Born in 1745¹ as the daughter of a butcher and a washerwoman, de Gouges married a wealthy older man. After becoming a widow, she had sufficient funds to support herself in Paris after 1788 on her precarious income as a writer.² Poorly educated, her grammar, spelling, and handwriting left something to be desired and her writings tended to be verbose and aimless. Consequently, she was not a very successful author, although she tried very hard to become one.

      Ridiculed because of her staunch, unyielding feminism, her early attempts to organize women, and her ground-breaking feminist manifesto and derided as a traitor to the Revolution because of her opposition to the death of the King and his family, she became a target of the Terror. A prolific political writer, she produced over 30 political pamphlet during the French Revolution. Although she supported the Revolution, she spoke out against the bloodshed and against Robespierre and Marat. She was guillotined in 1793 as a reactionary royalist.

      Gouges works were both profoundly feminist and profoundly revolutionary. Author of several feminist works, her best known work is "The Rights of Women." Taking the French Revolution's "The Right of Man" as her guide, Gouges wrote "The Rights of Women", claiming for women equality with men in all aspects of both public and private life - including the equal right along with men to vote, to hold office, to public employment, to speak in public on political topics (to "mount the rostrum"), to equal public "honors", to own and control property, to participate in the military, to an education, and to equal power in the family and the church.

      The Rights of Women 1791

1. Encyclopedia, p. 478, in her trial transcript, she claims she was born in 1755 (Levy, p. 254)
2. Encyclopedia, p. 478

References:

      Women in Revolutionary Paris 1789-1795: Selected Documents Translated with notes and Commentary by Daline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, Mary Durham Johnson, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1979, pp. 64-65, 87-96, 254-259

      Claire Buck, Women's Guide to Literature Throughout the World from Sappho to Atwood, Women's Writings Through the Ages, [Bungay, Suffolk; Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., 1992]

      Article on Gouges, An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, vol 1, A - K, Katharina M. Wilson, 1991, Garland Publishing Company, NY and London, p. 478-479

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