Olympe de Gouges
7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793
Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) was a French playwright, pamphleteer, and political activist best known for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791). An early advocate for women's rights and an opponent of slavery, she was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for her attacks on the Revolutionary government.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Olympe de Gouges.
- Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) Overlapped 45 years →
- Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) Overlapped 45 years →
- Daniel Boone (1734–1820) Overlapped 45 years →
- Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Overlapped 45 years →
- Francisco Goya (1746–1828) Overlapped 45 years →
- Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) Overlapped 45 years →
Life events
She was born into a petit-bourgeois family in Montauban in southwestern France.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAt sixteen she was married against her will to Louis Aubry, a caterer; he died shortly afterwards, leaving her a young widow with a son.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter being widowed she relocated to Paris, refused to remarry, and reinvented herself under the name Olympe de Gouges.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgShe started writing plays and essays in the early 1780s, producing dozens of works over the following decade.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHer play attacking the slave trade was accepted by the Comedie-Francaise, making her one of the earliest French public opponents of slavery.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgResponding to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, she asserted the full political and civil equality of women.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgShe was arrested in July 1793 after posting placards critical of the Revolutionary government and advocating a plebiscite on the form of government.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgShe was convicted of sedition by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
Source: en.wikipedia.org