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Minor Characters In Voltaire's Cunegonde

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Cunegonde was the daughter of the German lord/baron. He was a supporter of the Candide until and unless he didn’t discover Candide’s love for his daughter so far. Cunegonde was very young and beautiful girl. When his father’s castle destroyed in the war, many of the exploitative men used her and harass her sexually and take her as their mistress. (Sparknotes.com, n.d.)
Mrs. Paquette is another harassed character in the novella. She was also a kind of mistress in the novel and a minor character too. She was the lover of Pangloss and was maidservant at the place of Baroness. At the very end of the novel, she re-appears at Venice. (Gradesaver.com, n.d.)
Basically, according to the novella, we can see the value of women through the less and the minor characters in it. There are very few female characters in it. All of them are minor characters and very given low and suppressed yet oppressed life to live in the society.
As we can see from the comment by the old …show more content…

Their lives are depicted very similar in the case of sexuality, oppressed, suppressed and exploited manner. Since Cunegonde, Paquette, and the old women were all from the same category not because of status rather because of their character, condition and gender. We can say that Voltaire was the one of the best and the first feminist of his time. He describes all conditions of the women in the society through his works, especially through his this novel Candide by his characters consequently. From the very start of the novel, we could see the importance of the female characters like Cunegonde and Paquette were having less importance and rather they were described as the physical beings due to their beauty. According to their physical appearances, one was described as “plump, appetizing” and “extremely beautiful” (Voltaire 3-4), and the second was pronounced as a “pretty and tractable little brunette” (Voltaire,

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