Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges, political activist, writer, and provocateur challenged social issues that continue to shape our political landscape today. Through her plays and manifestos, she merged her own skills as writer and her experience as a woman and divorcé with Enlightenment ideals such as civic virtue, universal rights, natural rights and political rights. Unfortunately, many of these debates were for men and about men, and De Gouges’ audience did not listen to her in her time.
“Men everywhere are equal… Kings who are just do not want slaves; they know that they have submissive subjects.” -Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen
- 1788: De Gouge’s pamphlet Reflections on blacks and the play l’Esclavage des Noirs on the slave trade made her, alongside Marquis de Condorcet, one of France’s earliest public opponents of slavery. -Annie Smart (2011).
- 1789: Olympe de Gouges publishes Patriotic remarks outlining her proposals for social security, institutions for homeless children, and the introduction of a jury system.
- 1791: Gouges wrote her famous Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen shortly after the French Constitution of 1791. The constitution defined citizens “as men over 25, were “independent” and had paid the poll tax. De Gouges argued that not only that women have the same rights as men but also that children born outside of marriage should be treated as fairly as “legitimate” children.
- De Gouges opposed absolutism (absolute monarchical control), and instead she hoped that the people of France in the Third Estate could create a workable dynamic among all parties.
- De Gouge’s criticism of the men in the National Convention was a contributed more to the vote to execute her than her support of women’s rights.
- Further Reading: Here is a link to a more detailed account of her trial, here is a detailed timeline of her life, and here is an outline of her texts.
Marie Antoinette
- Marie Antoinette was born as the archduchess of Austria. Under the tutelage of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Antoinette became an exemplary singer and learned to play the harp and flute. At the age of fourteen she married Louis XVI, which was a political decision made in the hopes of strengthening the relationship between France and Austria after the Seven Years War.
- Antoinette was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette often stayed in Petit Trianon, Versailles’ “nature retreat,” with her children and the king only occasionally visited.
- Rumors of an affair with a Swedish diplomat, accusations of sexual relations with her son, and her involvement with the Diamond Necklace Affair, alongside growing rage from the Third Estate led to intense resentment of the queen.
- By 1783, “a growing public hatred of Marie Antoinette is reflected and fed by an unstoppable supply of pamphlets”, which portray the Queen as “immoral, ignorant, extravagant, and adulterous.”
- Marie Antoinette went through six pregnancies of which only one child survived past infancy.
- On October 14th 1793, Marie Antoinette is put on trial for treason to her role in the Diamond Necklace Affair and sexually abusing her son, the dauphin. Before nine male judges, Marie Antoinette is found guilty on all counts by an all-male jury condemns her to death.
- Further Reading: Here is an article that explores the celebrity of Marie Antoinette, here is an in-depth timeline of her life.
Charlotte Corday
- Charlotte Corday was born in in 1768 in Normandy into a family of minor nobility.
- In 1782, Corday’s older sister and mother died and she moved to a convent in Caen where she received a strong education and read the work of Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Plutarch. Their writings questioned the traditional authority of an absolute monarch and rejected class divisions. Corday begins to develop political sensibilities.
- In 1791, Corday moved in with her cousin, Madame Le Coustellier de Bretteville-Gouville. Corday was set to inherit her cousin’s estate.
- By 1793, King Louis XVI is executed, over 1,000 prisoners are killed within twenty hours in the September Massacres. The two anti-monarchy political factions, Girondins and the Montagnards, which initially existed within the Jacobin party, have splintered and the Montagnards have become increasingly radical. The Girondin movement fell in an insurrection in May propelled by Jean Paul-Marat. Corday, a Girondin sympathizer.
- Corday initially goes to the National Assembly, hoping to kill Marat in a public place. After learning that he is home due to an illness, Corday travels to Marat’s home. After two attempts, Corday secures an appointment with Marat after writing him that she has the names of Girdondists that Marat is hoping on killing. Corday finds Marat in his bathtub where he does his daily work from tub due to his worsening skin condition. Corday stabs Marat with a six inch kitchen knife. She does not attempt to flee and is captured almost immediately.
- Four days later, Corday is executed by guillotine. At her trial, she said that she “killed one man to save a hundred thousand.”A memorable woman stands upon the scaffold, not this time in white, but in the red smock of a murderess. It is Charlotte Corday, born d’Armans; and she has killed Marat. If ever murder were justifiable, it was this assassination. The sternest moralist cannot refrain from admiring this highsouled, undaunted girl; for the murder that she committed is elevated far above an ordinary crime.
Further Reading: Here is a link to a video on that goes into the murder of Marat and here is a link to Corday’s biography.
“A memorable woman stands upon the scaffold, not this time in white, but in the red smock of a murderess. It is Charlotte Corday, born d’Armans; and she has killed Marat. If ever murder were justifiable, it was this assassination. The sternest moralist cannot refrain from admiring this highsouled, undaunted girl; for the murder that she committed is elevated far above an ordinary crime.” -The New York Times, May 26, 1895
Marianne Angelle
- Marianne is a composite character based on Black women revolutionaries in the island nation of Saint Domingue now known as Haiti. While there are documents that prove that women were actively fought and engaged in espionage, specific names are rarely mentioned, with the exception of the wives of rebel officers, such as Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniere.
- Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniere is one of the few Haitian women who fought in the army. Dressed in a male uniform, she fought alongside her husband, and was known her skill with both rifle and sword. She was also admired for her swift decisiveness in battle and care for her fellow soldiers.
“In addition to actively fighting, women often initiated war. Mambos (Vodum priestesses) were known to cause revolts against or poison planters. In moral tradition, a mambo, sacrificed a pig in the Vodum ceremony that led to the 1791 uprising (Girard, 2009). Women warriors are also seen in Haitian tradition. The Vodun Iwa Marinet bwa-cheche is believed to be the Haitian Marianne who fought with Dessalines’ army and lit its cannons. In addition, the Vodun Iwa of maternal love, Erzulie, believed to be based on a black slave who allegedly fought in the Haitian revolution.” -Philippe Girard, “Rebelles with a Cause: Women in the Haitian War of Independence, 1802-04” (Linked below).
“History is a kind of listening for traces of other lives beneath the frequency of the present. That past, the grounding of the now, is sometimes hard to hear. Often the volume is turned too low, and those who are living are too loud.” -Dr. Mimi Sheller, professor of sociology at Drexel University.
The Revolutionists Dramaturgy 