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The Role Of Women In Voltaire's Candide

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Women in the 18th century often did not have a say in life decisions. They were subjected to the whims of the men around them. In the classic novel, Candide, by Voltaire, the main love interest, Cunegonde, is the victim of this time period. When she is reunited with Candide, she decides to tell him her “story” after he was booted out of the house by her father. Cunegonde essentially divulges that men were imposing their thoughts on her without care for her feelings. This reveals Voltaire’s intention to disclose the inequalities of social standards on females and their feelings of oppression. (grammar???) No matter what horrors are happening to and around a woman, she is unable to prevent or assuage the situation. The moment the Thunder-ten-tronckh family gets murdered by the Bulgars, the lovely Cunegonde gets ravished …show more content…

Men made all decisions for women; in doing so, men control women’s fate. For Cunegonde, being ravished was only the beginning to her suffering and oppression. She gets rescued from the Bulgar by a Bulgar captain, but only because the captain noticed the lack of respect his soldier showed him. Once again, Cunegonde’s thoughts and opinions are completely worthless to those in charge. The Bulgar captain decides her fate for her by taking her as a prisoner of the war; he thought her “pretty as well as useful” (41). However, after he had run out of money and “had grown tired of [her] he sold [her] to Don Issachar” (41). Men who lived during the 18th century were clearly able to do as they please with women without a care for their feelings. Voltaire brings this issue up an abounding number of times in order to raise awareness to those living in his time period about the oppression of women. He attempts to make the public realize that the popular saying, “women are to be seen and not heard,” is not acceptable because women do have feelings and thoughts that get trapped in the 18th century

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In Candide Voltaire discusses the exploitation of the female race in the eighteenth century through the women in the novel. Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman suffer through rape and sexual exploitation regardless of wealth or political connections. These characters possess very little complexity or importance in Candide. With his characterization of Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman Voltaire satirizes gender roles and highlights the impotence of women in the 1800s. Cunegonde is the daughter of a wealthy German lord.

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One key facet of living in the world today is the ability for people to have free will over their own lives. In Voltaire’s story “Candide,” it is clear to observe that although Candide is free to form his own decisions, he allows himself to be strongly determined by his surroundings as well as everyone who he encounters. This story proposes that Candide is trying to find a balance between submitting completely to the speculations and actions of others while also taking control of his life through blind faith. Throughout the story, Candide encounters frequent hardships along his voyage to prosperity. These obstacles include, but are not limited to becoming a bulwark, being beaten and forced to watch his beloved Pangloss having been hanged, leaving such an amazing place as Eldorado, being lied to and tricked out of diamonds by the abb`e, killing Cunegonde’s two lovers, almost being boiled alive for killing the monkey lovers, and being persuaded to be promiscuous on Cunegonde.

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This proved when the narrator’s mother always tried to get the narrator to do work that appropriate for a lady instead of outside work, however it was not something that she enjoyed. The narrator also was not considered of real helper to her father because she was a female. This proved when her father introduced the narrator as ‘his new hired hand’ to a salesman, he replied, “I thought it was only a girl” (line 76, paragraph 10).This shows how the society view girl as ‘just a girl’ at that time and it means that their roles are not really significant in the society. As being said by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “Most women have no character at all.” (Bressler, C.E., 2011).

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