Did the “rights of man” include women? During the French Revolution, the question of women’s rights was sharply debated. Just two years after the famous French Declaration, the French playwright and journalist Olympe de Gouges sought to apply those rights to women when she crafted her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. “Woman, wake up,” she wrote, “the tocsin [warning bell] of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights.”1 As the revolution unfolded, many women became actively involved, taking part in street demonstrations, establishing dozens of women’s clubs, and petitioning legislative bodies on behalf of women. Most men, however, even ardent revolutionaries, agreed with the French lawyer Jean-Denis Lanjuinais that “the physique of women, their goal in life [marriage and motherhood], and their position distance them from the exercise of a great number of political rights and duties.”2 In late 1793, all women’s clubs were officially prohibited. But in the same year, the posture of these increasingly assertive women found expression in an anonymous engraving titled “Frenchwomen Freed.” The woman’s cap displays the tricolor cockade that came to symbolize the revolution; she carries a pike inscribed with the slogan “liberty or death”; the medal on her waistband reads: “Liberty, armed with a pike, is victorious, July 14 [Bastille Day].”

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

French Woman during the Revolution

Notes