Women's Rights and the French Revolution

A Biography of Olympe De Gouges

Sophie Mousset

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351471183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Women played a major part in the French Revolution of 1789, but have received very little recognition for their contributions. The many claims and protests put forth by women at that time were suppressed, women's clubs were banned, and Olympe de Gouges, a leading contemporary advocate for women's rights, was silenced and has since remained an obscure figure. This book is the first biography of this astonishing woman.After boldly publishing her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791, de Gouges was sent to the guillotine for having had the courage to mount the rostrum on behalf of women. Unlike many who have captured posterity's attention, de Gouges had great sympathy but no indulgence for her sex. Instead of considering her female colleagues as eternal victims, she understood that they were to some extent responsible for their misfortunes, and that if they united and devoted themselves to changing their image, they could become great. De Gouges called for the advent of a new woman, one who would relinquish the nocturnal administering of men.Olympe de Gouges rightly deserves the title of pioneer, prophet, and heroine. This long-overdue biography pays her due homage. It will be of interest to students of the French Revolution, women's studies, and biography.

1
Montauban

In 1714, Louis XIV reigned over France.

A girl was born in Montauban, in the Languedoc region, to the Mouisset family. She was baptized at the church of Saint-Orens on February 18, and named after her godmother, Anne Olympe de La Pomarède. She was mother to the woman who would come to be known as Olympe de Gouges.

Jean-Jacques Le Franc de Caix, age five, was her godfather, later to become Marquis of Pompignan. He came from a very prestigious and famous family in Montauban. The position of president of the Board of Excise (a sort of regional audit office) was traditionally passed on to the family’s eldest son. Anne Olympe’s father Jacques Mouisset, a wealthy bourgeois draper, was an attorney at Montauban’s Exchange, the equivalent to today’s commercial court. The Mouisset family had been tied to the Lefranc de Pompignan family for several generations, and Jacques Mouisset was their eldest son’s private tutor. His wife Anne was their youngest son’s wet nurse, a boy who grew up to become bishop of Vienna, and then deputy and minister in 1789.

As Anne Olympe matured, her godfather’s tenderness and regard for her grew to such an extent that his family though it wise to send him away. Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan was called to Paris in 1734, and wrote several poems and plays for the theater, the most famous of which was Didon. Soon after his arrival in Paris, the play was performed at the Théâtre-Français, and the following year another of his plays, Les Adieux de Mars (The Farewells of Mars), was performed at the Théâtre des Italiens. Jean-Jacques was named Lord of Pompignan and Public Prosecutor. Despite Voltaire’s numerous sarcasms regarding him, he continued to write: opera librettos, essays, translations and especially poems, some of which can still be found included in Charles-Marie Desgranges’ anthology which was still read in schools, shortly after World War II.

On December 13, 1737, Anne Olympe married Pierre Gouze, a butcher. Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan had attempted to return to Montauban but was exiled yet again, this time to Aurillac, located in central France. It would seem that he suffered immensely from the separation; letters exchanged with a friend bear witness to his sorrow. In 1740, Anne Olympe gave birth to a son, followed by two girls.

In 1747, Diderot and d’Alembert took on librarian Le Breton’s project of creating an Encyclopedia with the ambition to “compile findings and organize them, in order for more men to be enlightened and for each human being to participate, within his scope, to his century’s enlightenment” (Diderot). The following year, Montesquieu published L’Esprit des lois (The Spirit of Laws) in Geneva. Drawing his inspiration from the English model, he proposed various reforms for France, which in turn inspired legislators in 1791. Diderot was incarcerated in Vincennes for several months following the publication of his Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient (Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See). The censorship deemed the text to be atheist and materialistic. The death penalty was still enforced for all those who printed, sold, or distributed any work considered disturbing to proper law and order.

The Lefranc de Pompignan family finally authorized Jacques to return to Montauban to run the Board of Excise. This was his chance to see Anne Olympe again, whom he had sorely missed and whose husband was often absent. A girl, Marie, was born to them on May 7, 1748. Lefranc de Pompignan’s paternity was public knowledge. Marie de Gouze was baptized on May 8; a workman by the name of Jean Portié was her godfather and a woman by the name of Marie Grimal, most probably one of her natural father’s nieces, was her godmother. The legal father, Pierre Gouze, didn’t attend the baptism and died two years later under circumstances unknown to us. The Marquis de Pompignan could not help but delight in the fact.

