Olympe de Gouges, a French playwright and…

September 1791 CE

Olympe de Gouges, a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reach large audiences, had begun her career as a playwright in the early 1780s, and as the political tensions of the French Revolution built, she became more involved in politics and law.

Personally, de Gouges was born to a petit bourgeois family—she believes she is an illegitimate daughter, and her supposed biological father’s rejections of such claims might have influenced her later passionate defense of the rights of illegitimate children.

In 1773, de Gouges had met a wealthy aristocrat with whom she had a relationship until the revolution began.

According to her biographer (Olivier Blanc), de Gouges lived with several men throughout her life during the revolution who supported her financially.

She strIVES to move among the aristocracy and to abandon her provincial accent.

Upon the outbreak of the Revolution, Olympe de Gouges Is filled with hope and joy for the great potential in the way of women’s rights.

She had been quickly disenchanted when the National Assembly (and later the Legislative Assembly) repeatedly denied women the extension of égalité.

As such, in 1791, she joins the Society of the Friends of Truth, an association with the goals of equal political and legal rights for women.

Also called the "Social Club", this club is seen as treasonous by the leaders of the Revolution, and although that is the case, they openly declare themselves republicans and sometimes even refer to themselves as utopian socialists.

Members sometimes gathered at the home of the well-known women's rights advocate, Sophie de Condorcet.

Here Gouges expresses, for the first time, her famous statement, "A woman has the right to mount the scaffold. She must possess equally the right to mount the speaker's platform." (The Declaration of the Rights of Women)

De Gouges is a political conservative with allegiances divided between the monarchy and the National Assembly.

In 1791, she demands that the King's brothers return to France to silence rumors of international conspiracy.

On September 5 of the same year, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, she writes the Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne ("Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen").

By publishing this document, de Gouges hopes to expose the failures of the French Revolution in the recognition of sexual equality.

This is followed by her Contrat Social ("Social Contract," named after a famous work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), proposing marriage based upon gender equality.