Olympe de Gouges au Tribunal Revolutionnaire

by Olympe de Gouges

Olympe de Gouges at the revolutionary Tribunal.

This text was written in prison [September 1793] and smuggled out by a visitor to be printed as a poster. Extraordinarily bold and courageous, given that Madame de Gouges was already incarcerated when she produced it, fellow prisoners felt that the poster attacking those in power would lead its writer straight to the guillotine.

5 pages, Unknown Binding

First published September 1, 1793

About the author

Olympe de Gouges, born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience. She became an outspoken advocate for ameliorating the condition of slaves in the colonies and she began writing political pamphlets. Today she is perhaps best known as an early feminist 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 (1791), 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 Maximilien Robespierre and for her close relation with the Girondists.