Olympe De Gouges Research Articles

Reinstating Olympe de Gouges? A Graphic Odyssey

Since the mid-2010s, interest in Olympe de Gouges as a pioneer of feminism has consistently grown in the wake of fourth-wave feminism and international social movements such as #MeToo. After almost two centuries of oversight or representations of de Gouges as illiterate and a victim of her time, a number of historians and authors have been working to reinstate her legacy as a writer and actor of the French Revolution. In conjunction with this newfound interest in feminist figures like Olympe de Gouges, the literary field experienced a metamorphosis with the growing popularity of graphic novels, from both popular/mainstream and scholarly perspectives. This article proposes to analyze how the depiction of Olympe de Gouges in the eponymous graphic novel by Catel and José-Louis Bocquet in 2012 contributed to the mainstream recognition of de Gouges as well as subsequent feminist figures, and enabled the development of graphic biographies as a literary sub-genre.

Feminism in 18 Century

The 18th century marked a pivotal era for the early stirrings of feminism, laying the groundwork for future movements seeking gender equality. During this period, societal roles were rigidly defined, with women predominantly relegated to domestic spheres. However, the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and individual rights, began to challenge these traditional norms. This intellectual movement inspired a reevaluation of women's roles and their capabilities. ioneering voices emerged, advocating for women's education and rights. One of the most influential figures was Mary Wollstonecraft, whose seminal work, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), argued for women's rationality and the importance of education. Wollstonecraft's treatise challenged the prevailing notion that women were inherently inferior to men, advocating instead for equal opportunities in education as a means to achieve true equality.Other women, such as Catherine Macaulay and Olympe de Gouges, contributed to the discourse, with de Gouges penning the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen" in 1791, a bold statement calling for women's rights during the French Revolution. These early feminists laid the intellectual and philosophical foundation for future generations to build upon.Despite their efforts, the impact of 18th-century feminism was limited by cultural and institutional barriers. The movement did not result in immediate societal change; however, it ignited a conversation about gender equality that would gain momentum in the centuries to follow. The ideas and writings from this era inspired later activists in the 19th and 20th centuries, who continued to fight for women's suffrage, legal rights, and social reforms.

Methods to Rewrite a Book as Female Translators

Human right has a history of more than 200 years in human society, but for a long period of time, it didnt includes feminism. In 1971, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen announced by Olympe de Gouges making the opening came out. After feminism became mature, people began to turn to take feminism into translation in 1980s, because in the past there was a trend to subconsciously regard all the authors as men. At that time, girls have no right to speak for themselves. What is more, when male translators translate the source texts, they will use some words to suggest the low position of female in society. And Jane Eyre would be took as an example to show this phenomenon. This paper will concentrate on how to rewrite a book as female translators. In this certain theme, several theories also need to be learned about to break the conventional opinions. In this paper, readers can find that in the beginning stage of feminist translation theory, there are not only benefits but also drawbacks. For instance, women could say for feminism by writing articles, but some people are radical to achieve their aims.

Olympe de Gouges: ‘Si cette femme n’avoit pas de fusées dans la tête’

Abstract This article shows how some androcentric representations affected Olympe de Gouges to the point that she was neither seen as the embodiment of the French Revolution, nor as one who ever embraced the revolutionary project. Through the work of Franco-Greek philosopher Cornélius Castoriadis on the imaginary institution of society, it will explore Gouges’s dissidence regarding the democratic project of the Revolution. Between her explicit demand for women’s autonomy and the desire to participate actively in the political institutions, the article shows how the Gouges’s radical imagination made her create her own version of what a revolutionary woman is, thereby allowing her to create both a political and social fantasy deeply rooted in imagination and counter-revolution. Her radical imagination reveals how she never embodied the revolutionary praxis since she refused to accept the implicit and instituted power of society, at an important time in French history.

Looking In and Shouting Out: Gendered Perspectives on the Convent in Gouges, Diderot, and Théron

This article argues that the gendered differences present in eighteenth-century French convent literature are put forth by two interconnected factors: (1) the ways in which the author understands and critiques the structure and function of monastic confinement and (2) the mechanism that drives the text forward, namely voice, gaze, or embodiment. Close readings of Olympe de Gouges’s Le Couvent ou les voeux forcés and Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse serve to demonstrate that the authors’ critiques of the convent space are not only present in their plots, but also replicated in the very form of their writing. These Enlightenment texts are juxtaposed with a 2012 theatrical adaptation of Diderot’s La Religieuse staged by French playwright Anne Théron, allowing for an investigation of how the mechanism propelling the work develops or persists when the authorial voice is altered across time and gender.