Young Marie was well cared for and loved. Her natural father’s “tenderness for me was such that he renounced conventional propriety by publicly calling me his daughter…. He devoted much time and effort into proposing to my mother that she leave me to his paternal care; no doubt my education would have been more cultivated; but she always rejected his proposition.”¹ Anne Olympe refused to be separated from her daughter — perhaps she was her favorite child, the result of her relationship with JeanJacques who loved her so? The correspondence between Olympe and her mother, especially when the latter was practically destitute, proves the deep tenderness between the two women.

What would Lefranc de Pompignan have done if Anne Olympe had handed their daughter over to him? He couldn’t have kept her at home and given her private tutors, as that would have provoked quite a scandal, especially in the largely Protestant town of Montauban; he could have only sent her to boarding school run by the nuns.

Thus, Marie didn’t receive the education she felt she lacked later on. However, this spared her humiliation, socially speaking. She probably spent a brief time with the Ursuline nuns of Montauban learning how to read and write; the nuns and her classmates most likely made sure that she was aware of her illegitimacy and of the fact that she wasn’t really part of aristocratic society. Nevertheless, she also probably avoided massive humiliation, and was encouraged, even appreciated and loved, which would explain the astounding confidence she had later on in life. The fact that she ended up taking her mother’s surname is telling of their intensely close relationship. Anne Olympe was a beautiful and capable woman, tender and determined; her daughter greatly resembled her.

Anne Olympe refused to yield to her lover and kept her daughter by her side, causing a severe difference of opinion between them. Young Marie was four years old when her mother married Dominique-Raymond Cassaigneau, a member of the police. Hurt and disappointed, Lefranc de Pompignan withdrew to his estate; Marie realized immediately how much she missed his tenderness.

One wonders whether the attachment she showed to the king later on wasn’t a substitute for the attachment she would have liked to show her father.

Marie’s education was basic at best. She learned to read and write, but poorly. Her first language was Occitan, which was normal for the times; few French actually spoke the national language, focusing instead on learning regional dialects. Olympe, complained bitterly about her lax education, French proving difficult for her. Many Occitanisms appear in her written plays. However, she did manage to make up for lost time upon her arrival in the capital. The elaboration of her plays required some knowledge, at least of the rules of the genre, knowledge which couldn’t be acquired just by reading. She dictated to secretaries, probably unsure of her spelling, but she certainly wasn’t the only one to do so, many writers did during that time. Parisian men’s contempt for women, and especially this provincial one, most probably had something to do with her reputation of being illiterate. Charles Monselet, who devoted a chapter to our heroine in his Oubliés et dédaignés (The Forgotten and the Despised) noted, “She was brought up quite haphazardly, the same way she was born, and it was no doubt assumed that her father’s blood and fine mind would be a sufficient substitute for an education; she therefore never learned to read nor write. It was also thought that her beauty would take care of the rest, and in thinking that, one wasn’t entirely mistaken.”² However, the woman who still called herself Marie did indeed sign her wedding certificate, and later on proofed her own plays, posters and brochures, so she must have known how to read and write.

Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan married Marie-Antoinette de Caulaincourt, a farmer general’s widow and a very devout woman. They had a son, Jean-Georges, in 1760.

These were unlucky years from a political standpoint; Louis XV was proving to be unfit to govern. The Seven Years’ War was just beginning, with France, Austria, and Russia allied against Prussia and England. This ended disastrously at the Treaty of Paris, in which France surrendered Canada, Mississippi’s left bank, and India over to England. Lorraine and Corsica were added later to the French territories.

Many major books emerged from a cultural standpoint. In 1758, when our future Olympe was just ten years old, Helvetius published De l’esprit (Essays on the Mind) anonymously, wherein he defended the notion that the equality between man and woman depended on the similarity of their brains; having the same organs to think with, they should therefore both be capable of acceding to culture. He reasoned that there should be a law reform in that direction, and that the most fundamental principal of equality resided in education. His book was banned in 1759 by Pope Clement XIII and burned by order of Paris’ Parliament and Sorbonne’s university of theology. Rousseau published La Nouvelle Héloïse (Julie, or the New Heloise), a sentimental and philosophical novel, which was a huge success, especially with women. He followed this with his Contrat social (The Social Contract), a political essay that had considerable influence on society; Revolutionary theorists referred constantly to it. In l’Émile (Émile), a treatise on education, Rousseau considered taking a female companion for his student, “made to yield to man and endure his injustice.” Despite the fact that he acknowledged that men and women differed only as regards their reproductive organs, he believed that one sex must dominate the other for the sake of mutual happiness. “Female education must be in direct relation to men: to please them, be useful to them, to be loved and honored by them, to raise them when they are young, look after them when they are old, counsel them, console them, and make their life pleasant and gentle: those have been women’s duties throughout time, and should be taught from childhood.”

