Olympe de Gouges

Olympe de Gouges /ɔlɛ̃p də ɡuʒ/ (Montauban, France, May 7, 1748 - Paris, November 3, 1793) is the pseudonym of Marie Gouze, French writer, playwright, pamphleteer and political philosopher, wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791. Like other feminists of her time, she campaigned for the abolition of slavery Arrested for her defense of the Girondins, she was summarily tried and guillotined to death.

Biography

He was born into a bourgeois family in Montauban. His father was a butcher and his mother the daughter of a cloth merchant. She married an older man in 1765, leaving her after a while a widow with a son, Pierre Aubry. Very disappointed in the marriage in general, which she described as a "tomb of trust and love", she refused to remarry. In the early 1770s, she moved to Paris where she saw that her son received a very good education. She led a bourgeois existence, and she frequented the Parisian literary salons where she met the intellectual elite of the French golden age. In 1774, her name was listed in the Paris Almanac, the & # 34;Who's Who & # 34; of the time. She then embarked on a literary career like her godfather, the poet Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan. She began to sign with the name of Marie-Olympe or Olympe, her mother's middle name, adding the preposition "of" to her Gouze's official last name.

He wrote several plays and set up an itinerant theater company that toured the Paris region, without his income allowing him to support himself. But quickly his works began to be represented in theaters throughout France. His best-known work, The Slavery of Negroes (L'esclavage des noirs), was published in 1792, but was entered in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française in 1785. under the title of Zamore and Mirza, or the happy shipwreck (Zamore et Mirza, ou l'heureux naufrage). This daring play was intended to draw attention to the condition of black slaves, but Olympe faced the disapproval of the Comédie Française actors. This depended economically on the Court of Versailles where many noble families had enriched themselves with the slave trade. On the other hand, trade with overseas colonies then represented 50% of the country's foreign trade. Olympe was imprisoned in the Bastille by means of a lettre de cachet, but she was released shortly after thanks to the intervention of her friends.

With the Revolution, his work was finally able to be performed at the Comédie Française. Despite the pressures and threats of the colonial lobby, still very influential, Olympe de Gouges maintained an intense activity in favor of the abolition of slavery. In 1788 he published the essay Réflexions sur les hommes nègres ( Reflections on Black Men ) which opened the doors of the & # 34; Club des amis des noirs & # 34; (Club of friends of blacks) of which he was a member. In 1790 he wrote another work on the same subject, Le marché des Noirs ( The Negro Market ). The main leaders of the abolitionist movement, the Abbe Grégoire and the Girondin deputy Brissot, recorded in their writings their admiration for Olympe de Gouges.

In 1788, the General Journal of France published two of his political pamphlets, one of them dealing with his patriotic tax project that he would later develop in his famous Letter to the People (Lettre au Peuple). The second outlined a broad program of social reforms. These writings were followed by pamphlets that he periodically addressed to the representatives of the first three legislatures of the Revolution, to the patriotic clubs, and to various personalities such as Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Necker whom he admired. It is estimated that there were about 30 pamphlets. He founded several fraternal societies for both sexes.

In 1791 she wrote her famous Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen which began with the following words:

Man, are you able to be fair? A woman asks you this question.

In line with Montesquieu, he defended the separation of powers. He initially supported the constitutional monarchy, but quickly adhered to the republican cause and opposed the death sentence of Louis XVI in 1793. He sided with the Girondins and warned of the risks of dictatorship, harshly criticizing the policies of Robespierre and Marat. He also denounced the creation of the Public Safety Committee.

Her defense of the Girondins, after they were eliminated from the political scene in June 1793, earned her arrest in August 1793 on charges of authoring a pamphlet in their favor. She sick from a wound that she had infected, she was transferred to a prison infirmary. To make her detention more bearable, she pawned her jewelry in the pawn shop, thus getting her transferred to a bourgeois pension where she confined the sick detainees of high society. Olympe de Gouges relentlessly demanded that she be tried in order to defend herself against the accusations against her, and thus avoid the expeditious revolutionary tribunal. To this end, she composed two pamphlets that she managed to get out of her place of confinement and that had a wide circulation, "Olympe de Gouges at the Revolutionary Court"; and "A persecuted patriot". They were her last texts.

On November 2, 1793, 48 hours after her Girondin friends were executed, Olympe was brought before the revolutionary court without being able to have a lawyer. She defended herself with courage and intelligence in a summary trial that sentenced her to death for having defended a federated state, in accordance with Girondin principles. She was guillotined the next day, on November 3, 1793. According to the statement of a police inspector and the counterrevolutionary newspaper Le Journal of the publisher Perlet, Olympe de Gouges mounted the scaffold with courage and dignity., although the son of the executioner, Henri Sanson, and other testimonies collected by the historian Jules Michelet affirm the contrary.

Olympe de Gouges' only son, Pierre Aubry, publicly disowned her shortly after her execution, fearing arrest.

The thought of Olympe de Gouges

Olympe de Gouges in 1793.

His works were profoundly revolutionary. He defended equality between men and women in all aspects of public and private life, including equality with men in the right to vote, in access to public work, to speak in public about political issues, to access political life, to own and control property, to join the army; including fiscal equality as well as the right to education and equal power in the family and ecclesiastical sphere. Olympe de Gouges wrote:

If the woman can go up to the slope, she should also be given the right to go up to the Tribune.

He addressed Queen Marie Antoinette to ask her to protect "her sex," which he said unfortunate, and he wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens, copied on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, in which he affirmed the equal rights of both sexes.

He also made proposals about the suppression of marriage and the establishment of divorce, the idea of an annual renewable contract signed between cohabitants and campaigned for paternal recognition of children born out of wedlock.

She was also a precursor of the protection of children and the disadvantaged, by conceiving in broad lines, a mother-child protection system (creation of maternity hospitals) and recommending the creation of national workshops for the unemployed and homes for beggars.

Links to Freemasonry

She was also linked to Masonic lodges; among them, the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, created by her friend Michel de Cubières. ^{[citation needed ]}

Articles of the Declaration of the rights of women and citizens

Without a doubt, the work of a political-social nature that had the most repercussion within French society and the one that will later influence other authors who advocate equality between men and women is The Declaration of the rights of women and citizens. With this declaration, Olympe de Gouges intended to seek freedom, equality and the right to vote for women, since this was a right that men had exclusively had for years and that women did not possess.

This work can be placed in the chronological framework of France in the XVIII century, that is, the work was produced in full French Revolution, where within French society great differences between men and women could be perceived. This thought is due, in part, to the influence that Rousseauian thought had on the French population. Rousseau himself considered gender roles to be determined by natural relationships. Mainly, the author considers that the role of women within society was to please men, therefore, the only place that he attributes to women within French society was at home and, within it, his husband would exercise dominance over the wife. In summary, he considers that the main role of the woman is to take care of the home and her children, thus acting in a submissive position towards her husband. Finally, it must be added that Rousseau considered women a path of perdition for men because they were a source of temptations and vices.

Rosseau's thought about women is reinforced in the book The forgotten Enlightenment and in The vindication of women from Olympe de Gouges to Flora Tristán where a direct source of the time is used: the Encyclopedia. In it, you can see the same thoughts of Rousseau and the support for them, in addition to adding the idea that the married man has the authority of his wife and children because he has greater physical strength and greater intelligence.. Therefore, the woman should only care about her physical appearance, that is, her beauty, showing her feelings and being a refined woman.

The Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens was published in 1791 with the aim of having it decreed by the National Constituent Assembly.

Olympe de Gouges drafted an adaptation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen changing in many cases the word man for woman, and in other articles highlighting the predominance of men over women.

I - The woman is born free and remains equal to the man in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on common utility.

II - The objective of all political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of Woman and Man; these rights are freedom, property, security and, above all, resistance to oppression.

III - The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation, which is nothing more than the union of Woman and Man: no body, no individual, can exercise authority that does not emanate from them.

IV - Freedom and justice consist in returning everything that belongs to others; Thus, the exercise of the natural rights of women is only limited by the perpetual tyranny that man opposes her; these limits must be corrected by the laws of nature and reason.

V - The laws of nature and reason prohibit all actions harmful to Society: everything that is not prohibited by these laws, prudent and divine, cannot be prevented and no one can be forced to do what they don't order.

VI - The law must be the expression of the general will; all Citizens must participate in their formation personally or through their representatives. It must be the same for everyone; all citizens, because they are equal in their eyes, must be equally admissible to all dignities, positions and public employment, according to their abilities and without any distinction other than their virtues and talents.

VII - No woman is exempt from being accused, arrested and imprisoned in the cases determined by the Law. Women obey this rigorous Law just like men.

VIII - The Law should only establish strict and obviously necessary penalties and no one can be punished other than by virtue of a Law established and promulgated prior to the crime and legally applied to women.

The Legionaries of Christ are a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right that belongs to the Regnum Christi Federation along with two other Federative Entities: Regnum Christi Consecrated Women and Regnum Christi Lay Consecrated Women. ^{[citation needed]} It was founded on January 3, 1941 in Mexico City by the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel. Its official name is Congregation of Legionaries of Christ.