Freiheit, Gleichheit, Gerechtigkeit – Antikolonialismus und Frauenrechte bei Olympe de Gouges

Abstract This article offers an insight into life and work of the French author and politician Olympe de Gouges as well as an analysis of her positions on the French Revolution and on other contemporary issues such as anti-colonialism, class differences and women’s rights. The article argues that the author used literature as a space to develop a political stance that, due to the legal situation, she could not carry out professionally. In her play “L’Esclavage des Noirs, ou l’Heureux naufrage” (1792) and in the essay “Réflexions sur les hommes nègres” (1788), de Gouges openly criticizes the brutality of white plantation owners, invokes the equality of all people, and condemns human trafficking. In “La Nécessité du Divorce” (1790), the author demands the right to divorce, a fair division of property, protection of one’s own property also for women, and a financially secure future for the children born out of wedlock. In her famous “Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne” (1791), the author called for truly universal suffrage, as well as for the right to liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

Cocks on Dunghills – Wollstonecraft and Gouges on the Women’s Revolution

Abstract While many historians and philosophers have sought to understand the ‘failure’ of the French Revolution to thrive and to avoid senseless violence, very few have referred to the works of two women philosophers who diagnosed the problems as they were happening. This essay looks at how Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges theorised the new tyranny that grew out of the French Revolution, that of ‘petty tyrants’ who found themselves like ‘cocks on a dunghill’ able to wield a new power over those less fortunate than themselves. Both offer diagnoses and prognoses that revolve around education. Wollstonecraft argues that a revolution that is not backed by a previous education of the people is bound to result in chaos and violence. Such education, however, must be slow, and it necessitates the reform of the institutions that most shape the public’s character. A revolution, perforce, is fast, and it often takes several years, or even generations before the spirit of the reforms finds itself implemented into new institutions. Olympe de Gouges shares Wollstonecraft’s worry and she observes that the men who were once dominated quickly become tyrants themselves unless their moral character is already virtuous. But the state of being dominated leaves little room for virtue; hence, newly minted citizens need to be educated in order not to replicate the reign of tyranny onto other. Gouges suggests that the answer to the difficulty she and Wollstonecraft highlighted was to educate the people where they could be found: on the streets, or, where they could easily and willingly be gathered: in theatres. By helping organise revolutionary festivals, highlighting the ways in which citizens could be virtuous, and writing plays to awaken their virtue, and proposing a reform of the theatre, so that the production of such plays would be possible, Gouges offered a plan for the civic education of French citizens in the immediate aftermaths of the Revolution. Unfortunately, the chaos she and Wollstonecraft had sought to remedy, led by the cocks or petty tyrants, ensured that they were unable to see through their plans, with Wollstonecraft having to leave Paris and Gouges being sent to the guillotine.

At the origins of feminism: Ideas of Olympe de Gouges in the context of radical egalitarian doctrines of the French Revolution (1789–1794)

The article aims to present and analyze political and legal thought of Olympe de Gouges, a French revolutionary activist, who is considered one of the most important precursors of modern feminism. Her writings should be situated in the context of radical egalitarian doctrines, influential during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The paper also shows an impact of this pre-feminist thought on the private and public law of the Revolution. Las part is devoted to a comparison of de Gouges’ ideas with some contemporary feminist discourses.

Talking Heads? Guillotined Women in the Revolutionary Afterlife

Abstract During the early months of the Terror, five notable women were guillotined within months of one another. Charlotte Corday, Marie-Antoinette, Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Jeanne Roland, and Jeanne Du Barry are also among the handful of female voices featured in two turn-of-the-century collections of dialogues des morts (one anonymous; one by François Pagès); a genre which came to serve a commemorative and political function in the period, providing its authors with a means to articulate their vision of French history and national identity in the turbulent revolutionary years. This article examines the presence of women in these collections, considering what is at stake in giving them (imagined) voice and adopting (and adapting) their names and histories. It argues that these texts play on the trope of the silent or speaking woman to explore the notion of existence in posterity, and that it is through lost bodies, rather than attributed words, that these women ultimately come to signify most of all.

Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Cynthia Enloe about Gender and Global Politics

Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Cynthia Enloe about Gender and Global Politics

Den prøvede familie

The troubled family, this article claims, is a recurring topos in the fictions of the Haitian Revolution. Most often, this topos is distinctively sentimental, designed to affect readers emotionally, and authors use the family in trouble as an emotionally charged political microcosm capable of negotiating the limits and rules of social inclusion and exclusion. In this article, Olympe de Gouges’ play L’esclavage des noirs (1792), published just months after news of the Haitian revolution reached France, is read alongside Émeric Bergeud’s Stella (1859), often heralded as the first Haitian novel. While Gouges’ play exemplifies the sentimentalism that characterized much French abolitionist thought (Festa, Dobie), the analysis also emphasizes the inegalitarian subject-object relation between the empathetic Frenchmen and the enslaved colonial workers. Writing from the Caribbean, Bergeaud deselects the standard tropes and stylistic elements favored by Gouges and other sentimental European abolitionists. In his attempt to write a foundational national novel, however, he too invokes the topos of the troubled family.

Derechos políticos de las mujeres en una sociedad democrática

El presente trabajo aborda a través de la línea del tiempo de los derechos políticos de las mujeres en una sociedad democrática, para la realización del estudio, se hace un análisis de la lucha de las mujeres por sus derechos humanos a través de la historia, dando inicio con los postulados de Olympe de Gouges como punto de partida del feminismo en el mundo y la lucha por los derechos humanos de las mujeres.

La Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne d’Olympe de Gouges (1791): Une femme entre semi-fiction et dogme politique

This article deconstructs the legal semi-fiction written by Olympe de Gouges: The Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791). Using the French discourse analysis software TROPES, it examines the uni...

Revolution and Republicanism: Women Political Philosophers of Late Eighteenth-Century France and Why They Matter

ABSTRACT In this article, I present the arguments of three republican women philosophers of eighteenth-century France, focusing especially on two themes: equality (of class, gender, and race) and the family. I argue that these philosophers, Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, and Sophie de Grouchy, who are interesting and original in their own right, belong to the neo-republican tradition and that re-discovering their texts is an opportunity to reflect on women’s perspectives on the ideas that shaped our current political thought.

Equality and Difference in Olympe de Gouges’ Les droits de la femme. A La Reine

ABSTRACT This article examines Olympe de Gouges’ demands for the rights of woman in her famous but still understudied work Les droits de la femme. A La Reine [1791]. Particular emphasis is put on analysing how she combines her demand for equality with her conception of sexual difference. The article consists of three parts. The first part gives a brief overview of the demands for the equality of the sexes as they were presented in seventeenth-century France and critically reacted upon in eighteenth-century France, not least by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his defence of sexual difference. The second and third parts focus on Gouges’ argumentation. First, by analysing how she argues for women’s active citizenship by criticising the exclusion of women from the public sphere, but without questioning sexual difference as such; and second, by discussing how she redefines the famous slogan of the French Revolution; liberty, equality, fraternity. The conclusion argues that rather than being caught in a paradox of equality and difference, as has been claimed by Joan W. Scott, Gouges did successfully combine the two concepts, even if her interpretation of their relation was excluded from the canon of political theory.

Republicanism and Religious Optimism in Mary Wollstonecraft and Germaine de Staël

ABSTRACT In Sandrine Bergès’s article ‘Revolution and Republicanism: Women Political Philosophers of Late Eighteenth-Century France and Why They Matter’ [2021], neo-Athenian and neo-Roman principles of republicanism are fused in order to show the idiosyncratic political position of Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, and Sophie de Grouchy. As Bergès acknowledges, this amalgamation renders possible republican readings of women’s writings which so far have not been regarded as republican. Through my reading of Germaine de Staël and Mary Wollstonecraft, my aim will be to show how Staël and Wollstonecraft embody the principles that Bergès highlights, but also venture into other areas tied to republican thinking that Bergès leaves untouched: religion and progress. Wollstonecraft and Staël both tie Christianity closely to their republicanism, maintaining that a future republican state will come through divine intervention. In this way, I hope to add complexity to Bergès’s project by expanding our knowledge of female republicans.

Théroigne de Méricourt y Olympe de Gouges. Lo que de ellas dicen sus retratos

Dos mujeres: Théroigne de Méricourt y Olympe de Gouges, se constituyen como figuras de referencia durante la Revolución francesa. Contrariamente a lo que se piensa, estas mujeres (y otras revolucionarias) fueron objeto de diversos estudios durante los siglos XIX y XX, aunque muchas veces partiendo de interpretaciones sesgadas y obstaculizadas por prejuicios de género. Los grabados y retratos que se les dedicaron –y conservamos– nos ayudan a situarlas en el contexto del que formaron parte. A la vez, son susceptibles de diversas interpretaciones y análisis, tanto desde un punto de vista técnico y estilístico como iconográfico. Buena parte de estas representaciones no resultan muy distantes de las que se llevaban a cabo con otros modelos más convencionales; otras abren nuevas perspectivas. Todas, junto con los poemas, escritos y apostillas que les dedicaron, nos sirven para adentrarnos en su historia.

