Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is resounding throughout the universe: acknowledge your rights. Nature's powerful empire is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition or untruth. The light of truth has dissipated all the clouds of nonsense and usurpation. Enslaved man increased his power and had to have recourse to yours in order to break his fetters. Freed he became unjust towards his companion. Oh women! Women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gained through the Revolution? A greater scorn, a more pronounced disdain. During the centuries of corruption you only reigned over the weakness of men. Your empire is destroyed: what is left to you? The conviction that men are unjust? Reclaim your heritage, that right founded on the wise decrees of nature; what can you fear from such a fine undertaking? A witticism from the Governor of the Feast of Cana? Are you afraid that our French Governors, correctors of an inappropriate morality that was too long caught up in the branches of politics, will say repeatedly: women, what have we got in common? Everything, you must reply.--Olympes de Gouges, The Rights of Woman. 5 September in 1791
Gouges' text reminds that, in the first instance, the age of revolution and democracy was inter alia a disaster for women:* a very imperfect and unequally distributed informal power behind the scenes in feudal times got replaced by a formal subordination to male fraternity. The would-be-age-of-mass democracy was also the age of mass disenfranchisement. As Gouges is writing, she is explicitly aware that there are well-entrenched financial interests in the new "National Assembly" that "are agitating to re-enslave "men of color" in the French colonial empire.
Gouges' argument turns on the thought that if women can be taxed and hanged, then they should be able to shape the law.+" Perhaps the most memorable line of her declaration is, in fact, that "woman is entitled to mount the scaffold; she must be equally entitled to mount the rostra so long as her manifestos do not disturb the public order according to the law." (That freedom of speech can be curtailed by considerations pertaining to the disturbances of public order is a spinozistic idea, which can also be found in article X of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen .) Underlying her thought is the basic idea that if one has duties, one has correlated rights. (She puts it like this: "woman shares all the labour, all the hard tasks; she should therefore have an equal share of positions, employment, responsibilities, honours and professions." (Arictle 13))
The impartiality of the law, for Gouges, is exemplified by the lack of special mercy or lenience toward women: "the law will rigorously pursue any woman found to be guilty." We can discern in this the influence of Beccaria's ideas, who thought that for the law to be effective as a deterrent and just, it must be machine-like predictable in its effects and without room for discretion.
I do not mean to deny that there is also another strain running through the argument grounded in democratic majoritarianism. This is not initially obvious. She first claims "The law must embody the general will [volonté générale];" (Article VI) Of course, the general will in the service of the common good, or common utility [in the 18th century sense of common interest], need not require participation by all. But Gouges makes that "all Female and Male citizens must contribute personally, or through their representatives, to its development." And she reiterates the point a few articles later But she also claims that "the constitution is worthless if the majority of individuals [les majorités des individus] that make up the Nation has not participated in its redaction." (Article XVI) And because she expects men never to be fully unified, no majority is possible without women citizens.
Gouges' addressing the declaration to the Queen did not help her once the Terror set its sights on her. (She was guillotined 3 November 1793.) But for present purposes, what is most notable is that she claims that "the principle of sovereignty is vested primarily [or even essentially] in the Nation." (Article 3) One may expect that, in turn, the nation is constituted by a shared language, shared history, or certain geography. But she treats he nation as "the union of Woman and Man." This is an important contrast to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, where the referent of the nation is implied (the French people) in virtue of the fact that it is promulgated by the "representatives of the French people."
The contrast matters because Gouges turns the nation into something abstract, outside of time and place: in one sense, "the union of Woman and Man" [réunion de la femme et de l'homme] just seem to refer to a marriage (I return to that below). In another sense, treating réunion as a kind of assembly, it is a regulative ideal in which men and women are co-equals in a political project. In both senses the nation can be truly universal in a way that a propagation by the French National Assembly cannot.
It is no accident that Gouges formulation of the sovereign evokes marriage. It is pretty clear that while Gouges explicitly conceived the point of political life in terms of "liberty, property, security and above all the right to resist oppression," she understands the right to property in terms of marriage, inheritance, and home. The connection among these is made explicit by the rather surprising postscript to the Declaration, which is a kind of marriage contract (and which has no counterpart in the Declaration of the Rights of Man) about the combining of assets. It explicitly allows for divorce and has provisions for the care of children (recognized by the mother). The whole tenor of Gouges' declaration is, in fact, is to change the definition of marriage in such a way such that any child born to a citizen is part of a family (with a right to inheritance) and a right to housing, even public housing if necessary.
I am ascribing such a right to housing to Gouges from her somewhat enigmatic remarks about the utility of reintegrating prostitutes into the body politic such that a "perfect ensemble" [un ensemble parfait] is produced. She writes:
I would also like, as I suggested in The Primitive Happiness of Man in 1788, that streetwalkers be housed in designated areas. It is not streetwalkers who contribute the most to the depravity of morals, it is society women. By reinstating the latter one modifies the former. This bond of fraternity will create disorder at first but by and by it will it will produce a perfect ensemble.
While I am unsure what the mechanism is by which improvement is supposed takes place over the medium term, I think the underlying diagnosis (despite the potential for victim-blaming) is important. (In what follows, I am assuming that the "designated areas" are not hidden from 'society'.) Gouges' point is, in part, that to tackle the effects of inequalities on the (invisible) vulnerable, one must make the vulnerable and these inequalities visible and felt again.
*As regular readers know (recall), I was alerted to this by Eileen O' Neill's classic (1998) Disappearing Ink..
+On taxation, see "female and male citizens have a right to decide for themselves, or through their representatives, the necessity of public contribution. Female citizens can only subscribe to it if they are allowed an equal share not only of wealth but also of public administration and in determining the amount, assessment, collection and duration of the tax." (Article XIV)
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