AOL Web Search

Olympe de Gouges, French social reformer and writer who challenged conventional views on a number of matters, especially the role of women as citizens. During the French Revolution, she sided with the Girondins and defended Louis XVI. After the Girondins lost power, she was executed.

Olympe de Gouges (1748—1793) “Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum” wrote Olympe de Gouges in 1791 in the best known of her writings The Rights of Woman (often referenced as The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen ), two years before she would be the third ...

Olympe de Gouges, originally Marie Gouze was born on May 7, 1748 in Montauban (Occitanie region of southwestern France) and died on November 3, 1793 in Paris. She was a social reformer and playwright who advocated for all those she saw as under represented including orphaned children, and women (especially unwed women).

Portrait of de Gouges, Alexander Kucharsky. (Wikimedia Commons) Olympe de Gouges was born Marie Gouze in Monauban, a small town north of Toulouse in 1748. Her father, Pierre Gouze, was a butcher and her mother, Anne-Olympe Mouisset, came from a family of drapers. It is possible that de Gouges was the illegitimate daughter of Jean-Jacques ...

Olympe de Gouges. The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen was published on 15 September 1791. It is modeled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. Olympe de Gouges dedicated the text to Marie Antoinette, whom de Gouges described as "the most detested" of women. The Declaration states that ...

Biography of Olympe de Gouges, French Women's Rights Activist. Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze; May 7, 1748–November 3, 1793) was a French writer and activist who promoted women's rights and the abolition of slavery. Her most famous work was the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen," the publication of which resulted ...

Olympe de Gouges, also called Marie-Olympe de Gouges, original name Marie Gouze, married name Marie Aubry, (born May 7, 1748, Montauban, France—died November 3, 1793, Paris), French social reformer and writer who challenged conventional views on a number of matters, especially the role of women as citizens.

Home - Research Guides at Library of Congress