"Averse to all intrigue, beyond all parties whose passionate fight has divided France, I forged a new path for myself; trusting my own eyes alone, and listening to my own inner voice, I have confronted the foolish, have attacked the mean and have sacrificed all my assets to the revolution." Olympe de Gouges was born in 1748 in Montauban near Toulouse in France as Marie Gouze. She came from petit-bourgeois origins. Although just as intelligent as she was pretty, no attention was given to her education. She could hardly read or write, and coming from the South of France only spoke French poorly and later dictated all her work to her secretary. Despite the multiple mistake of belonging to the wrong sex, her "questionable" origins and poor upbringing without any income and daughter of a widow, Marie Gouze was not prepared to accept her prescribed fate.

She moved to pre-revolutionary Paris with a rich transport company owner where she gave herself the more attractive and aristocratic sounding name "Olympe de Gouges" and sought contact to educated and cultural circles and salons. She lived from the support of her lover and accepted the slander of being called a whore in order to achieve her dream. She wanted to become a writer.

Olympe de Gouges attempted to earn her living as a theatre author. For years she fought to have her works staged in the conservative theatre Comédie Francaise which was subject to the king. One of her very first plays in Paris immediately became a matter of politics. She pilloried slavery in the colonies in her "L´Esclavage at the Nègres". The Mayor of Paris had her piece taken off the stage after just three performances. de Gouges was derided In the newspapers.

She wrote bitterly: "Why this unswerving prejudice against my sex? Any why is it said, as I have quite clearly heard, that the Comédie Francaise should not put on any plays by women. I am a woman, but not rich ... Will it ever be allowed for women to escape from the terror of poverty other than by base means."

Spurred on by the revolutionary events from 1789 onwards, she turned to politics with more vengeance. De Gouges regularly visited the national assembly sessions. She transformed her ideas into suggestions for social-political measures, which she printed at her own cost and hung up as posters. She became the focus of discussion throughout Paris.

With her " Declaration of the Rights of Women and Women Citizens"Olympe de Gouges was the first person to formulate wholly comprehensive human and citizens rights. The declaration caused excitement throughout France and even abroad. Her paper "The Three Urns or the Welfare of the Fatherland" finally led to her being arrested. This gave rise Olympe de Gouges being seen as a supporter of the Girondists, who had been excluded from the Convent at the same time (in May/June 1793). In this De Gouges had suggested a referendum on three possible forms of government. "Republican Party government, one and undividable.; Federative government; Monarchy." What is more, she had publicly defended the king in December 1792, mainly for humanitarian reasons. She wanted to achieve a reformation of society with words, by publishing her writings and through continual appeals for reason and not with violence. As a result she remained a true representative of the enlightenment despite her differences with Rousseau.

De Gouges was brought before the revolutionary tribunal. Both events, her paper and her defending the king, were interpreted as propaganda to reinstall the monarchy. Olympe de Gouges was beheaded on 3rd November 1793.

Olympe was not only condemned for being a member of the Girondists, but also as a women's rights supporter. Two weeks after her death she was held up as an warning example to other women in a speech by the leader Chaumette. "Remember this "virago"... this shameless Olympe de Gouges, ... who neglected her duties in the home and wanted to make politics and committed crimes. All such unmoral beings have been consumed by the fire of vengeance of the law... You want to imitate her? No, you surely feel that you are only interesting and worthy of appreciation when you are that what nature wanted you to be."
[Published in the Courrier Républicain, 19th November 1793]

[Author: Dorette Wesemann, Edited by: Ragnar Müller]

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