Olympe de Gouges Denounces Gender Inequality in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen

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[...] Olympe de Gouges questions the legitimacy of this power through the question "Who gave you? ». Thus she challenges everything that men have always considered as self-evident. The questions lack no irony. The verbs used in the imperative present have an injunctive value that marks the vehemence of the statement. Man is presented as being at the opposite of nature and the creator. "If you dare », l.5 is a challenge that Olympe de Gouges throws to men while man will never be able to find in nature a justification for his behavior. [...]

[...] The lexical field of the union 'confused », « cooperate », « harmonious » line 11 shows that nature tends towards a perfect equality between men and women. Third movement: There, the enunciation changes, since Olympe de Gouges uses the 3ème person of the singular for speaking of man. 'The man» used in the singular at line 13, echoes to 'Man» from the beginning of the passage. It brings man back to a place that situates him in the middle of all other living species in nature. The adjective 'alone» here, which is attached to him, shows how man acts against the current of nature. [...]

[...] Olympe de Gouges then writes a Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. This passage is the preamble to this Declaration. Problematic issue: How does Olympe de Gouges denounce the inequality between men and women? What is the argument developed by OG to denounce? How does OG combine argumentation and denunciation? Announcement of the plan: We will be able to distinguish three movements, from the beginning to ' tyrannical empire » (the apostrophe), then a second movement that goes from 'goes back to animals » until 'immortal» (the observation of nature) and finally the third movement which begins at 'man alone » until the end of the passage (the man who has decreed himself an exception of nature) First movement: The text opens with an apostrophe addressed to man. [...]

[...] Olympe de Gouges addresses all men who are responsible for the situation of women. The first sentence is a rhetorical question, the first of many others. The word 'man» opposes that of woman, which concerns the second sentence, always on line 1. There, it is a woman in particular, herself, who gets up to ask for justice. Olympe de Gouges then uses the informal form, which can be translated as a willingness to place herself on an equal footing with the men to whom she is addressing herself and to restore the injustice done to women, as testified by the proposal ' you will at least not take away from her this right », l.2. [...]

[...] Olympe de Gouges recontextualizes, however, the context of this Declaration in this century of enlightenment, l.14, a century of ""sagacity », l where, however, values opposite to this century of enlightenment prevail since 'l'ignorance the most crude », l Olympe de Gouges ends her passage with the silence of man 'for nothing more to say », who in fact knows only 'commander as a despot », l and has absolutely understood nothing of what he claimed to want to defend in his declaration which has forgotten half of the French people by excluding women. Conclusion: Thus, we have seen how Olympe de Gouges defends the inequality of man and woman by using a vehement argument that invites the man to notice that he has no means of legitimizing the superiority he claims to have. [...]