In response to a suggestion from reader Papertiger in our New Year post, we inaugurate, a little late in the day, a new feature, Scattered Applause, in which Pave will applaud applause-worthy French people. It does not diminish Pave's charter as French scold to remember that good things and good people have come from France.
So we begin by applauding (Marie) Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793), née Marie Gouze, widow of Aubry, a spirited reformer, playwright, and journalist. The details of her life are variously reported, but we are inclined to trust her admirers over her detractors.
Olympe de Gouges was born in 1745 [sic], fruit of the passion of Jacques Le Franc de Caïx for the first love of his youth in Montauban, Anne-Olympe Mouisset, Gouze by her married name. Never recognized by her natural father, Marie Gouze, later Widow Aubry, chose to be known as Olympe de Gouges. ... Widowed very young, universally described as a woman of exceptional beauty, Olympe decided to leave Quercy with her son Pierre. It was at that time, according to some of her admirers, that she stopped for a while at Parnac, on the banks of the Lot opposite her father's château at Caïx, where she appears never to have been admitted. ... Once in Paris, Olympe learnt the French language and embraced the life style of a free woman -- and a libertine one, in the sense that she chose lovers with discernment, and never remarried. With the financial support of of her principal lover, she published political posters, manifestoes and theatre pieces which testify to a prodigious power to anticipate future democratic demands. Among them: an equality between the sexes extending to conjugal and separation agreements; full recognition and equality for illegitimate children; people's juries for criminal trials; solidarity with the poorest of the poor; income taxes; liberation of slaves in the French colonies; and the abolition of the death penalty.
The young Republic conferred on Mdm. de Gouges its most sincere recognition of the power of her ideas by sending her to the guillotine.
She wrote a Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne (1791) in response to and cleverly modeled on La Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen (1789), wherein "homme" was originally gender specific (scil., "men only") and was further construed to be "white" and, if not Christian, then at least "non-Jewish".
Mdm. de Gouges was arrested and tried in 1793 for her tract Le trois urnes, ou le salut de la Patrie, par un voyageur aérien (The three urns, or the health of the Country, by an aerial voyager). At her trial she was prosecuted by Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville* for -- as we understand his argument -- being an uppity woman.
Asked to express herself and to reply precisely concerning her sentiments with respect to the faithful representatives of the people whom she had insulted and calumniated in her writings, the accused replied that she had not changed, that she still held to her same opinion concerning them, and that she had looked upon them as ambitious persons.During the resume of the charge brought by the public prosecutor, the accused, with respect to the facts she was hearing articulated against her, never stopped her smirking. Sometimes she shrugged her shoulders; then she clasped her hands and raised her eyes towards the ceiling of the room; then, suddenly, she moved on to an expressive gesture, showing astonishment; then gazing next at the court, she smiled at the spectators, etc.
Mdm.de Gouges was found guilty as charged. Well, no surprise there. The Revolutionary Tribunal was aces for successful prosecutions. Condemned to death, she claimed to be pregnant, which precluded the death penalty.** A Republican health officer was promptly found to discredit her claim.
Olympe de Gouges was guillotined November 3, around 4:00 in the afternoon to the delight of the crowd.
In article 10 of her Droits de la Femme, Mdm. de Gouges famously put it to the Republic:
"La femme a le droit de monter sur l'échafaud, elle doit avoir également celui de monter à la tribune""A woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she should also have the right to mount the rostrum "
Alas for Mdm. de Gouges, the Republic only obliged her the first ascension.
Women were granted suffrage in France on October 21, 1945. As for the rest, well, French women still wait.
* When establishing the Cheka (VChK, Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, scil., the secret police), Lenin fretted, "Where are we going to find our Fouquier-Tinville?"
** At least here the young Republic maintained a humanity completely absent from contemporary French-European humanism.
PFFT (What is this?): The sow eats her farrow 4 | Rayonnement français 0
It does not diminish Pave's charter as French scold to remember that good things and good people have come from France.
A kinder, gentler PAVE?
Happy New Year.
Interesting post, Damian. I enjoyed it.
Some, it appears, found ways around the women/men frictions mentioned.
For further posts in this vein, may I suggest a person that I just finished reading a biography of..Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée Éon de Beaumont (1728 - 1810), usually known as the Chevalier d'Eon.
