Olympe de Gouges

by Sophie Mousset

La femme naît libre et demeure égale à l'homme en droits. Olympe de Gouges (1748-1792), fille naturelle d'un aristocrate et d'une bourgeoise, est l'auteur de la Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne en 1791. Elle n'aura de cesse toute sa vie de mener des combats que d'autres conduiront à leur terme beaucoup plus tard. Combats pour les droits des orphelins, des enfants naturels, pour le divorce, pour l'éducation des filles, contre l'esclavage, pour la démocratie et, bien sûr, pour le droit des femmes, qui n'obtinrent le droit de vote qu'en 1945. Femme, réveille-toi, le tocsin de la raison se fait entendre dans tout l'univers, reconnais tes droits... Aux femmes de se prendre en main. Olympe de Gouges montre l'exemple belle, intelligente, elle choisit la liberté plutôt que le remariage; révolutionnaire, elle apprend le maniement des mots, et publie nombre de pièces de théâtre et textes revendicatifs, aux succès divers, qui l'amènent à la prison et à la mort. Elle est guillotinée en 1792.Sophie Mousset rend un hommage vivace à Olympe de Gouges, femme exceptionnelle encore méconnue, qui rappelle que les droits des femmes et la liberté sont toujours à défendre.

Genres: History, Feminism, Nonfiction, Biography, French Revolution, Womens, France

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2003

Reviews

[Abigail]

On November 3, 1793, a woman, described by one eyewitness as beautiful and serene, mounted the scaffold in Paris's Revolution Square - the site of so many bloody executions during the Reign of Terror - and was guillotined. Only the second woman, after Marie Antoinette, to be put to death by the Revolution, her name was Olympe de Gouges...

The natural child of a nobleman’s son and a draper’s daughter, Marie Gouze was born in Montauban, in the region of Languedoc, in 1748. Married and widowed before the age of twenty, she left the provinces for Paris in 1767, taking the name Olympe de Gouges. Throwing herself into the whirlwind of social life in the capital, de Gouges lived a life of dissipation, until her exposure to Enlightenment ideals in the literary salons of the day inspired her to pick up the pen.

Although mocked by many of her male contemporaries for her provincialism, her lack of formal education, and her indifference to that most French custom of “ridicule,” de Gouges became a prolific playwright and political pamphleteer, always enthusiastic, always loyal to the causes which she championed. A member of the French abolitionist society, Société des amis des Noirs (“Society of the Friends of the Blacks”), she wrote a number of plays which condemned the institution of slavery, among them Zamore et Mirza ou l’Heureux Naufrage (“The Happy Shipwreck) and le Marché des Noirs (“The Slave Market”), which was burned after her death.

A passionate believer in human rights and social justice, de Gouges also spoke out for women’s rights and equality, whether that meant the right to own property, the right to obtain a divorce, or the right to see their children - born in or out of wedlock - acknowledged and supported by their fathers. Far, far ahead of her time, she was convinced that the French Revolution, which she initially supported, would only be complete when it liberated women as well as men. To that worthy end, she penned her most famous work, Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne ("Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen"), in response to the more famous (and more limited) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It was the first truly universal human rights document ever written, and sought to broaden the focus and intention of the declaration upon which it was modeled. In her passionate postscriptum, de Gouges called upon her fellow women to rise up, to assert their rights:

“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. The flame of truth has dispersed all clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain... If they persist in their weakness in putting this conclusion contrary to their principles, courageously oppose the force of reason to their empty pretensions of superiority; unite yourselves beneath the banner of philosophy; deploy all the energy of your character, and you will soon see these haughty men, not groveling at your feet as servile adorers, but proud to share with you the treasures of the Supreme Being”(73-74).

Willing to criticize both republicans and royalists, de Gouges was a moderate and a woman of principle, who spoke out, in countless pamphlets, against the increasing violence and terror of the times. She opposed the execution of the king, and penned a scathing denunciation of Robespierre, in which she predicted that his path to power would lead “between the heaps of the dead.” Eventually arrested, along with many other Girondists, de Gouges went to her death believing that she would be vindicated.


