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The Enlightenment Period - Religion and Society

 

Inspired, they went on to write cahiers de doleances, or lists of grievances, in which they demanded equality among all of the king's subjects. After their demands weren't met, they formed the National Assembly with the intentions of reforming the government in order to receive equal representation. With John Locke's ideas in mind, the National Assembly issued the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen. It proclaimed that all men were born free and remained equal in rights (The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789). With this document, the National Assembly took a huge leap in eradicating the old ways of feudalism that the Enlightenment had condemned. Nobles no longer held prestige just because they were upperclassmen. The Declaration formulated the idea that in society all men are equal regardless of social class. Though this document was full of revolutionary ideas involving equality, it intentionally failed to mention women having these rights. However, during the Enlightenment, women were gradually beginning to speak out and demand equality opposed to the separate sphere that they had been forced to live in. One of the first woman's rights advocates of the Enlightenment, Mary Wollstonecraft, urged women to leave the house and become apart of society . She demanded that women's rights be1 respected and marked the birth of women's movement for equal rights. Following in the same footsteps as Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges found fault in the Declaration's failure to include women. Calling for equality, she composed the Declaration of the Right's of Woman. It was basically a reprint, of the original Declaration; however, women were included in on equality ( Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791 ). Along with being influenced by Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouge had been impacted by the overall theme of reason of the Enlightenment. It was in the spirit of reason in which she insisted on women discovering their rights.


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