Olympe De Gouges Research Paper

Olympe De Gouges: Hero or Liability for the French Revolution? “Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights”. Prior to 1789, the year the French Revolution began, women including Olympe De Gouges, were thought to have had few purposes. One being to “please” their husbands and two they were responsible for the upbringing of their children. However, because of women like Olympe De Gouges this was about to change. During the last decades of the eighteenth century, two parts of French society, women and the Third Estate (France’s middle-class and poor) fought to gain all of these rights: political, economic, and social all of which had been largely withheld from them. To Olympe De Gouges the French Revolution had a very different meaning than most, equal rights for ALL women and she wasn’t going to give up until she achieved that goal, which she was executed still trying to fight for her rights as a woman. Olympe De Gouges was the daughter of a butcher and the wife of a restaurant owner, and a proud member of the middle
The Declaration of Men blamed women for the “sole causes of public misfortunes and government corruption”. Olympe was an enlightenment thinker and was familiar with what they had thought. She used this to her advantage to try and gain the Enlightenment thinkers to believe in what she had written about. Not all women agreed with what she had stated in her Declaration for Woman because not all women were educated and not all women had the drive and the courage to speak up like Olympe had done. The enlightenment thinkers used “reason” to get their way so Olympe thought she would have all the Enlightenment thinkers on her side. In reality not many were on her side, Robespierre thought the same way she did, not about how all women should own property but that they deserved education. Yet he still voted in favor for her