After a career as a soldier, diplomat, and secret agent for King Louis XV, told the world he was a woman who had disguised herself as a man. But d’Eon was lying, in fact, he was a man pretending to be a woman who was now admitting to be a man.
No mention of her/his voting rights, however...
Bonjour,
Toujours les obsessions américaines.Olympe de Gouges n'est qu'un personnage marginal de notre histoire.
Mais avec vos ridicules "women's studies" ,"culturals studies" et autres "gays and lesbians studies" qui nous font mourir de rire ,ici,en Europe (à part quelques crétins qui ont essayé sans succès d'implanter ces lubies dans nos Universités) ,vous en faites un personnage essentiel.
Nous sommes fiers de l'ensemble de notre Histoire et les "whites old men dead" nous les aimons aussi.Tous nos savants mathématiciens dont vos élèves et étudiants apprennent les théorèmes (Pascal,Fermat,Mersenne,d'Alembert,Galois etc),tous nos physiciens ,tous nos médecins dont vos étudiants apprennent les expériences et,etc,.Ce prodigieux héritage qu'un pays de 200 ans ne peut avoir et n'aura jamais...
Et fier de cet héritage , nous nous projetons maintenant dans l'avenir avec nos centrales nucléaires ,le CERN,Airbus,Galileo,Iter etc…
Et vous avec votre agressivité mensongère (pourquoi ne pas liquider l'Arabie Saoudite source de l'islamisme ? parce que ceux-là sont vos copains du pétrole ?) vous vous enfoncez dans une guerre coûteuse et sans issue en Irak.Juste retour des choses pour vos trahisons et mensonges récents (Kosovo etc)...
Good luck for your country in Irak , and...in Bolivia !
Look at this, folks. We've got our own little Jean-Marie Le Pen, right here!
Wow, a real live little bigot and racist for all to see! But wait, such things do not exist in France, no?
Right here, a member of the nationalist far right. You can feel his FEAR of the EU, globalization, the US, and the Muslim community.
Such a sad, ridiculous person you are...
Good luck to losers like you!
Good luck to Turkey in the EU!
Bonjour
@Andy
1)Je me souviens que cette ordure de Le Pen était reçue comme un chef d 'Etat par votre ordure de Reagan.Alors vos leçons tombent à plat…
2)Recevoir des leçons d ' un citoyen d'un pays qui a soutenu toutes les dictatures fascistes d'Amérique Latine (Videla ,Strossner etc ) et d Asie (Sukarno etc) c'est vraiment comique…
3)La Turquie n'entrera JAMAIS dans l'UE:les Français n'en veulent pas et c'est NOUS qui décidons , pas les yankees !
4)Ne nous faites pas pleurer sur les musulmans.Qui les tue en Irak c'est vous ou nous ?
Good luck for your country in Irak et in Bolivia !
1)Je me souviens que cette ordure de Le Pen était reçue comme un chef d 'Etat par votre ordure de Reagan.Alors vos leçons tombent à plat…
And just how was Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Hussaeini received by the French?
2)Recevoir des leçons d ' un citoyen d'un pays qui a soutenu toutes les dictatures fascistes d'Amérique Latine (Videla ,Strossner etc ) et d Asie (Sukarno etc) c'est vraiment comique…
4)Ne nous faites pas pleurer sur les musulmans.Qui les tue en Irak c'est vous ou nous ?
Nothing but “proxy wars” and the Domino Theory, to win the Cold War...
Sukarno: "Go to hell with your aid". Well, they took “aid” after the wave….
BTW, France was busy with the dictatorships as well.
More on Bolivia and Turkey later. Gotta run.
Good luck to your country in the suburbs!
president François Mitterand was quoted as saying that French assistance was really aimed at keeping Iraq from losing the war.
And guess who saw no objection to that at the time, andy?
Oh, no doubt the US had no objections...payback for the Iran hostage problem, among many other reasons...
But I think the quote you posted was specifically talking about the money that Iraq owed France. I think they are making a point the France was concerned about the payment for the arms, not a political concern, which they mention.
France adopted an independent and unambiguous arms sales policy towards Iraq. France did not tie French arms commitments to Baghdad's politico-military actions, and it openly traded with Iraq even when Iranian-inspired terrorists took French hostages in Lebanon.
France would want whichever country owed for the arms to win. It’s as good as any other reason to support one country or the other, I guess.
As we have both found out: If you sell arms, you have to live with what the countries do with those weapons....