Olympe de Gouges versus Rousseau: Happiness, Primitive Societies, and the Theater

AbstractInLe Bonheur Primitif(1789), Olympe de Gouges takes on Rousseau's account of the evolution of human society in his first twoDiscourses, and she argues that primitive human beings were not only happy, but also capable of virtue. I argue that in that text, Gouges offers a contribution to the eighteenth-century debate on human progress that is distinct from Rousseau's in that it takes seriously the contribution of women and families to human happiness and progress. I show how the concept of emulation plays an important role in Gouges's analysis, both in her account of primitive societies and of the theater, and argue that she uses it to bridge the gap between primitive happiness and future progress.

Henry the Liberal, Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 by Theodore Evergates

et “esclavage” (258) comprend six parties qui occupent plus d’une trentaine de pages. Seules six femmes—“Charlotte Corday” (201), Olympe de Gouges (383), “Jeanne d’Arc” (461), “Rosa Luxembourg” (610), “Louise Michel” (643) et “Simone Weil” (904)—échappent aux oubliettes où sont tombées leurs consœurs. Il est étonnant que, contrairement aux entreprises de ce genre où les articles sont généralement signés, ici il est quasiment impossible de savoir à qui on les doit. Ce n’est qu’à la fin du volume qu’apparaissent sous les noms des quarante collaborateurs les sujets qu’ils ont rédigés. Vu l’envergure du projet et l’ampleur de la tâche, on ne peut que féliciter Bischoff et Bourguinat qui ont rédigé à eux seuls plus de la moitié des textes et qui ont mené à bon port un ouvrage de qualité. Auburn University (AL) Samia I. Spencer Evergates,Theodore.Henry the Liberal,Count of Champagne,1127–1181.Philadelphia: UP of Pennsylvania, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8122-4790-9. Pp. 307. $75. Evergates’s book will appeal primarily to historians. He presents a chronicle of the life and career of Henry of Blois, who from 1152 to 1181 consolidated territories he had inherited in different parts of northern France into the compact realm of Champagne. He made Troyes his capital and built there a palace and adjoining chapel that were a wonder of Gothic architecture until their destruction during the French Revolution. He also had made in his own honor a bronze tomb with his effigy upon it that was so famous it inspired passages in Chrétien de Troyes’s romances. Henry himself occupied a central position in the political life of his era. He was connected to everyone at the summit of contemporary society. King Stephen of England was his father’s brother. His wife Marie was the daughter of King Louis VII of France by his first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. His sister Adèle was the third wife of Louis and mother of the future Philippe II. Besides these relations, Henry was closely associated with other celebrities of the time. In part because of his participation in the Second Crusade in the early 1150s, he got to know its sponsor, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Later he had the opportunity to know Pope Alexander III, who was living in France because his election had been contested by anti-popes in Rome. Another famous exile in Henry’s circle was Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had quarreled with King Henry II in England over the church’s prerogatives. Beckett’s passion for collecting manuscripts of classic works helped inspire a similar interest in Count Henry, who accumulated a library almost as legendary as his chapel. Henry’s court is also associated with the literary career of Chrétien de Troyes, but Evergates finds little evidence of Henry acting as the poet’s patron. The main source of a link between Chrétien and the court at Troyes is the poet’s mention of Countess Marie having proposed the matière and sens of his romance Lancelot, he himself providing the 276 FRENCH REVIEW 90.3 Reviews 277 conjointure. Count Henry was praised throughout his life, and after his death for his generosity and largesse. He displayed these qualities repeatedly in his dealings with the knights who served him, but especially in regard to religious organizations like monasteries and canonical chapters. It is curious to note how institutions devoted to prayer and piety were so eager to protect their material interests. Henry could afford to earn his title of liberal because of the financial success he enjoyed through the commercial fairs that took place annually in Troyes, Provins, and other towns of his realm. He increased the number and frequency of these events. Given Champagne’s geographical position at the crossroads of the north-south and east-west trading routes, these fairs were the occasion of a highly significant coming together of international social and political as well as economic forces. By his promotion of these gatherings, Henry was a major contributor to the development of modern capitalism. University of Denver James P. Gilroy...

Reading Olympe de Gouges by Carol Sherman

Reading Olympe de Gouges by Carol Sherman