One of the first feminists, Olympe de Gouges, began her life in 1748 when she born Marie Gouze in Montauban, Quercy in southwest France. Her mother was Olympe Mouisset and her legal father, Pierre Gouze, was a butcher, but she claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of Jean-Jacques Lefranc, Marquis de Pompignan. She was forced in 1765 to marry a man she felt great repugnance for and did not love. He was a caterer and minor official named Louis Aubry. In 1767, around the time he died, she moved with her son, Pierre, to Paris where her sister Jeanne was living.

Whether the name Gouges was a variant spelling or not is unclear. However, what is clear is that Jeanne sometimes signed her name Gouges, and Olympe also adopted Gouges as her surname instead of taking her father’s or husband’s last name. As a single woman intent on surviving in Paris alone, her own surname helped her to establish her independence and identity. Continue reading →

One famous French beauty and socialite was Juliette Récamier or Madame Récamier. She was known to hobnob regularly with aristocrats and the elite, and one day, in 1803, when she was hosting and mingling, a rather interesting incident occurred. It involved Jean March Gaspard Itard. He was a French physician at the National Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and he had been accompanied to Madame Récamier’s by a feral boy* whose case he had taken up and whom he named Victor of Aveyron.

The story of Victor begins when he was first spotted by woodsmen near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance in the commune of Aveyron as early as 1794. Periodically, between 1797 and 1798, Victor was again seen. Stories differ as to whether he emerged from the forest on his own or whether woodsmen captured him with their nets. However, once he emerged from the woods, he stayed with numerous people, although he also ran away regularly and was recaptured. Continue reading →