Olympe de Gouges

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French playwright who, in 1791, wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. This was Olympe de Gouges (1748-93) and she was responding to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789, the start of the French Revolution which, by excluding women from these rights, had fallen far short of its apparent goals. Where the latter declared ‘men are born equal’, she asserted ‘women are born equal to men,’ adding, ‘since women are allowed to mount the scaffold, they should also be allowed to stand in parliament and defend their rights’. Two years later this playwright, novelist, activist and woman of letters did herself mount the scaffold, two weeks after Marie Antoinette, for the crime of being open to the idea of a constitutional monarchy and, for two hundred years, her reputation died with her, only to be revived with great vigour in the last 40 years.

With

Catriona Seth Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford

Katherine Astbury Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick

And

Sanja Perovic Reader in 18th century French studies at King’s College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:48.4	enjoy the programs. Hello in 1791 in the French Revolution
0:52.4	Lamped Guge wrote the Declaration Hello in 1791 in the French Revolution,
0:52.6	Lamped Guge wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman
0:56.2	and of the Female Citizen, a repost to the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
1:00.5	Where the latter stated, men are born equal, she asserted women are born equal to men, adding,
1:07.0	since women are allowed to mount the scaffold, they should also be allowed to stand in parliament
1:11.8	and defend their rights.
1:13.6	And two years later, this self-made playwright, novelist, activists and woman of letters did
1:18.0	herself mount the scuffle two weeks after Mary Antoinette for the crime of being open to the idea of a constitutional monarchy.
1:24.6	After 200 years her reputation died with her, only recently strongly revived.
	...

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