Declaration of the Rights of Man, Written

¶ … Declaration of the Rights of Man, written by Lafayette during the reign of Louis XVI, is quite different to that of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman created by De Gourges during the rule of the revolutionary French government.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man consists of 17 short and succinct points. As we see it has been approved by the National Assembly of France on August 26, 1789. Its passage seems to have been smooth. That of the Rights of Woman, however, was formed and accepted by oen group -- a partisan group of women -- and even they did not reflect the general population of females who, as de Gourges remarks, are against the status quo being changed and would need males to campaign for any effective social change in their condition to be accomplished. De Gourges was correct. The first pamphlet, the Declaration of Man, won Lafayette fame and acclaim. The second one, the Declaration of Women, led to the death of De Gouges, its author.

Lafayette precedes by noting that "the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments" he, therefore, calls upon the French government to base their system upon "simple and incontestable principles [that] shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound tot the happiness of all."

His principles include the following: Men are born free and, therefore, equally share the natural rights of man, which are "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression." Liberty consists of being protected from injury by another. The State should protect this right. Operation of Law and equal access to a just Law is the right of all. All citizens should be equal in the eyes of the law and equal to all available positions. Citizens should only be arrested and accused when they have perpetrated an offense against the law. If proved so, citizens should submit without excuse. Punishments should be just and not overly harsh. Tolerance should be expended to religion unless when it is disturbing to public rights. There should be free communication of ideas; equal taxation; military forces that work for the good of all; and individuals should not be deprived of their property unless legally demanded or publicly required.

These principles were, more or less, in accordance with the alleged aims of the French government. True, they violated many of them in practical terms. As note -- it is paradoxical that the author of this Rights of Women -- a pamphlet echoing many of these sentiments -- but for females - was herself impetuously sentenced to death without objective attorney and that she resisted her death, thus violating two of these prescriptions. On the other hand, this was a Declaration for Man, not for Woman. The French government was in accordance with most of Lafayette's statements and therefore did not perceive it as threatening the status quo or being revolutionary. It was, accordingly, passed through with little fuss. Louis XVI signed it, although he never intended to support it. It own public acceptance and support since it represented the public's desire.

The Declaration of the Rights of Women was however quite a different story and revolutionary in all aspects of the matter.

Its tone, first of all, is different. The tone was deliberately fashioned after, but, in contradistinction to the Declaration of Rights of Man, it is written in a rhetorical style appealing to man for equal acceptance of women who are similar to them in all biological ways and accusing them of forgetting this fact and of treating women unjustly. De Gouges calls males despotic and arrogant as well as irrational in their treatment of the sexes. Even animals have m ore respect for the female gender than they.

Some of the principles are the same: De Gouges says that women are born as equally free as men and therefore share the same rights as they, specially the rights of liberty, property, security, and renunciation of oppression.

De Gouges also calls upon the laws of nature as specifying rational laws of conduct that man should live by (Article V). This idea of laws of nature was an inherent belief of the French nation popularized by their philosophers, such as Rousseau and Voltaire. De Gouges, however, emphasizes the character of the laws of nature showing that they are equally applicable to both sexes and cannot be overruled.

In this way, woman, as men are equally applicable to all positions provided they show merit in obtaining them. No positions must be closed to women solely because of their sex. Likewise women should be equally sentenced to death and, like men, 'should obey this rigorous rule'. Paradoxically, de Gouges herself disobeyed this rigorous rule when she herself was guillotined. But then again, it may be argued that her sentence was unequal and that the French government saw accusation, arrest and detention as having different structures in the case of men than it did by women.

Many of de Gouges' articles are almost as succinct as those of Lafayette, but she chooses to elaborate in those which particularly touch on Man's injustice to woman. She, therefore, for instance, elaborated on the rights of free speech to women, particularly when it opposes the status quo (as for instance claiming parentage of a certain illegitimate birth). De Gouges, herself, was to do that in her own life, although whether her claimed parentage is accurate is still debatable.

Wherever woman's rights are lacking, such as by property and tax, De Gourges focuses on this omission so that her rhetoric exceeds the called-for principle.