Olympe de Gouges: A Woman too Revolutionary for Revolution

The characteristics that distinguish Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) from other French feminists of her time will be determined by looking at her background, her plays, and pamphlets, and her ideas and methods as compared to her contemporaries. It will evaluate the events and people in de Gouges’s life that shaped her thinking and personality. It will focus on her works such as, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (“Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”), that boldly speak out against the exclusion of women, from the ideas of the popular enlightenment thinkers of the time