Please respond briefly to the three questions below. Post your responses as a new post (not as a comment on this post):
- Choose one of the seventeen items in De Gouges’ “Declaration of the Rights of Woman” that seems particularly interesting to you and explain its meaning. Look up any unfamiliar words or terms.
17. Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separated; it is for each of them an inviolable and sacred right, and no one may be deprived of it as a true patrimony of nature, except when public necessity, certified by law, obviously requires it, and then on condition of a just compensation in advance.
Here De Gouge is explaining that any property, whether it belongs to a man or a women, belongs to the person. No one should not be allowed to never own property. If a couple splits, then they should get equal parts.
- What do Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft seem to be saying about marriage? What do you make of their concerns?
They both seem to say that marriage is a sort of prison for women. They must do everything the man says, like a slave, in order to succeed and live a proper life. De Gouge wants women to push back against the oppression that they’ve faced and rise together, whereas Wollstonecraft in her writing seems to want to appeal more towards the man and convince THEM that it is time to give women equal rights,
- What is it like to read these two 18th century texts in the 21st century? Describe one issue that De Gouges and Wollstonecraft address that still seems relevant to us today.
It is crazy to read this and think that if I had been born only a few one hundred years earlier, I wouldn’t have the rights that I do now. These women make an important point and I applaud for writing about what they think is important, fighting for their rights, even though I am sure many people didn’t want them to, De Gouge was even hanged for fighting for what she believed in! An issue I think that both Wollstonecraft and De Gouge address that still seems relevant to us today is that of marriage compromise. I think that even nowadays, women feel like they have to stop pursuing their dreams to become a housewife and tend to children and their husband. Even though it is less prevalent now, I feel like there is not a lot of compromise on both man and wife. Men aren’t seen as the main child nurturer, during the pandemic a lot of women had to stop working to tend to their child’s online school. I wonder what would happen if men and women could alternate and take care of their children on equal days and ways.