올랭프 드 구즈의 생애와 「여권 선언」

The Life of Olympe de Gouges and Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen

The French Revolution was a great moment of hope for women. Olympe de Gouges believed in the Revolution and also threw all her energy into it. She was the daughter of a butcher of Montauban, but she felt herself born for a much higher existence. In 1765 she married Aubry, from whom she had a son. After the death of her husband in 1766, she took the name of Olympe de Gouges and came to Paris, where she conducted a half-worldly life before launching into the litarary career. From the year of 1788, Gouges published many political writings of which the most important was Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen. In this text, she asserts that women are born free and equal to men in rights. Writing this Declaration, Gouges wants to indicate publicly not only that the man of the Declaration of the Rights is the male and not human beings, but also that in actual facts the political rights of Women is denied by men. The form of this Declaration traces that of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of August 26, 1789, but Gouges does not content to replace the word man by the word woman . The formulation of her several articles differs from that of the Declaration of 1789. In this polemical and militant text than the former, Gouges appeals to all women to wake up, to recover consciousness of their natural rights. The Argument of this text rests on the fundamental idea that women have by nature the same rights as men. As a daughter of Enlightenment, Gouges opposes to the physical strength and to vain pretensions of masculine superiority the power of the philosophy and the reason. The article contains the essence of text: “It is necessary, by relying Ⅳ upon laws of the nature and of the reason, to restore to women their natural rights.” Having defined the Nation as the reunion of the Woman and of the Man, she asserts in her article : “The Constitution is null, if the majority of ⅩⅥ individuals who compose the Nation has not co-operated to its drawing up.” In a word, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen is an original and complete work of art, with its dedication to the Queen, gives an exact impression of the colorful and sometimes uncontrollable manner.