Olympe de Gouges was born with her given name of Marie Gouze in 1745. Her parents worked hard. Her father was a butcher and her mother was a washerwoman. She always believed that she wasn’t the daughter of a butcher but instead the child of Jean-Jacques Lefranc, a French poet. He denied Olympe de Gouges and adamantly refused her as his child.
Olympe de Gouges married at young age. She married in 1765 but her husband, Louis Aubry, died one year later. In 1770, Olympe moved with her son to Paris. It was there that Marie would take on the name of Olympe de Gouges. Olympe was a social climber and many historians believe that she used her beautiful outer appearances to climb the social ladders allowing men to keep her up financially.
Some of her writings are still famous today including a 1774 anti-slavery play L’Esclavage des Negres which was a play about slavery. It wasn’t until the start of the French Revolution that the play became noticed. Throughout life, Olympe de Gouges continued to choose controversial topics when she wrote and later that included very controversial gender-focus topics.
Olympe de Gouges wrote passionately about the right to divorce as well as the right to have sexual relations outside the confines of marriage. She was an active voice in human rights which was evident in many of her writings.
Olympe de Gouges took the world upon her shoulders and tried to save the underdog in many incidences including the execution of Louis XVI of France. Due to the commotion that Olympe de Gouges stirred with her final writing, translated as The Three Ums or The Health of the Country, Olympe de Gouges was arrested in 1793. She was executed on November 3, 1793.