Voices of the past
Doléances from other centuries, grouped by the language they were written in.
Each text is translated automatically, so that none of them is closed to you.
Raised to the same dignity
If it is glorious for a monarch to reign over free men, it is no less so for him to reign over women raised to the same dignity.
Goddesses of another kind
Further, let your minister open the annals of our ancestors: he will see that in our Gaul of old, our princes, our chiefs, our magistrates took no important deliberation, whether for peace or for war; that they formed no essential plan, and carried none out, without having first consulted our sex. The men of that time held us capable of great affairs; they paid homage to our talents; they were more just than the men of today. Why so? Because they were less haughty and less tyrannical. We were in their eyes so many goddesses — but goddesses of another kind than the goddesses of our own day.
Schools, colleges, universities
We have to propose the establishment of schools, colleges and universities to which we may be admitted, there to receive the instruction necessary to the full development of our intellectual faculties, so that we may contribute, as far as lies in us, to the immortal work of the general happiness.
Laws that cannot bind
Whether laws pronounced without the knowledge and against the will of those fourteen million rejected souls could bind them; whether they are not entitled to complain of the insulting omission made of their persons in a matter that concerns them as much.
Talents kept buried
It can therefore be only to male despotism that we owe this universal ignorance in which all our talents are kept buried; only to that voluptuous tyranny of men, who have made of us so many automata, pleasing enough to divert and amuse them.
Taxing spending, not land alone
They likewise vote that persons owning no landed property — merchants, bankers, capitalists and rentiers — be taxed in proportion to their spending and their lodging.
Wheat beyond reach
That wheat, at the excessive price at which it now stands — from 40 to 50 livres the setier weighing 300 pounds — is beyond the reach of the people in general, and does not allow them to live, being unable to meet it by their day-labour and wages; which is a striking grievance that the King's goodness may remedy.
A frivolous education
Is it not outrageous that only our bodily faculties are cultivated in us, as though we were mere matter, as though we had no soul? Is it not shameful that they confine themselves to teaching us to compose our bearing, to make our gestures symmetrical, to measure our step, to dance with grace, to sing with melody — as though they saw in us nothing but puppets and feather-headed linnets?
The crushing burden
The inhabitants of Houdan, assembled and undersigned, protest against the crushing burden of taxes and charges of every kind — taille, capitation, vingtièmes, trade tax, corvée labour, aides, gabelle, registration duty, franc-fief — to all of which the financial administration has given every possible increase and extension.
The eloquence of suffering
We alone suffer from it, and the eloquence of suffering is more moving, more affecting and more illuminating than the eloquence of cold reason. Men charged with pleading our cause would not bring to it that warmth, that fire which brings truth to light.
Not by order, but by head
There is but one favour we dare press upon Your Majesty: that our opinions be taken, not by order, but by head; because the more of us there are to speak, the better our interests will be debated and the better they will be known.
Because they are men
It is therefore because they are men that they are called to the council of the nation; and we are shut out of it because we are not. What unworthy partiality! Is it then an ignominious stain to be born a woman? Shall it be said that under so enlightened a reign we must blush for our sex?
Fourteen million souls, forgotten
What, Sire! Your Majesty declares before the face of Europe a will to assemble the entire nation — and forgets us in the summons!
[...] To count fourteen million souls for nothing would undoubtedly be proof of the most complete incompetence in arithmetic, as in legislation.
Without the Sabine women
Rome was born, it is true, without the ministry of women; but without the Sabine women, what would have become of Rome? She would have vanished from the face of the earth almost as soon as she was born.
On divorce, without hearing us
We mean the question of divorce, upon which reason and nature do not permit any ruling without our participation and without hearing us; seeing that, if divorce were to pass into law, our ever-tyrannical legislators might annex to it clauses wholly to our charge, to which it would be unjust to subject us by force.
An assembly called representative
We ask whether a national assembly from which the most numerous class is unjustly banished can reasonably be called the representative assembly of that same nation.
One tax, on all property
They vote particularly for the soonest possible suppression of the aides and the gabelles; that a general tax on land be established, levied in money upon property of every kind, whether belonging to the Clergy, to the nobles, to the privileged or to others, to make good not only the yield of those two most disastrous taxes, but also that of any others whose suppression should be judged necessary to the well-being and tranquillity of society; offering to remit the proceeds of the said tax directly to the Royal treasury and without charges.