Diderot began writing his Neveu de Rameau ( Rameau’s Nephew), a nonconformist satire which was ignored by his contemporaries, Voltaire wrote his political essay Traité sur la tolerance (Treatise on Toleration), and Beccaria, influenced by Encyclopedists, published Des Délits et des peines (An Essay on Crimes and Punishment) anonymously in Milan in 1764, wherein he condemned torture and the death sentence and demanded equality for all when facing criminal justice. Bougainville began to travel, explore and study in the Pacific: upon his return, he published his observations in the immensely successful Voyage autour du monde (A Voyage Round the World). His descriptions of indigenous peoples brought on a revival of interest for the “natural condition” and “good savages.” Much later, in 1769, a posthumous text written by Diderot came to light, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, (Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage) which was a severe and poignant criticism of colonization. As will be shown later on, our heroine was passionate about the subject.

On October 24, 1765, Marie Gouze married Pierre Aubry, who was thought to be a caterer or a restauranteur employed by Alexis de Gourges, Administrator of the Treasury Subdivision of Montauban, at the church of Saint-Jean de Villeneuve in Montauban. In her Memoirs, Olympe writes that she was fourteen at the time of her wedding, when she was, in fact, seventeen.

According to the Montauban chronicler, Mary Lafon, she was of great beauty, as was her mother. “Two women, seated in the second tier, drew stares from everyone. One of them was tall, attractive and still charming, if already in her thirties, and the other, barely fifteen, was the image of perfection and Southern beauty: her eyes sparkled with the fire of thought and passion, her superb black hair fell in bountiful curls, escaping from her small lace bonnet, she had a Greek profile and a nicely shaped waist underlined by a pink silk sash…. Everyone gazed upon this beautiful young girl.”3

The marriage was forced upon her; she had no inclination towards her fiancé. “Married off to a man whom I didn’t love, who was neither rich nor well born, I was sacrificed for no reason that could possibly balance out the disgust I felt for him.”⁴

She suffered from this. “At the age of sixteen, that period of life when one’s unsteady heart is learning to know itself, when first impressions start to develop, that age when innocence is still so shy that it gives way without even a murmur when imposed and forced upon….”⁵

Since she belonged both to the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, Marie perceived herself as coming from a good social class and was shocked to have been married off to a man of inferior social status. (The marriage contract, established under a notary public, indicates a sizeable difference of fortune.) At the time, women married into their husband’s social class and very rarely married below them; it is therefore surprising that this man was chosen to be her husband. Who decided this? Did her mother, who had given her a simple workman for a godfather, want to distinguish herself from or take revenge upon her daughter’s aristocratic father? Or did the decision come from elsewhere? In any case, this was Marie’s first and probably most painful humiliation:

I shall never know why, but I was prevented from marrying a man of quality who desired to wed: as of then, I felt above my status, and if I had had my say, my life would have been less varied, and only my birth would have been romantic.⁶

This short sentence is important. It shows and signifies that Olympe found the humiliation of her wedding and the violation, to say the least, of her feelings to be at the origin of her desire for revenge, and her resolve to be the one and only judge of herself.

Far from resigning herself to her fate, Marie chose to revolt. How could one be surprised that when she was widowed, she refused to keep her abhorred husband’s name, and refused another marriage which she considered to be “the grave of love and trust,”⁷ and that she demanded the right to divorce?

At the time of his marriage, Louis Yves left his employment with the administrator to start his own business, thanks to Marie’s dowry. A few months later, a pregnant Marie wrote a will in favor of her child to be; this was standard procedure at the time since many women died in childbirth. Pierre Aubry, named after his official maternal grandfather, was born on August 29. A massive rise in the river Tarn’s water level provoked serious flooding in November, destroying numerous homes. The exact date is unknown, but shortly afterwards, Louis Yves Aubry died as a cons...