The Enlightenment movement and its intellectual impact

Enlightenment

The Declaration of the Rights of Women" versus "The Declaration of the Rights of Man"

Enlightenment thought posited that the human animal, defined as the male animal in "The Declaration of the Rights of Man" of 1789, was inherently free in its natural state. However, social laws and customs hemmed most of humanity in, and limited the freedom of the human potential for goodness. Limitations upon freedom were occasionally necessary, for the common good, but more often limitations by law were placed upon persons to enrich the ruling classes for the profit of the minority. Thus, "The Declaration of the Rights of Man" held in Article 6: "All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents."

Many women, including many women of the French Revolution, took these ideas quite seriously -- the word "citizens" of "The Declaration of the Rights of Man" was not read to merely include men, but women as well by many female citizens. According to Olympe de Gouges in 1791, not only were women equally free in a state of nature as their male counterparts, but the original French Revolution had done little to profit the female sex, despite considerable female support for the revolution and its underlying Enlightenment ideals. Just as the male members of the human race, the members of the second and third estates, deserved freedom, so did women. "The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies," she said. Rationality must prevail instead.

De Gouges thus agreed with the prevailing Enlightenment sentiment that religion was nothing but a series of lies and half-truths, and that in a state of free nature, human beings were best able to explore their intellectual breath and depth -- and a proper definition of humanity included women. Rationality and reason should govern the rule of law, as opposed to custom and class, both of which reinforced the imbalanced state of relations of the genders. The "Declaration of the Rights of Man" proclaimed an end to "ignorance," and the neglect of human rights, so did the "Declaration of the Rights of Women," in a far more radical and inclusive manner.

The ideas of "The Declaration of the Rights of Man" posited that merely because the ruling elites had dominance over the poorer classes did not make royalty inherently superior to those who, from historical misfortune, lacked the social privilege of high birth. The first listed Article read: "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good." Similarly De Gouges wrote: "In the centuries of corruption you [women] ruled only over the weakness of men. The reclamation of your patrimony, based on the wise decrees of nature-what have you to dread from such a fine undertaking?"

The reclamation of natural rights outside of the outmoded, false notions of intellectual superstition is again, quintessential Enlightenment discourse. However note that De Gouges angrily writes her tract in an accusing voice, to first rally females, before she calls upon men to enter into a mutual social contract with women. This is a distinct difference in tone than the "Declaration of the Rights of Man's" general principles that cagily exclude the female sex in some statements but not in others, as "citizens" is only occasionally used as a gender-inclusive term.

The falseness of marriage, as it is a socially constructed state, is heralded by the 1791 words of De Gouges: "Marriage is the tomb of trust and love. The married woman can with impunity give bastards to her husband, and also give them the wealth which does not belong to them." Marriage is a tomb because it limits women's physical, social, and emotional freedom, and it is not really legitimate because it is a man-created institution. Hence De Gouges' of the notion of bastards, even to express the relationship of male to female in the once supposedly sacred institution of wedlock.

In the social contract proposed by De Gouges, human relationships between males and females become 'in kind' or communal. "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights" -- a quasi-socialist idea of the perfectibility of human society because of the perfectibility of the individual is suggested in these words from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" and its assertion of a communal good, but De Gouges takes this even farther. She writes: "We intend and wish to make our wealth communal, meanwhile reserving to ourselves the right to divide it in favor of our children and of those toward whom we might have a particular inclination, mutually recognizing that our property belongs directly to our children, from whatever bed they come, and that all of them without distinction have the right to bear the name of the fathers and mothers who have acknowledged them, and we are charged to subscribe to the law which punishes the renunciation of one's own blood." In contrast, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" affirmed the right to individually owned property.

Finally, the renunciation of one's own blood, namely the inferiority of non-legitimate children is condemned by De Gouges. This seems to be keeping with the ideas of the first declaration -- after all, if distinctions of birth and rank in regard to social position and occupation are inherently unfair, why should a child be limited because of the mistakes of his or her parents, if transgressing the bounds of religious doctrine are considered mistakes at all? "Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society," say the declaration of 1789. But as in all matters, the "Declaration of the Rights of Women" emerges as the more radical text, even though it takes the ideal of the perfectibility of humankind to a more extreme utopian state.