But despite the extraordinary drama of her life, her unparalleled courage, and her pioneering stand for universal human rights, de Gouges has been reduced to a footnote in history. Dismissed shortly after her death as someone who had “forgotten the virtues suitable to her own sex,” and diagnosed during the 19th century as one of the “hysterical” women of the revolutionary period, this heroic figure remains something of an enigma. I first heard about her in a college Women’s Studies class, and struck by my professor’s description of her “Declaration,” I went in search of books by or about her. I was disgusted (although not especially surprised) to discover that there simply weren’t any books in English devoted to this topic.

Imagine my delight, lo these many years later, when a friend pointed me towards Sophie Mousset’s new biography. A brief 108 pages, Women’s Rights and the French Revolution offers little more than an outline of de Gouges’ life, placed in its historic context. I know more now about the particulars of her life, but still know little about who she truly was. Perhaps there simply isn’t enough material available? But although I feel somewhat disappointed by this title, with its limited scope, and odd translation errors, I am so overjoyed to find ANYTHING about de Gouges in English, that I have given it three stars. After all, the author is not an academic, and perhaps this publication will inspire some better-qualified scholar to undertake this important subject.

[Alexandra]

Since I started learning about the French Revolution I've been fascinated by the women involved in it. The workers Pauline Leon and Claire Lacombe, the intriguing Theroigne de Mericourt, and of course Olympe de Gouges - who wrote the Declaration of Rights of Woman and the Citizeness, in answer to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. And ended up getting executed. There's not a whole lot about Olympe in English, which I think is an absolute travesty, so when I went on a bit of book-buying spree of revolutionary books and came across this one, I decided I needed to own it.

I should have paid attention to how long it was. It's only 100 pages of text, and given it cost $66 I'm a bit grumpy. I may still have bought it, but probably as an ebook instead. 

I'm also a bit grumpy because of the content. Partly I'm sad because the translation isn't excellent, so there are bits where I'm not sure if a sentence is a translation issue or a writing issue. Partly I'm annoyed because I think it would be very difficult to read and really get this book without knowledge of the French Revolution. That makes it inaccessible to people coming it at from a feminist history perspective rather than a French Rev one, which is doing Olympe a disservice. I would really have liked to see Mousset lay out more of the context of the revolution than simply mentioning some of the events that were happening around Olympe's life. 

Mostly though I'm dismayed at some of the ways that Mousset talks about Olympe's life and writing. Some of this comes out of currently reading Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, as part of our Galactic Suburbia one-chapter-per-episode readalong. One of the things that Russ identifies is the idea that women's writing is inherently personal, or autobiographical. Mousset frequently sees Olympe in the characters of her plays, and suggests that she is interested in the right of illegitimate children because she is one, in divorce because of an unhappy marriage, in housing for the elderly because her mother died destitute, and so on. As if it's not possible to care about those things without some personal connection. I'm not denying that those issues may have played a part, but to suggest that this woman - who was clearly driven, intellectual, and passionately interested in making society a better place - was only inspired by things she experienced greatly weakens her commitment.

And then there's the way that Mousset talks about her writing: "Her lack of culture forced her to constantly make reference to herself" (p31) - which I just don't understand as a concept, and aren't we all still in admiration of Shakespeare for probably not having the greatest education early on? Olympe explicitly presents herself in her writing at times, downplaying her achievements - but couldn't this just be seen as a pose? Check this out:

"I haven't the advantage of being schooled, and as I've already said, I know nothing, I will therefore not use the title Author, although I've already presented the Public with two plays, which it was kind enough to welcome. And, unable to imitate my colleagues in their talent and arrogance, I shall listen to the voice of modesty, which suits me in all respects." (p33)

Doesn't that just scream Olympe playing the pose of modest woman (which she was accused of not being), but also having a dig at male 'colleagues' for their arrogance? Maybe there's extensive French scholarship to suggest that Olympe was always excruciatingly honest and never played a pose, but right now I'm not buying it. And Mousset follows up this quote by saying that "If there was one thing that she was absolutely not, that was modest!" - which... do we care? Would we make the same comment of a male author? After another passage where Olympe talks about her achievements, or lack of, Mousset says "It's obvious here that Olympe is mocking herself" (p34), but again I can't help but wonder if it's all a pose to get the audience on side. And my irritation is compounded when Mousset comments that "If her lack of humility still seems irritating today, imagine how exasperating she must have been at the time!" (p37, my italics). To which I have no answer because I'm gobsmacked. 

