Olympe de Gouges

Portrait of Olympes de Gouges (1748-1793)

Olympe de Gouges, born Marie Gouze
Born	1748
Died	1793
Occupation(s)	Playwright, political author

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) was a butcher’s daughter who ended up under the guillotine due to her lifelong fight for the right to a public stage, both for theatre and politics. She wrote several political treatises in dialogue with the philosophes, openly fighting for the rights of women and against slave trade. De Gouges was in constant conflict with the Comédie Française which for many years systematically refused to perform her plays. For a short period in the 1780s (1786/1787), she had her own theatre troupe. In Le bonheur primitif de l’homme (1789) she argued for ‘a second theatre’ that she wished would be called ‘The national theatre, or, that of women’, in which the plays would be chosen by two committees: one consisting of men and one consisting of women.