Representation Of Women In Candide Essay

Representation of Women in Candide In Voltaire's Candide, satire is used throughout to mock the world of its existing philosophy back in the era of Enlightenment. The role of women in Candide exemplify how they suffer and are mistreated at the time. Their characters are seen as tools for man's pleasure. The stories of the women in the novel illustrate the hypocrisy and irony of the Enlightenment, which was a time of intellectual freedom and the equality for man and woman. Cunegonde, Candide's lover, was beautiful, wealthy, and was the daughter of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh. She lived in a great kingdom, which possessed one of the most beautiful castles for the mere fact that it had a door and windows. Her perfect world was turn when the Bulgars attacked the castle and “she was disemboweled by Bulgar soldiers after having been raped as much as a woman can be”(23). Despite all the physical pain she endured that night, she survived but was left scarred for life. The one who had rescued her, ended up selling her to “a Jew who traded in Holland
and Portugal and was passionately fond of women”(32). This passage shows how man view the purpose of woman; as a representation of sex. The old woman is another character in the novel who is a victim of such atrocious acts.
She too, had all the wealth, beauty, and power one would love to possess. All of it diminished after a brutal attack from the Barbary pirates. They violently stormed the castle and killed all in sight. These monsters grabbed all the women and used them as sex slaves. The old woman was claimed by the captain and was raped many times. After she escaped, she found a man to help her but was betrayed when he sold her off in Algiers. Throughout the months she“had undergone poverty and slavery, been raped almost every day, seen her mother cut into quarters, experienced hunger and war, and was now dying of the plague in Algiers”(47). Her experience was absolutely agonizing. The woman’s experiences in the novel are far worse than any man. The man is immediately executed if there is to be a war, but the woman get a far worse treatment than
death. The animalistic view of men in the novel is to use women for self pleasure. The treatment of women does not comply with the era. Enlightenment was suppose to be a time of moving forward and putting the roles of men and women aside and make them equal. Instead one can still see how men enslave the women and sell them off as if they were some sort of object. In today's world one can still see that women are becoming victims of sex trafficking and many succumb to rape. Women deserve to be seen as equal and have a defined character instead of being used for sex.