Olympe, writing and politically active in the late 1780s and early 1790s, seems like a forerunner of second wave feminism: "Whichever barriers may be encircling you, it is in your power to emancipate yourselves from them; you only have to wish to do so" (p1) - pretty sure enslaved women on what would soon be Haiti wouldn't have agreed with this sentiment. (It should be noted that Olympe was passionately anti-slavery, to the point of one of her plays being banned for its anti-colonial message.) Mousset does present Olympe's achievements in terms of her plays being performed, and outlines some of the ways in which she was involved in politics and Parisian society. Partly because she was a moderate in many ways as that became increasingly like an anti-revolutionary, and probably also because she was an outspoken woman, Olympe eventually ended up on the wrong side of the people in charge, and Mousset presents Olympe's final two years quite well. 

For me, this feels like an extensive early version that could easily be twice as long with added commentary on the French Revolution to give Olympe greater context. I do like the way that Mousset presents Olympe's most well-known work today, the Declaration of Rights of Woman and the Citizeness, with some commentary on the way Olympe changed the wording from what had been adopted by the national government. But I'm not sure I could recommend this to someone - certainly not as an entry to the world of women's involvement in the Revolution. (That book is Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France, By Lucy Moore.)   

[Vicki Kondelik]

Women's Rights and the French Revolution is Sophie Mousset's biography of the playwright and feminist activist Olympe de Gouges. I first learned about Olympe a long time ago, in a college class on the French Revolution, when we read her most famous work, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, where she said that women should have the same rights as men, including the right to vote and hold political office. The document did not have much effect on the leaders of the Revolution, who either ignored Olympe or ridiculed her, but later on it was recognized as a pioneering work of feminist theory, and had a great influence on Mary Wollstonecraft and other early feminists.

Olympe was born Marie Gouze in 1748 in the city of Montauban in southern France. Her first language was Occitan, the regional language of the south of France, which is actually closer to Catalan than French. She did not learn French until much later. Her pseudonym was taken from her mother's name (Anne Olympe). She was the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, the Marquis de Pompignan, with whom her mother had an affair, although she was officially the daughter of her mother's husband, a butcher. Mousset writes as if it were a fact that Olympe was Pompignan's daughter, but I have read elsewhere that her paternity is in doubt. Certainly Olympe believed she was Pompignan's daughter, whatever the truth may be. She corresponded with Pompignan as if she were his daughter, and later she fictionalized this correspondence in her first literary work, an epistolary novel, in which she mentions the fact that her siblings looked like their father, the butcher, while she did not. During the Revolution she became an advocate for the right of illegitimate children to bear their fathers' names and inherit from them. Her own experiences growing up certainly influenced her thinking.

Olympe did not receive any formal education, and learned only the basics of reading and writing. Later, her detractors said she could not read and write at all, which is untrue, because she wrote many plays and other literary works, even though it is true that the early ones might have been dictated to someone. She always regretted her lack of education, and believed that women should have the same education as men.

At the age of seventeen, Olympe was married off to Louis Yves Aubry, a man she never loved, and who was of a lower social class than she was. As Mousset says, it was very unusual for a woman of the time to marry a man of a lower social class. No one knows why Olympe's mother forced her into the marriage. A year later, her son, Pierre Aubry, was born. Not long after her son's birth, her husband was killed in a flood, and she never remarried. The disastrous experience of her marriage led Olympe to become an advocate for divorce during the Revolution. Mousset does not tell us much about Olympe's son and what their relationship was like, except that it seems they became somewhat estranged, and that Olympe's son joined the army during the Revolution.

Shortly after her husband's death, Olympe began an affair with a wealthy merchant, and she and her son moved to Paris with him. She enjoyed the social life of Paris, and became famous for her beauty. Olympe frequented the leading salons of the Enlightenment and met the famous philosophers and literary figures of the time. In the early 1780s, she became an author. Her first work was the autobiographical epistolary novel mentioned above, then she turned to writing for the theater. She wrote over forty plays, most of which were never performed. Some were published, but not performed. She did have several plays produced at Paris' leading theater, the Comédie-Française, the best known of which was Zamore et Mirza, an anti-slavery play. Olympe was always a strong abolitionist. Unfortunately, many powerful people at the time were pro-slavery, and they tried to block her play from being performed. She took legal action against them and won her case. Her play was produced, but the pro-slavery people heckled it, and it only ran for three performances.

