Declaration Of The Rights Of Woman Analysis

The Declaration of the Rights of Man, written in 1789, and the Declaration of the Rights of Women which followed in 1791, have many similarities as well as many differences. The introductions to both declarations tell the readers that France has had a history of abusive power that led up to both of these individual documents being drafted. I think that although the women’s document shares the same history that inspired the man’s declaration and demands the same rights, the women’s document is definitely fueled by the man’s version. The women’s version has 17 Articles, like the man’s version, but the women’s version also has a preamble and a lengthy postscript.

Both documents demand social and political rights. They both mention rights…show more content…
The women addressed each of the seventeen points of the men and added their own opinions on how and why women should be incorporated into them. The women were not simply rebelling against a government like the men were; instead they were appealing to the men of their country to hear their righteous cause. For example, the Man’s first Article states, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights” while the women’s Article I says that, “Women is born free and lives equal to man in her rights.” This article by itself shows the entire essence of what the women were looking to do-declare their equality to men. To me, the women’s declaration is an obvious cry for women’s equality and rights. I think that these French women were forerunners of our own modern women’s movement that took place in the U.S.

Furthermore, Article IV in the women’s Declaration states that “…thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of women are perpetual male tyranny.” This demonstrates that while their Declaration was specifically addressing male domination, at first they simply appealed to men to give them equality, but later they became more forceful when they said the only thing standing in the way of women having equal rights is if the “men perpetuate their tyranny against…show more content…
One idea of Enlightenment thinkers was that human beings are inherently good and rational (Stearns 320). They believed that “political life could be reformed through rational calculations and the belief in the essential goodness of human nature” (Stearns 320).

The rights in the Declaration were to be held universal and valid in all times and places. It gave the people popular sovereignty and equal opportunity in stark contrast to the divine “right of kings” that gave these rights only to the monarchy. As Article 6 says, “All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.” This Article gives rights to the common man and eliminates the “special rights” of the nobility and the clergy. Additionally, the rights of “liberty, property, security, and the resistance to oppression,” as stated in Article 2 are shown as the aim of all “political association.” These basic rights were born from the Enlightenment and the new way of thinking that it produced. The need for law comes from the fact that “the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights” (Article 4). The law