page_title: Olympe de Gouges
section_title: Letters and pamphlets
hierarchical_section_title: Olympe de Gouges / Plays and writings / Letters and pamphlets
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Caricature de Robespierre qui, n'ayant plus personne à exécuter, guillotine le bourreauEnglish: An engraving of Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France. Text on pyramid: Cy Gyt Toute La France (Ci git toute la France)
context_page_description: Olympe de Gouges, born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose writings on women's rights and abolitionism reached a large audience in various countries.
  She began her career as a playwright in the early 1780s. As political tension rose in France, Olympe de Gouges became increasingly politically engaged. She became an outspoken advocate against the slave trade in the French colonies in 1788. At the same time, she began writing political pamphlets. Today she is perhaps best known as an early women's rights advocate who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her association with the Girondists.
context_section_description: In her early political letters Gouges made a point of being a woman, and that she spoke "as a woman". She addressed her public letters, published often as pamphlets, to statesmen such as Jacques Necker, the Duke of Orléans, or the queen Marie-Antoinette. Like other pamphlet writers in revolutionary France, she spoke from the margins and spoke of her experience as a citizen, with a desire to influence the ongoing public debate. In her letters she articulated the values of the Enlightenment, and commented on how they may be put into practice, such as civic virtue, universal rights, natural rights and political rights. In language and practice this was a debate among men and about men. Republicans discussed civic virtue in terms of patriotic manliness (la vertu mâle et répub-licaine). Women were not granted political rights in revolutionary France, thus Gouges used her pamphlets to enter the public debate and she argued that the debate needed to include the female civic voice.
  Gouges signed her pamphlets with citoyenne. It has been suggested that she adopted this notion from Rousseau's letter To the Republic of Geneva, where he speaks directly to two types of Genevans: the "dear fellow citizens" or his "brothers", and the aimables et virtueeses Citoyenne, that is the women citizens. In the public letter Remarques Patriotique from December 1788 Gouges justified why she is publishing her political thoughts, arguing that "This dream, strange though it may seem, will show the nation a truly civic heart, a spirit that is always concerned with the public good".
  As the politics of revolutionary France changed and progressed Gouges failed to become an actor on the political stage, but in her letters offered advice to the political establishment. Her proposition for a political order remained largely unchanged. She expresses faith in the Estates General and in reference to the estates of the realm, that the people of France (Third Estate) would be able to ensure harmony between the three estates, that is clergy, nobility and the people. Despite this she expresses loyalty for the ministers Jacques Necker and Charles Alexandre de Calonne. Gouges opposes absolutism, but believed France should retain a constitutional monarchy.
  In her open letter to Marie-Antoinette, Gouges declared:
  "I could never convince myself that a princess, raised in the midst of grandeur, had all the vices of baseness... Madame, may a nobler function characterize you, excite your ambition, and fix your attention. Only one whom chance had elevated to an eminent position can assume the task of lending weight to the progress of the Rights of Woman and of hastening its success. If you were less well informed, Madame, I might fear that your individual interests would outweigh those of your sex. You love glory; think, Madame, the greatest crimes immortalize one as much as the greatest virtues, but what a different fame in the annals of history! The one is ceaselessly taken as an example, and the other is eternally the execration of the human race."
  Public letters, or pamphlets, were the primary means for the working class and women writers to engage in the public debate of revolutionary France. The intention was not to court the favour of the addressee, often a public figure. Frequently these pamphlets were intended to stir up public anger. They were widely circulated within and outside France. Gouges' contemporary Madame Roland of the Gironde party became notorious for her Letter to Louis XVI in 1792. In the same year Gouges penned Letter to Citizen Robespierre, which Robespierre refused to answer. Gouges took to the street, and on behalf of the French people proclaimed "Let us plunge into the Seine! Thou hast need of a bath... thy death will claim things, and as for myself, the sacrifice of a pure life will disarm the heavens."
caption: Cartoon showing Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France.
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