Another play of Olympe's that was performed in Paris was a sequel to Beaumarchais' The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. Copyright laws at the time were not as strong as they are now, and so people often wrote sequels to other people's works, without the original author being able to prevent it. Beaumarchais did not approve, though, and he was somewhat of an adversary to Olympe in Paris' theater world.

When the Revolution began, Olympe turned from writing plays to writing political pamphlets and treatises. She was a supporter of the early Revolution and took the opportunity to write on behalf the poor and the oppressed, as well as becoming an advocate for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. Olympe also attended the meetings of revolutionary societies, at least the ones that would admit women.

She was disappointed, though, in the misogyny of many of the revolutionaries. The famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was clearly meant only for male people. While women gained some rights under the revolutionary government, including the right to initiate a divorce and to own property separately from their husbands, they never gained political and voting rights. In fact, it was not until the 1940s that women in France gained the right to vote. This lack of political rights led Olympe to write her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, which is reproduced in full in Mousset's book. In it, Olympe follows the text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, article by article, but adds what must be done so that women would have equal rights. Needless to say, the revolutionary leaders did not take it well, and they mocked Olympe and dismissed her as a hysterical woman.

Olympe was always a supporter of a constitutional monarchy, and did not approve when the Revolution took a more radical turn. She was appalled by the violence of the Terror, and wrote against Robespierre and Marat. She especially hated Marat, who was one of the most bloodthirsty of the revolutionary leaders. After Louis XVI was deposed, she offered to defend him at his trial. Of course, the National Convention did not take her offer seriously. Olympe thought Louis was a weak king, but felt sympathy for him and Marie-Antoinette as people. During the split between the moderate Girondins and the radical Jacobins, Olympe sided with the Girondins.

During the Terror, Olympe's pamphlets got her into trouble. She had the courage to write a pamphlet against Robespierre, in which she predicted that he would send many people to the guillotine, and much of what she said proved true. She also thought that many of the people of France did not really want Robespierre and the Jacobins as their leaders, and she published a pamphlet that called for a referendum in which the people would choose between three types of government: a constitutional monarchy, a federalist republic, or a unified republic (which was the type of government that Robespierre favored). It was this pamphlet that proved the last straw as far as the Jacobins were concerned, and Olympe was imprisoned and tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Although she defended herself well, the outcome was inevitable, and she was guillotined in November 1793, only a few weeks after Marie-Antoinette. She was not forgotten, though. Her Declaration had a huge influence on Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and on later feminism.

At only 108 pages, Mousset's book is very brief and, unfortunately, does not give the reader much of a sense of Olympe as a person. But I recommend it because it is practically the only book in English about this remarkable, courageous woman. It is translated from French, and sometimes the translation does not read very well. Also, it seems to rely heavily on a French biography by Olivier Blanc. I hope that, one day, more will be written in English about Olympe de Gouges, but for now this is just about the only biography available unless you read French. Certainly it provides a glimpse of this amazing woman and her times.

[Stuart Ian Burns]

Barely literate - an impressive story which needs telling becomes clouded in a poor approach to events and often character assassination. But this is a translation and at times it reads like the text has been fed through Google Translate then given some freshening up afterwards so it's entirely possible something has been lost in the transformation.

[Courts]

Fascinating woman, sloppy translation.

[Readergirl.657]

Un personnage intéressant qui combat pour des causes intéressantes.

Olympe de Gouges est une femme de lettre/politicienne du mouvement des Lumières .

J'ai apprécier cette biographie très bien sourcée même si que ce nest pas le genre de lecture que je lirais pour le plaisir .

[Echantal]

Une femme inspirante qui rédigeait en 1791 la « déclaration universelle des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne », les femmes ayant été complètement oubliées de la « Déclaration universelle des droits de l’Homme ». Pour avoir osé tenir tête à Robespierre, pour avoir osé demander l’égalité entre hommes et femmes, pour avoir « oublié sa condition de femme », elle fut guillotinée - la deuxième femme, peu de temps après Marie-Antoinette.

[Anna]

This was a short but well researched biography of Olympe de Gouges- a pioneer of modern women's rights. Olympe de Gouges was a feminist, activist, playwright and abolitionist with ideas that were decades if not centuries ahead of her time and consequently suffered a violent death by the very society she was trying to help. It was well paced and contains an extensive bibliography for further reading.