Séance Royale

Octavo, 32 pages, uncut copy preserved in its original wrappers, as issued.

217 x 140 mm.

Gouges, Olympe de. Royal Session. Motion of His Lordship the Duke of Orléans, or Patriotic Dreams. 
S. l. [Paris], 1789. 

Rare first edition.
O. Blanc, Olympe de Gouges, no. 115. Martin & Walter, 15297. Monglond, I, 11.

In this work, Olympe de Gouges defends the dignity of her “sex” and women’s right to participate in public debate by “higher means” than those assigned to them by society.
She puts forward proposals in favor of a constitutional monarchy, better popular representation, and a moral reform of the nation.

Olympe de Gouges openly distances herself from the Orléanists with a scathing attack on the Duke of Orléans, whom she likens to Oliver Cromwell and denounces for his hidden political ambitions. This courageous stance would have personal consequences, particularly for her son, who was removed from the list of the duke’s engineers.

Royal Session marks a key milestone in the early political engagement of Olympe de Gouges, paving the way for her future battles for women’s rights and social justice.

Contents: To His Lordship the Duke of Orléans (p. 1-9); Address to the King (p. 10-13); Royal Session. Speech of the King to the Nation, or the Author’s Blush (p. 14-18); Motion by His Lordship the Duke of Orléans, made in a dream that may come close to reality (p. 19-32).

Dating from mid to late July 1789, this pamphlet was produced to counter the opprobrium that her poster of 11 July had elicited; in the poster Royal Session she addresses Louis XVI directly, suggesting that he abdicate in favor of a regent as he seems unable to respond to the crisis facing France.
Presenting the text as a dream bestowed upon an innocent author did nothing to hide either the temerity of such a direct address or the audacity of the arguments. De Gouges attempted to deliver the poster to the king in Versailles; unsurprisingly, she was denied access to the royal personage. In her text Departure of Necker and Mme de Gouges of 1790, de Gouges justifies her position by reasserting that the king would have solved both his and the nation's problems by putting himself above politics: as always, a form of constitutional monarchy “à l'anglaise” was the preferred option.
The Royal Session poster created such a stir, with assumptions that de Gouges supported a power grab by the Duke of Orléans, that she was obliged to publish this elaborate explanation of her position.
The anonymous writer seeks to encourage the duke to become a different kind of leader.

“Marie-Olympe de Gouges is one of the very few women in ancient history to have been executed for publishing political writings. Yet this committed woman, a fine humanist figure from the end of the 18th century, has only recently been rediscovered as a forerunner in the history of ideas. She remains an exceptional figure, not only for her enduring political commitment but above all for her avant-garde positions, courageously expressed, on the condition of Black people and that of women. It took until the major social questions concerning women, racism, and minorities became newly pressing in the aftermath of the Second World War for the tragic memory of de Gouges to finally be brought to light.

Deeply involved in public life, de Gouges was severely judged by the ‘moral majority’ of her time, for whom motherhood, maintaining the home, and educating children were supposed to remain the exclusive outlets for women’s creativity and activity.

De Gouges, whose name appeared on political propaganda posters, came to attention during the trial of Louis XVI, where she offered to defend the deposed monarch, publicly expressing her aversion to the death penalty. She was subsequently accused of complicity with the Girondin deputies, whom she defiantly defended in a letter to the Convention on June 9, 1793, a week after their proscription and arrest.
The liberal and humanist movement to which she belonged—like the Friends of the Blacks and also the friends of women—was swept away by the Terror.

But it is well known that history is written by the victors, and it seems that in the case of de Gouges, executed three days after the Girondins, posterity has followed, in the worst possible way, the lead of the Commune’s prosecutor Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, an archetypal Montagnard and demagogue, who then claimed to speak in the name of Nature: “Remember that virago, that man-woman, the shameless Olympe de Gouges, who wanted to play politics and committed crimes; all those immoral beings were obliterated by the avenging blade of the laws!”

Inspired by the Enlightenment and reason, she produced an original body of work filled with ingenious and innovative ideas.

Her invariable mode of expression was the classic pamphlet, ranging from four to as many as fifty pages for some. In 1792 and 1793, to spread her opinions more widely, she launched poster campaigns at the time of major political events such as the war, national reconciliation, the rise of Montagnard dictatorship, the trial of Louis Capet, or the defense of freedom of expression.

On humanitarian questions, her contemporaries Condorcet and Abbé Grégoire are often cited instead. Yet the latter paid the first tribute to de Gouges' exemplary courage, stating in 1808 that she “knew how to plead the cause of the unfortunate Blacks.” It is fitting today to pay tribute to de Gouges’ courageous spirit, who defended humanitarian causes with such warmth.” (Olivier Blanc).

Copy uncut, preserved in its original paper wrappers, as issued.