Death Comes to the Maiden by Camille Naish

Author:Camille Naish [Naish, Camille]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Social History, Modern, 17th Century, Reference, General, 19th Century, 18th Century, Europe, Renaissance
ISBN: 9781136247620
Google: Fb9Y0UgN-K0C
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-07T15:55:40+00:00

The play closed after three nights, causing its author to ask justice of Bailly, Mayor of Paris. But Bailly simply reproached her for Zamora's incendiary themes. Olympe then appealed to her fellow-writers for solidarity, without noticeable effect; finally, in August 1792, certain men of letters - La Harpe, Ducis, Chamfort, Mercier, Flo nan and Chenier - presented a petition to the National Assembly asking for a more liberated theatre and some assurance of an author's rights. Bailly relented, reopening the case of Zamora. By this time, however, Olympe had turned to revolutionary politics.

As a Frenchwoman, Olympe had welcomed the convocation ol the Third Estate; she hoped the deputies would notice her ardent patriotism. The thought of mobilising patriotic women came to her after the Assembly formally received the wives and daughters of Parisian artists in September 17B9. Mirabeau approved of her plan - "as long as women are not involved, there is no true revolution', he declared - as did the Marquis de Condorcet, who shared her opinions on black rights. Olympe's patriotism soon took on overtones of sympathetic feminism, attesting to a spontaneous and practical compassion for her sex. In her Patriotic Remarks of 1788-9 she proposed constructing shelters for the elderly, the homeless, for abandoned children and the widows of labourers killed while at work: 'Often they are pregnant when their husband is brought back on a stretcher, and the unfortunate widows remain without assistance for some time, with no bread for the children who cry out for it.' Her Useful and Salutary Projects of 1789 contained thoughts on hygiene and maternity:

Are there any appalling torments not experienced by women, when they become mothers? And how many lose their lives, giving birth? No art can succour them, and one sees young women dying in the arms of doctors after suffering day and night from keenest pain, after giving life to men, not one of whom has seriously busied or concerned himself in the slightest with the tortures he has caused.

(Blanc, 1981, p. 194)

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