A Fierce Female’s Political Quest; Olympe De Gouges Discovering Olympe de Gouges’ work has been a valuable acquaintance, since de Gouges is a truly fascinating character in French history; as Beckstrand wrote in her article “she [Olympe de Gouges] wrote forty-one plays, twenty-nine works of prose and sixty-three political pamphlets, taking unpopular stances on difficult issues concerning women’s rights and the abolition of slavery” (185). De Gouges can be remembered as a passionate individual, courageous, intense and extremely dedicated to her cause. Furthermore this intriguing lady never backed down from a challenge, and she continued to fight for her ideals, until “she was [guillotined] on November 4, 1793 for her controversial writing” (Beckstrand 185). Olympe de Gouges has been most noted for the 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen, “for this and other publications dissenting from Jacobin orthodoxy[…], she became the second woman (after [Queen] Marie Antoinette) to be executed by guillotine, in 1793” (Roelofs 572). Nonetheless, she can certainly be counted as one of the historical women who helped develop and modify traditional gender roles; “de Gouges uses the rhetoric of masculinity and femininity to destabilise gender roles and sexual stereotypes” (Beattie 264). Olympe De Gouges, born Marie Gouze in 1748, was one of the most profound, bellicose and confrontational female advocates of the French Revolution. She is a perfect example of a