Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and was guillotined two years later. Born Marie Gouze in Montauban in 1748, the daughter of a butcher and probably the illegitimate child of a local marquis, she was married at sixteen to a man she detested, widowed within two years, and refused ever to marry again — describing marriage as the tomb of trust and love. She moved to Paris, took a new name, and wrote. She produced some thirty plays and dozens of political pamphlets in an age when few women published under their own names, and she wrote fast and unevenly. Her play L'Esclavage des Nègres, written in 1784 and staged by the Comédie-Française in 1789, attacked colonial slavery and drew threats from the planter lobby. The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen appeared in September 1791, addressed to the queen, and took the 1789 Declaration article by article, substituting women. Article I holds that woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights; Article X contains the line that has outlived everything else she wrote — that woman has the right to mount the scaffold, and must equally have the right to mount the rostrum. She also demanded divorce, civil marriage, paternity recognition, maternity hospitals and an end to the death penalty. She opposed the execution of the king, offered to defend him, and attacked Robespierre and Marat in print. She was tried in November 1793 and guillotined the same day.
- Lived: 1748 CE – 1793 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: playwright, political_activist, feminist
