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by Olympe de Gouges (1748 - 1793)
Translation by Anonymous / Unidentified Author

The Rights of Woman
Language: English  after the French (Français) 
Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; 
you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, 
what gives you sovereign empire to oppress my sex? Your strength? 
Your talents?
Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. 
Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated – 
in a century of enlightenment and wisdom – into the crassest ignorance, 
he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession 
of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution 
and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it.

Excerpt from the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman’, Paris 1791. De Gouge’s devotion to the cause of women’s rights led to her execution by the guillotine in November 1793.

Text Authorship:

  • by Anonymous / Unidentified Author [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Based on:

  • a text in French (Français) by Olympe de Gouges (1748 - 1793) [text unavailable]
    • Go to the text page.

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Libby Larsen (b. 1950), "The Rights of Woman", 2015 [ mixed chorus ], from Songs of Youth and Pleasure, no. 1, Gehrmans Musikförlag [sung text checked 2 times]

Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2026-02-27
Line count: 10
Word count: 109

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