NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 122 of 150

Correct — D, She declared that the nation is the union of woman and man. This is a near-quotation from her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, published in 1791 as a deliberate rewriting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789. Its third article states that the principle of all sovereignty rests essentially in the nation, which is but the reuniting of woman and man. That single sentence is the heart of her argument: the revolutionary claim that sovereignty belongs to the nation is accepted, and then turned back on the revolutionaries by pointing out that half the nation had been left out of the reckoning.

• (a)She declared that although citizens should have equal rights, they are not entitled to the same honours by the State — This inverts her position. Her Declaration holds that all citizens, women included, are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments according to their capacity, with no distinction other than their virtues and talents. She demanded the same honours, not different ones.
• (b)She was a supporter of the Jacobin government — She was one of its sharpest critics. Her increasingly vehement writings attacked Robespierre's Montagnards and the revolutionary government during the Terror, and she urged an end to the bloodshed. That opposition is what destroyed her.
• (c)She was jailed for treason by the National Assembly — Wrong body and wrong outcome. She was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, charged with seditious behaviour and with seeking to restore the monarchy after her 1793 poster Les Trois urnes, and she was executed on 3 November 1793 — not merely imprisoned. The National Assembly of 1789 to 1791 had ceased to exist by then.

The French Revolution proclaimed liberty, equality and fraternity but conferred active citizenship on men alone. Women organised anyway — through political clubs, through the march to Versailles in October 1789, and through pamphlets. Olympe de Gouges, a playwright and political writer born Marie Gouze in 1748, produced the most systematic of these arguments in 1791 by taking the Declaration of the Rights of Man article by article and rewriting it for women. In 1793 the Jacobin government closed the women's political clubs, and de Gouges was among those who paid for opposing it.

Two things about this item are worth handling carefully. The first is a printing matter: the booklet prints 'about the Olympe de Gouges', with a definite article before a personal name. That is a slip in the paper, not a different person, and it is reproduced here exactly as printed rather than silently corrected. The second is the method the question rewards. Three of the four options are testable against a single document and a single trial, so a candidate who knows the Declaration's argument and the identity of the court that tried her can strike out (a), (b) and (c) without needing any further reading. Do not be misled by the fact that option (c) sounds severe and therefore plausible; the correct detail is more severe still. And note that examiners like this period precisely because it lets them test whether a candidate can tell the National Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the National Convention and the Revolutionary Tribunal apart.

• The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen was published in 1791.
• Its third article holds that sovereignty rests in the nation, which is the reuniting of woman and man.
• It also claims for all citizens, women included, equal admissibility to public dignities, offices and employments according to capacity, virtue and talent.
• She was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, charged with sedition and with seeking to restore the monarchy, and executed on 3 November 1793.

• Assuming any critic of the monarchy must have supported the Jacobins.
• Naming the National Assembly for a body that no longer existed in 1793.
• Choosing a severe-sounding option over the correct one when the truth is more severe still.

NDA sets one or two French Revolution items per paper, usually as a which-statement-is-correct test on a named figure, a named body or a named phase.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen was published in

  • (a)1789
  • (b)1791
  • (c)1793
  • (d)1799

  Answer(b) 1791 — two years after the Declaration of the Rights of Man that it was written to answer.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Olympe de Gouges was tried and condemned in 1793 by the

  • (a)Estates General
  • (b)National Assembly
  • (c)Revolutionary Tribunal
  • (d)Directory

  Answer(c) Revolutionary Tribunal — the court of the Terror, which condemned her on 3 November 1793.