History

The Legionaries of Christ congregation was founded in Mexico City on January 3, 1941 by the then seminarian Marcial Maciel Degollado, originally from Cotija de la Paz. The initial name of the congregation was 'Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and the Virgin of Sorrows'.

The first novitiate was created on March 25, 1946, also in Mexico City. A few months after that same year, 1946, part of the congregation moved to the north of Spain, to Comillas, to live near the University of Comillas and carry out part of their studies there. It would be in this country where the congregation would found a novitiate in 1958, specifically in Salamanca, the location of the UPSA headquarters.

The congregation received its canonical approval from the Holy See in May 1948. The canonical establishment took place on June 13, 1948 in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Its first priests were ordained in 1952.

XIV - Citizens have the right to verify, by themselves or through their representatives, the need for public contribution. The Citizens can only approve it if an equal distribution is admitted, not only in fortune but also in public administration, and if they determine the quota, the tax base, the collection and the duration of the tax.

XV - The mass of women, grouped with that of men for the contribution, has the right to ask all public agents to account for their administration.

XVI - Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, does not have a constitution; the constitution is void if the majority of the individuals that make up the Nation have not cooperated in its drafting. In this article, Olympe de Gouges justifies the need for women to participate in the elaboration of laws because she considers that the Constitution is useless if a large part of the Nation does not participate in its elaboration.

XVII - The properties belong to all the sexes reunited or separated; they are, for each one, an inviolable and sacred right; No one can be deprived of it as a true patrimony of nature unless public necessity, legally verified, clearly requires it and under the condition of fair and prior compensation.

In the final part of The Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens, specifically in the epilogue, Olympe de Gouges carries out a reflection and an appeal in which she asks that women wake up and defend your rights, since they were taken from you by men. He also says that the revolution has been in vain, since they continue with the same differentiations, and affirms that the only people who have benefited from said revolution have been men, since they were helped by women in said process, but when women The women needed their help, they did not give it to them, so it is necessary for women to assert themselves and fight for their own rights, since no one is going to do it for them.

Legacy

In life, Olympe de Gouges had to deal with the usual misogyny of the time, and was discredited by the misunderstanding of her ideas by many of her contemporaries. Her work fell into oblivion, while ignorance and misinterpretation of her writings contributed to making her the object of contempt and ridicule throughout the century XIX, where a large part of the French intelligentsia flatly rejected the idea that a woman had been a revolutionary ideologue. It was said of Olympe de Gouges that she barely knew how to read and write, she was suspected of authorship of her works and she doubted her intellectual capacity to the point of questioning her mental faculties.

It was not until the end of the Second World War, for Olympe de Gouges to emerge from the realm of caricature and pseudo-historical anecdote, and become one of the great humanist figures in France at the end of the century XVIII. He was the object of study in the United States, Germany and Japan. In France, after the publication in 1981 of his biography by Olivier Blanc, who investigated his life from original documents of the time, the events of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989 paid homage to the work of Olympe de Gouges. Since then, several of his plays have been performed and his writings have been republished.

In 1989, at the suggestion of the historian Catherine Marand-Fouquet, several petitions were addressed to the then President of the Republic Jacques Chirac to have the name of Olympe de Gouges appear in the Panthéon in Paris. The president, advised by historian Alain Decaux, dismissed the idea.

Several French municipalities have wanted to pay homage to Olympe de Gouges, giving her name to schools, institutes, squares and streets. In Montauban, her hometown, the municipal theater has been named after her since 2006. In the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a performance hall located on the site of the former La Roquette women's prison also bears her name.. On March 8, 2007, a room in the Hotel de Beauvau, headquarters of the French Ministry of the Interior, was dedicated to him.

On September 19, 2005, Olympia de Gouges or the Passion to Exist, a play by Margarita Borja and Diana Raznovich, premiered at the Empire Theater in Buenos Aires, by the University Institute for Feminist Research and Gender from the Jaume I University of Castellón.

In July 2017, the Government of the Principality of Andorra created the Olympe de Gouges Awards, which recognize the efforts of individuals and legal entities for gender equality in the workplace.

Historian Florence Gauthier, an expert on the French Revolution, questions the image of Olympe de Gouges after reading Joan Scott. She criticizes Gauthier, that Olympe is becoming a myth that confuses her historical figure and her context. According to Gauthier, Olympe actively defended Girondin positions, such as census suffrage and an "aristocracy of the rich" in opposition to democracy, he in fact opposed the extension of rights to slaves in the colonies, for whom he advocated a "softening"; of its conditions. Likewise, she defends that the democracy of the Jacobins did not exclude women, that they "voted in the village and urban assemblies in the Middle Ages"; and that "numerous women were heads of families and participated by right in the elections of the primary assemblies of the Third Estate".

