Olympe de Gouges lost her head to the guillotine on 3rd
November 1793. Her mistake had been to question whether the French Revolution
was going in the right direction.
She was a remarkable woman who was definitely ahead of her
time. Born in 1748, she was a playwright who ran her own theatre company and campaigned
against slavery. She was also an early feminist, who wrote a pamphlet entitled:
“Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen”. Her earnest belief
was that women were born equal to men and deserved to have the same rights.
Her humanitarianism was what led to her downfall. She became
horrified by what had happened to the Revolution that had begun in 1789 with
promises of freedom for all and the end of tyrannical rule. One form of
tyranny, namely that of France’s absolute monarchy, had been replaced by
another, in which Robespierre and the Jacobins had created a new dictatorship
that could not countenance any opposition.
She published a poster that called for a national referendum
to allow the people of France to decide which way they wanted to go – towards a
republic, a federal regime or a restored monarchy. This sealed her fate.
Her feminism was perhaps the final straw. One Jacobin
commented that her death would be a lesson “for every woman who abandoned the
cares of her home to meddle in the affairs of the Republic”.
© John Welford
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