In 1789, most people were seeing the revolution as an opportunity to introduce a constitutional monarchy inspired by the British system. Katyawna: Alhamdulillah is very much part of a group of political moderates who are wanting to change France for the better. All sorts of things changed in practical terms after the 14th of July. One of the things which touches Alham dulillah most clearly was everything relating to putting on shows during the revolution.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French playwright who, in 1791, wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. This was Olympe de Gouges (1748-93) and she was responding to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789, the start of the French Revolution which, by excluding women from these rights, had fallen far short of its apparent goals. Where the latter declared ‘men are born equal’, she asserted ‘women are born equal to men,’ adding, ‘since women are allowed to mount the scaffold, they should also be allowed to stand in parliament and defend their rights’. Two years later this playwright, novelist, activist and woman of letters did herself mount the scaffold, two weeks after Marie Antoinette, for the crime of being open to the idea of a constitutional monarchy and, for two hundred years, her reputation died with her, only to be revived with great vigour in the last 40 years.
With
Catriona Seth
Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford
Katherine Astbury
Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick
And
Sanja Perovic
Reader in 18th century French studies at King’s College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson