De Gouges Declaration Of The Rights Of Women

Throughout most of history women had a very limited voice when it came to being published and especially when it came to the subject of woman's rights. Most women did not have the ability to become authors due to the lack of formal education given to the general populace and limited even further by the topics which women who could afford to be educated were taught. If women were published they wrote about specific topics that they knew well, but that usually had no political or social agenda. Men were publishing quite often and they had a much larger pool of topics that they wrote about. As the years went on and more women were educated, though still not a terribly large number of women, were able to be published and they began talking about
the social views on women through allegories. During the French Revolution with Louis XVI's creation of the Third Estate women were finally able to articulate their social complaints in a written manner and this opened the conversation of woman's rights. Olympe de Gouges wrote the article "The Declaration of the Rights of Women" and used her talents to argue why women were equal to men. In previous writings by women the language that they used was still sheepish and more submissive. These women did not really assert themselves in their writings but they built up the men that they were writing to and they used more passive language. In 1789 women who worked selling flowers wrote a cahier de doléances, this document consisted of complaints from these women about the inequality in how their business is treated. These women wrote to the men in power using phrases like "In 1735, thanks to the kindheartedness of King Louis XV, the matrisses bouquetières obtained verification of their communauté..." (Women of the Third Estate, pg 258). The tones of these articles usually gave men the credit for where women were in society at the time and did not make a firm stand for women. This is not the way that Olympe de Gouges articulated her argument in "The Declaration of the Rights of Women" though. de Gouges modeled her article first and foremost after an article written about men. The "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" was written in 1789 and de Gouges' article was published in1791. At the very beginning of her article de Gouges is clearly not using the women's cahier as a model for her article. "Man, are you capable of being just?" (de Gouges, pg 261) is de Gouges' opening line to her article. In this one question she is demanding that her male audience tell her if they are a just one. Her opening paragraph goes on to question how men can possibly be just if they if women are still not equal to them and they do not advocate for such equality, but continue to oppress women. This language immediately puts her on the same level as the men and calls them to action to not only give women an equal citizenship status but treat them better overall. de Gouges set up her "Declaration of the Rights of Women" as a formal document.
It has different sections to it such as "The Rights of women" and a preamble before she goes on to list seventeen articles. In these articles she kept up her legal and strong language and said the rights that women should have, which included rights of trials. In Article VI she says that women should be treated equally to men when they break the law and that women should not be sheltered from punishment for a crime that they committed. This was not a topic that had been addressed much, but de Gouges was adamant that when she advocated for equality for men and women she advocated for absolute equality between the two
sexes. When de Gouges wrote her articles she wrote many of them in the context of both men and women.
She did not specifically write that women needed these rights because they were women, but they needed these rights because men had these rights and because fundamentally if men had them women should have them as well. This gave her argument more body because she was making it on the fundamental basis that women and men are of the same species and in every other species in nature the male and female creatures are equal. "Everywhere you will find them; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious togetherness in this immortal masterpiece." (de Gouges, 261). By using this argument de Gouges is telling men that as long as women are not their equal in the rights of society then they were breaking the laws of nature and it must be remedied. To stretch this argument further one could even say that since God created everything men were going against God by not allowing women to be
equal. Through the professionalism that de Gouges used in her language and the way that she formats the document itself helps to give more credence to her argument and makes it more viable. The cahiers asked for rights if it would please the men to give them and it would not please most men of the time to give women equal rights. de Gouges demanded these rights by saying that men could not be just if they did not give them to women. By doing this de Gouges set an example for other women that they could and that they should demand their rights as well. This contradicted the fragile and sheepish image that most men had of women at the time but it could not fully surpass that image. Ultimately, de Gouges' "Declaration of the Rights of Women" was not ratified and most of the rights she advocated for such as equality, freedom, and divorce rights were not granted until much later. What this did help was to have woman's rights become a subject of conversation and it let women enter that conversation on a more intelligent level.