Olympe Audouard(1832 — 1890)
Olympe Audouard
France
8 min read
Olympe Audouard (1832–1890) was a French writer, journalist, and feminist. A tireless traveler, she journeyed through the Middle East and the United States and published accounts of her travels. She campaigned for women's rights, particularly the right to divorce and access to education.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- 1832: born in Aix-en-Provence
- 1862: founded the feminist journal *Le Papillon*
- 1860s–1870s: travels to Egypt, the Middle East, and the United States; travel accounts published
- Actively campaigned for the reinstatement of divorce, abolished since the Civil Code of 1804
- 1890: died in Nice
Works & Achievements
Her most celebrated militant work, in which she forcefully demands the reinstatement of divorce, abolished since 1816. She denounces the condition of the married woman reduced to the status of a civil minor under the Napoleonic Code.
An account of her journey to the Orient describing the lives of Turkish women with an ethnographic curiosity rare for the time. This book transforms the purely exotic vision of the Orient into a nuanced, comparative observation.
A firsthand account of Egyptian and Syrian societies, the fruit of an exceptional solo journey for a woman of her era. Olympe Audouard weaves together landscape descriptions, local customs, and comparisons with French society.
An account of her stay in the United States, where she discovered with admiration the far greater freedom enjoyed by American women. She compares the situation of women on both sides of the Atlantic, decidedly in favor of the Americans.
A Parisian literary and artistic periodical that Olympe Audouard founded and directed, using the press as a platform to spread her feminist ideas while publishing society columns and travel writing.
Anecdotes
Married very young to a Marseille merchant, Olympe Audouard endured an unhappy union that left a deep mark on her. This personal experience of marital oppression became the driving force behind all her activism: throughout her life, she campaigned for the restoration of divorce — abolished since 1816 — to free women from unbearable marriages.
In 1866, Olympe Audouard traveled alone to Egypt and Syria — an exceptional journey for a woman of her era. There she observed the condition of women in the East and brought back an account that caused a sensation in Paris, blending ethnographic observations with feminist reflections. Some readers refused to believe that a woman could have undertaken such a journey on her own.
In the United States, Olympe Audouard met pioneers of American feminism and gave public lectures in English before mixed audiences — something exceedingly rare for a French woman of her time. Back in France, she recounted in her books that American women enjoyed a social freedom far greater than that of French women.
Olympe Audouard was one of the first French women to dare take the podium and deliver paid public lectures. In 1866, she rented a Parisian hall to speak about the condition of women before a large audience. This boldness earned her as much admiration as it did sharp criticism in the conservative press.
Founder of the literary journal *Le Papillon* around 1862, Olympe Audouard served as its editor and chief contributor. She used it to champion the cause of women while publishing travel and society chronicles. The title symbolized for her the superficial lightness that society imposed on women — the very thing she sought to transcend.
Primary Sources
The American woman is free: she can work, travel, appear alone in public without her reputation suffering for it. No one asks her to account for her comings and goings, and this freedom, far from ruining her, seems to elevate her.
I wanted to see for myself what is called the Orient, without intermediaries, without an official guide, in order to bring back a true and personal impression. A woman alone in these lands causes surprise; but surprise is not always unpleasant.
Divorce must be restored. Without this fundamental freedom, woman remains bound to a contract she sometimes signed as a child, knowing neither the world nor herself. The law makes a wife a minor for life.
The Turkish woman, believed to be confined and ignorant, often possesses a sharpness of mind and a knowledge of the world that surprises the European traveler who is quick to pity her without knowing her.
Key Places
Birthplace of Olympe Audouard in 1832, in the south of France. Her Provençal roots shaped her independent character and determined temperament.
The center of all her intellectual and activist work: it was in Paris that she founded *Le Papillon*, delivered her public lectures, and moved in the literary and feminist circles of her time.
Olympe Audouard visited Egypt in the 1860s and brought back a fascinated account of Oriental women and Egyptian society, which fed her comparative reflections on the condition of women.
Her journey to the United States allowed her to meet the pioneers of American feminism and observe a society where women enjoyed greater freedoms. She drew on this experience for her book *À travers l'Amérique*.
Olympe Audouard died in Nice in 1890, in this Mediterranean coastal city that had only been part of France since 1860.