Works

Theater

• Le mariage inattendu de ChérubinSeville and Paris, Cailleau, 1786.
• L’Homme généreuxParis, Knapen et fils, 1786.
• Le Philosophe corrected ou le cocu supposéParis, 1787.
• Zamore et Mirza, ou l’heureux naufrage1788.
• Molière chez Ninon, ou le siècle des grands hommes1788.
• Bienfaisance, ou la bonne mère suivi de La bienfaisance récompensée1788.
• Œuvres de Madame de Gouges, dedicated to the Duke of Orléans, 2 volumes, Paris, Cailleau, 1788 (recollecting his first published works).
• Œuvres de Madame de Gougesdedicated to the prince of Condé, 1 volume, Paris, Cailleau, 1788.
• Le Marché des Noirs, manuscript deposited and read at Comédie Française (1790).
• Le nouveau Tartuffe, ou l’école des jeunes gens, manuscript deposited and read at Comédie Française (1790)
• Les Démocrates et les aristocrates, ou les curieux du champ de Mars, (1790)
• La Nécessité du divorcemanuscript preserved in the French National Library, (1790)
• Le Couvent, ou les vœux forcés, Paris, veuve Duchesne, veuve Bailly, (1790)
• Mirabeau aux Champs Élysées, Paris, Garnery, (1791)
• L’Esclavage des Noirs, ou l’heureux naufrageParis, veuve Duchesne, veuve Bailly, 1792. Text online
• La France sauvée, ou le tyran détrôné, manuscript, (1792)
• L’Entrée de Dumouriez à Bruxelles, ou les vivandiers, (1793)

Political Writings

These are brochures, posters, articles...

