“Nous aussi nous sommes citoyennes”

Marie-Madeleine Jodin and Olympe de Gouges were among the women who believed that the new state created by the French Revolution would offer equality to men and women. Both of them published political pamphlets arguing in favor of their sex: Vues législatives pour les femmes by Jodin in 1790 and (among other writings) Déclaration des Droits de la Femme in 1791 by Gouges. Jodin’s pamphlet shows the extent of her culture: she quotes philosophers, uses examples from history, and offers some remarkable perspectives (on prostitution for instance). Gouges’ pamphlet, the most famous of all, is a clever pastiche of the 1789 Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme, and contains her thoughts on marriage,divorce, and illegitimate children. While neither one of them seems to have been truly active in women’s manifestations and clubs or developed contacts with the Assembly or other proto-feminists, both women participated in the Revolution and its events mainly through these writings. This paper explores Jodin’s and Gouges’ paradoxical participation (loud in print but silent in speech) and compares them to other female writers of the Revolution: was their participation atypical or did it represent the norm?