Olympe de Gouges

Born Marie Gouze in southwestern France in 1748, de Gouges moved to Paris in the 1780s and built a prolific career as a playwright and pamphleteer, tackling slavery, divorce, children's rights, and unemployment. She welcomed the Revolution in 1789 but quickly soured when it denied women the rights it granted men. Her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen demanded equality and challenged male authority head-on. Aligned with the moderate Girondins, she opposed the execution of Louis XVI and wrote with growing fury against Robespierre's Montagnards during the Terror. O…