The Rights of Woman by Olympe De Gouges was published after the French Revolution and the creation of the French Constitution, in 1971. She published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman to assert the unsettling fact that although the goal of the French constitution was to promote equal suffrage, it had failed to even address or acknowledge women’s suffrage. During that time period, women were viewed as socially different or inferior to men in the public sphere and were not able to participate in politics or public affairs. Thus, Olympe De Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman in an attempt to correct and identify what she thought was missing in the French constitution.
Olympe De Gouges, the author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, is the daughter of a butcher and a serving woman. She was very outspoken about the injustices of slavery, orphans, unwed mothers and gender roles. Olympe De Gouges depicted her stance on inequality through her writings and became one of the most radical voices for women’s right in the 1700’s. However, her writings became too radical and she was a victim of the spoils of The Reign of Terror, where she was accused of being counterrevolutionary and beheaded.
The main points of the the Rights of Woman is that: 1) women are not acknowledged in the French constitution and are wrongfully robbed of their natural rights, 2) women should be treated as equals to men, and 3) new laws are needed to address women’s rights and to help protect themselves from the men’s one-sided rule. Olympe De Gouges’ mockery, imitation or revision of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, provides a strong format for announcing exactly what is wrong and missing from the constitution. By using the same format and adding or replacing specific words help to make her points even clearer – for instance, she adds “woman and man” in most articles and as clearly seen in article seven, she emphasizes the importance of gender equality with the line, “Women obey, just as men, this rigorous law” (25). An interesting point I found in the writing is in the middle of the postambule, where she captures our attention with “Women have done more harm than good” and then [I understand it as] she continues to explain how women are forced into this position because men see no use for women other than their charms and unfortunately, women are resorted to using their bodies as pawns for the advancement of men’s politics. (I was a bit confused when I reached this section so maybe we could talk about it in class and clarify?) A suggestion for improvement on this piece is that she made a lot of valid points in her postambule regarding the rights of married or divorced women, however, it took the focus away from the main goal of attaining women’s rights so she could have wrote less about that. Overall, Olympe De Gouges was successful in delivering her message regarding the absence of women’s suffrage, however, she failed in providing a plan of action or the answer to the question, “okay, now that we know – what are the next steps? How do we make this possible?” Her last sentence of the postambule was quite vague and non-convincing, “If an attempt to give an honorable and just place to my sex is, at this moment, considered as a paradox on my part and as attempting the impossible, I leave to future men the glory of treating this subject; but in the meanwhile, it can be prepared through national education by restoring customs and conjugal conventions” (28).
Looking back from 2015, progress has definitely been made. Though men and women are not naturally and inherently seen as equals, there will always be residing features that differ between us and it’s only natural that we retain these differences. Essentially, most and if not all of Olympe De Gouges’ articles in the Rights of Woman have been met in today’s society (looking specifically at present day in the United States).