Olympe De Gouges Essay

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Olympe de Gouges: One of the First Feminist of the History

Marie Gouze (Olympe de Gouges) was born in Montauban, France on May 7 of 1793. Olympe was born into a family belonging to the petty bourgeoisie; her father was a butcher and her maternal grandfather owned a business of cloths. At the age of seventeen years, Olympe de Gouges was forced to marry an older man. Olympe’s only son named Pierre Aubrey was born from this union. After the death of her husband and completely disappointed with the meaning of marriage, Olympe decided to move to Paris and give a good education to her only child. Despite of her limited intellectual knowledge, Olympe became a writer, playwright, pamphleteer and political activist . Perhaps by the failure of her first and only marriage which she described as “the tomb of love”, Olympe de Gouges never again got married. Olympe dedicated her life to defend the rights of minorities by giving special attention to the precarious situation of the slaves and the lack of freedoms suffered by women in France. The social criticism, which was widely abounded in the texts written by Olympe de Gouges, not only put Olympe’s work in the public eye, it also boosted her fame throughout France. One of the main issues …show more content…

Inspired by the Declaration of” The Rights of Man and Citizen” in which the women had been excluded, Olympe drafted this document advocating for the civil liberties of women. Through the declaration of the rights of women, Olympe de Gouges demanded the right of women to education, the right to vote, and above all, the right to freedom of expression. Unfortunately, the declaration did not get a favorable acceptance. Despite being written in a historical moment in which social democracy was advocated and the fact that women contributed so much to the French revolutionary process, the declaration of the rights of women was

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