 | 15:23 |
| Actually staged each year | 10 to 12 | 15:23 |
| Number of plays she wrote in her lifetime | More than 40 | 19:29 |
| Number of plays that survive | 12 | 19:29 |
| Number of plays actually staged in her lifetime | 4 | 19:29 |
| Publication date of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman | September 14, 1791 | 24:35 |
| Date of execution | November 3, 1793 | 33:50 |
Glossary
- Citoyen / citizen
- The French masculine noun meaning a male citizen. De Gouges used its feminine form, citoyenne.
How to listen
Anyone interested in the French Revolution, women's history, and women's writing during the Enlightenment — especially readers who want the details of women's political participation that textbooks leave out.
The first four-plus minutes, on the many ambiguities of her early life, can be fast-forwarded; the core material starts in the middle.