Discuss this assessment of Olympe De Gouge's 'Declaration des droits de la femme'.

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Resistance and Desire        Gary Ramm

“Like so many eighteenth-century revolutionaries, she saw her own class, the rising bourgeoisie, as the vanguard of the revolution, and it was to the woman of her own class that she directed her arguments.”

Discuss this assessment of Olympe De Gouge’s ‘Declaration des droits de la femme’.

The ‘Déclaration des droits de la femme’ by Olympe de Gourge was without doubt directed at her fellow bourgeois women. It is very obvious to see that the ideas stated in her declaration were aimed at the bourgeoisie, and not necessarily only at the women. A lot of the ideas she expresses are aimed directly at the men in society as a direct opposition to the earlier ‘Déclaration des droits des hommes’ which was criticised for its exclusion of women from the human rights movement.

It can be argued that the declaration is an expression of selfishness from the bourgeoisie. As a whole, it argues for a united society which gains more power, but as a result of the power being shifted downwards from the higher powers and being spread out more amongst the bourgeoisie. The working-class were never to gain anything from the power shift, and the bourgeoisie knew it. The forerunner of the original declaration was to shift power from the highers to the bourgeoisie and never to allow it to be passed any further. This was masked behind a vision of a society who worked together in harmony. The truth was always going to be far from it.

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To say that her declaration was aimed directly at the women of her own class is not fully accurate, although it can be applied if one looks at the meanings of each idea. The idea of the declaration is that each and every woman is to be treated the same as each and every other man or woman.

« Nulle femme n’est exceptée; elle est accusée, arretée & detenue dans les cas déterminés par la Loi. Les femmes obéissent comme les hommes a cette Loi rigoureuse. »

This idea states that all women should be treated equally in ...

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