• Lettre au Peuple ou projet d’une caisse patriotique, par une citoyenneSeptember 1788.
• Remarques patriotiques par la Citoyenne auteur de la Lettre au peupleParis, December 1788.
• Le bonheur primitif de l’homme, ou les rêveries patriotiqueAmsterdam and Paris, Royer, 1789.
• Dialogue allégorique entre la France et la Vérité', dédié aux États GénérauxApril 1789.
• Le cri du sage, par une femmeParis, May 1789.
• Avis pressant, ou Réponse à mes calomniateursParis, May 1789.
• Pour sauver la patrie, il faut respecter les trois ordres, c’est le seul moyen de conciliation qui nous resteParis, June 1789.
• Mes vœux sont remplis, ou Le don patriotique, par Madame de Gouges, dédié aux États générauxParis, June 1789.
• Discours de l’aveugle aux Français, par Madame de GougesParis, June 24, 1789.
• Lettre à Monseigneur le duc d’Orléans, premier prince du sangParis, July 1789.
• Séance royale. M Motion^gr le duc d’Orléans, ou Les songes patriotiques, dédié à M^gr le duc d’Orléans, par Madame de GougesJuly 11, 1789.
• L’ordre national, ou le comte d’Artois inspiré par Mentor, dédié aux États générauxParis, July-August 1789.
• Lettre aux représentants de la NationParis, L. Jorry, September 1789.
• Action héroïque d’une Française, ou la France sauvée par les femmes, par Mme de G...Paris, September 10, 1789.
• Le contre-poison, avis aux citoyens de VersaillesParis, October 1789.
• Lettre aux rédacteurs de la Chronique de ParisDecember 20, 1789.
• Réponse au Champion américain, ou Colon très aisé à connaîtreParis, January 18, 1790.
• Lettre aux littérateurs français, par Madame de GougesParis, February 1790.
• Les Comédiens démasqués, ou Madame de Gouges ruinée par la Comédie française pour se faire jouerParis, 1790.
• Départ de M. Necker et de Mme de Gouges, ou Les adieux de Mme de Gouges aux FrançaisParis, April 24, 1790.
• Projet sur la formation d’un tribunal populaire et suprême en matière criminelle, présenté par MPlantilla:Me de Gouges le 26 mai 1790 à l’Assemblée nationaleParis, Patriote français, 1790.
• Bouquet national dédié à Henri IV, pour sa fêteParis, July 1790.
• Œuvres de Madame de Gouges, Paris, 1790 (recollection of its political writings from 1788 to 1790).
• Le Tombeau de MirabeauApril 1791.
• Adresse au roi, adresse à la reine, adresse au prince de Condé, Observations à M. Duveyrier sur sa fameuse Ambassade, par Mme de GougesParis, May 1791.
• Sera-t-il roi ne le sera-t-il pas ?, par Madame de GougesParis, June 1791.
• Observations sur les étrangersJuly 1791.
• Repentiar de Madame de GougesParis, Monday, September 5, 1791.
• Les droits de la femme. À la reine, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenneSeptember 1791.
• le Prince philosopheParis, Briand, 1792 (Eastern account).
• Le Bon Sens du FrançaisFebruary 17, 1792.
• Lettre aux rédacteurs du Thermomètre du JourMarch 1, 1792.
• L’Esprit français ou problème à résoudre sur le labyrinthe de divers complots, par madame de GougesParis, veuve Duchesne, March 22, 1792.
• Le Bon Sens français, ou L’apologie des vrais nobles, dédié aux JacobinsParis, April 15, 1792.
• Grande éclipse du soleil jacobiniste et de la lune feuillantine, pour la fin d’avril ou dans le courant du mois de mai, par la LIBERTE, l’an IV de son nom, dédié à la TerreApril 1792.
• Lettre aux FrançaisApril 1792.
• Lettres à la reine, aux généraux de l’armée, aux amis de la constitution et aux Française citoyennes. Description of the fête du 3 juin, par Marie-Olympe de Gouges, Paris, société typographique aux Jacobins Saint-Honoré, June 1792.
• Œuvres de Madame de Gouges, 2 volumes, Paris, veuve Duchesne (texts and political theatre of 1791 and 1792).
• Pacte national par marie-Olympe de Gouges, adressé à l’Assemblée nationaleJuly 5, 1792.
• Lettre au Moniteur sur la mort de Gouvion, 15 July 1792.
• Aux FédérésJuly 22, 1792.
• Le Cri de l’innocenceSeptember 1792.
• La Fierté de l’innocence, ou le Silence du véritable patriotisme, par Marie-Olympe de GougesSeptember 1792.
• Les Fantômes de l’opinion publique. L’esprit qu’on veut avoir gâte celui qu’on avoirParis, October 1792.
• Réponse à la justification de Maximilien Robespierre, adressé à Jérôme Pétion, par Olympe de GougesNovember 1792.
• Pronostic sur Maximilien Robespierre, for an animal amphibie5 November 1792.
• Cour's correspondent. Compte moral rendu et dernier mot à mes chers amis, par Olympe de Gouges, à la Convention nationale et au peuple, sur une dénonciation faite contre son civisme aux Jacobins par le sieur BourdonParis, November 1792.
• Mon dernier mot à mes chers amisDecember 1792.
• Olympe de Gouges défenseur officieux de Louis Capet, of the Printer of Valade eldest son, rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris, December 16, 1792.
• Adresse au don Quichotte du Nord, par Marie-Olympe de Gouges, Paris, Imprimrie nationale, 1792.
• Arrêt de mort que présente Olympe de Gouges contre Louis CapetParis, January 18, 1793.
• Complots dévoilés des sociétaires du prétendu théâtre de la RépubliqueParis, January 1793.
• Olympe de Gouges à Dumouriez, général des armées de la République françaiseParis, January 22, 1793.
• Avis pressant à la Convention, par une vraie républicaineParis, March 20, 1793.
• Testament politique d’Olympe de Gouges4 June 1793.
• Œuvres de Madame de Gouges, 2 volumes, Paris, 1793 (political writings of 1792 and 1793).
• Les Trois Urnes, par un voyageur aérienJuly 19, 1793.
• Une patriote persécutée, à la Convention nationaleAugust 1793
• Olympe de Gouges au Tribunal révolutionnaire21 September 1793

Reissues of the works of Olympe de Gouges

• Olympe de Gouges, Écrits politiquespresented by Olivier Blanc, vol. I (1789-1791), vol. II (1792-1793), Paris, Côté Femmes Éditions, 2003.
• Olympe de Gouges, Théâtre Politique, prologated by Gisela Thiele-Knobloch, Paris, Côté Femmes Éditions, 2 vol., 1991: ISBN 2-907883-34-8, and 1993: ISBN 2-907883-59-3.
• Olympe de Gouges, Théâtre, presented by Félix-Marcel Castan, Montauban, éditions Cocagne.
• Olympe de Gouges, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenneHey. Mille et une nuits, Paris, ISBN 2-84205-746-5.
• Olympe de Gouges, Walk to the guillotine. Political texts. Contrascription, 2021.