The Role Of Women In Voltaire's Candide

The Role of Women in Voltaire 's Candide
In Voltaire 's Candide, the author characterizes the women being relentlessly misused and raped, insensitive of any social or political class. Female characters such as Cunegonde, the old woman, and Paquette were set on that stage to due to the social standards in the eighteenth century. Cunegonde, the old woman, and Paquette weren 't major characters, but Voltaire stressed the gender roles and weakness of women in the society throughout the novel.
A perfect example of indifferent of any social or political class would be Lady Cunegonde, who is from a prosperous family with political influence. Lady Cunegonde depicted as a damsel in distress because most of the time when she is in a dilemma, she usually needs a man to save her. Conjointly it shows the weakness she has, and her dependence on men which the society believed that women were the …show more content…
They were treated as slaves and pets because the men would buy, borrow, and trade women. They were more like property than a wife, sister, mother, or maid, because of all the philosophies of men being the greater good, when they are sometimes the cause of war due to their pride. Conjointly women strip off their dignity and pride to the point where they are not regarded as people but a piece of meat that men. Another thing was that they had a value which was beauty and if the woman was not beautiful, she is thrown away like debris. For example when the old had her buttock cut off and the other deformations that left her body scarred with uglies, no one really wanted her besides to clean and cook. The same occurred with Lady Cunegonde, when she lost her beauty she lost her value to Candide, which ultimately lead her to misery because she wasn 't able to use her looks for recognition. Women played two main roles in Candide which was carnal and serving whether as a maid or