Olympe de Gouges has been called illiterate, immoral, and insane while being mentioned solely for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and [the female] Citizen. This book uncovers her radical views of the self, the family, and the state and accounts for her vision of increasing female agency and decreasing the entitlements of aristocratic males.

Women played a major part in the French Revolution of 1789, but have received very little recognition for their contributions. The many claims and protests put forth by women at that time were suppressed, women's clubs were banned, and Olympe de Gouges, a leading contemporary advocate for women's rights, was silenced and has since remained an obscure figure. This book is the first biography of this astonishing woman.After boldly publishing her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791, de Gouges was sent to the guillotine for having had the courage to mount the rostrum on behalf of women. Unlike many who have captured posterity's attention, de Gouges had great sympathy but no indulgence for her sex. Instead of considering her female colleagues as eternal victims, she understood that they were to some extent responsible for their misfortunes, and that if they united and devoted themselves to changing their image, they could become great. De Gouges called for the advent of a new woman, one who would relinquish the nocturnal administering of men.Olympe de Gouges rightly deserves the title of pioneer, prophet, and heroine. This long-overdue biography pays her due homage. It will be of interest to students of the French Revolution, women's studies, and biography.

Inspired by Voltaire’s advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française d’étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University.

"Despite critical interest in the role of women in the French Revolution, there is no single, comprehensive study of the works of the two most prolific women writers of the period: Olympe de Gouges and Manon Roland. At a time when politicians were molding public policy concerning life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and constituting criteria for citizenship, increasing numbers of women in Paris were clamoring for rights. New medical and philosophical theories redefining female nature were trotted out to justify women's continued exclusion from full political participation. Such theories focused on the female body as the locus of women's intellectual inadequacies and promulgated the idea that women who acted outside of the confines of their physiological nature were considered desensitized and unfeminine. "Deviant Women of the French Revolution and the Rise of Feminism" aims to uncover the work of those women who challenged prevailing views of female nature, sought social reforms, and were deemed 'deviant' for their writing and/or activism during the French Revolution."--Jacket.

200 years ago, the women of revolutionary Paris were demanding legal equality in marriage; educational opportunities for girls; and public instruction, licensing, and support for midwives. This title presents sixty documents which focuses on these and other socioeconomic struggles by women and their impact on the French Revolutionary era.

During the French Revolution, hundreds of domestic and working-class women of Paris were interrogated, examined, accused, denounced, arrested, and imprisoned for their rebellious and often hostile behavior. Here, for the first time in English translation, Dominique Godineau offers an illuminating account of these female revolutionaries. As nurturing and tender as they are belligerent and contentious, these are not singular female heroines but the collective common women who struggled for bare subsistence by working in factories, in shops, on the streets, and on the home front while still finding time to participate in national assemblies, activist gatherings, and public demonstrations in their fight for the recognition of women as citizens within a burgeoning democracy. Relying on exhaustive research in historical archives, police accounts, and demographic resources at specific moments of the Revolutionary period, Godineau describes the private and public lives of these women within their precise political, social, historical, and gender-specific contexts. Her insightful and engaging observations shed new light on the importance of women as instigators, activists, militants, and decisive revolutionary individuals in the crafting and rechartering of their political and social roles as female citizens within the New Republic. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998. During the French Revolution, hundreds of domestic and working-class women of Paris were interrogated, examined, accused, denounced, arrested, and imprisoned for their rebellious and often hostile behavior. Here, for the first time in English translation,