Olympe de Gouges : (7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793), born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose writings on women's rights and abolitionism reached a large audience. She began her career as a playwright in the early 1780s. As political tension rose in France, Olympe de Gouges became increasingly politically engaged. She became an outspoken advocate against the slave trade in the French colonies in 1788. At the same time, she began writing political pamphlets. Today she is perhaps best known as an early women's rights advocate who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the right of the woman and the female citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male autoritate and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reight of terror (1793–1794) for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her association with the Girondists.
I chose to talk to you first about his book "Woman wake up",This little book is a collection of political texts by the author, with the main themes of feminism, the rights of blacks and France at the time of the Revolution.
Story : "Woman, wake up; the alert of reason is heard throughout the universe; recognize your rights. The mighty empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudices, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The torch of truth has dispelled all the clouds of foolishness and usurpation. The slave man has multiplied his strength, needed to use yours to break his chains. Becoming free, he became unfair to his companion. O women! women, when will you stop being blind? " A resolutely rebellious tone, an energetic language, a committed speech, by one of the great female voices of the French Revolution Extract : « No one should be disturbed for his very basic opinions; the woman has the right to ascend the scaffold; she must also have the right to go up to the tribune; provided that its manifestations do not disturb public order established by law. » « Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is heard throughout the universe; recognize your rights. The mighty empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudices, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. » View :
I recommend this book to people who want to see the point of view of a courageous feminist during the revolution
Before dying Olympe de Gouges exclaimed "children of the fatherland, you will avenge my death"
Summary :
"Because it was the first in France in 1791 to formulate a 'Declaration of the Rights of Women' which poses in all its consequences the principle of the equality of the two sexes, because it dared to claim all the freedoms including the sexual, claiming the right to divorce and common-law, defending the mother-daughters and bastard children, understanding that the conquest of civil rights would be a decoy if one did not same time to the patriarchal right, because she has paid with her life for her fidelity to an ideal. "
VIEW:
Thus either Olympe de Gouges is a work in two parts, the first is a biography in which Benoîte Groult attaches to the political profile of Olympe de Gouges. Not knowing how to read or write when she arrives in Paris, she will gradually learn and use assistants to whom she will dictate her many interventions. Through its many battles, from the reduction of the debt by a voluntary contribution of each one, to the defense of the weakest - women, girl-mothers, single women, widows, indigents, fight against the slavery of the blacks that she expresses in a play that she plays at the Comédie Française, she is a whole woman, courageous and of a foolproof energy that can be discovered. Swarming with often pragmatic ideas, she embraces all the problems, none of the battles she undertakes exhaust her, implementing her own fortune and all the means of communication of the time in the service of the causes she defends: newspapers - she even creates her own newspaper - wall cupboards, plays, direct mail to stakeholders or decision-makers.
The second part takes up the original texts where she exposes her avant-garde ideas, altruistic sometimes simple to set up but a purism, a vehemence of words and especially a political opposition of her detractors will serve her. We can not in any way blame her lack of courage, she overflows in touching societal issues: she drafts the social contract of men and women (a new version of marriage contract completely innovative) and, anticipating the Critique, adds in its flowery and personal language "This is almost the formula of the conjugal act which I propose execution.A reading this bizarre writing, I see rising against me the tartuffes, the beggars, the clergy and all the infernal sequel ". She claims the right to divorce and a status for natural children (that she was herself).
My only downside is the style of the time and I sometimes struggled to follow his demonstrations but she remains an incredible personality and I enjoyed discovering, Olympe Gouges her life as a fighter and his death almost claimed, a hard-line progressive.
To be continued......