75 pages • 2 hours read
VoltaireCandide
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1759A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
The old woman tells her story. She is the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina, raised in a palace in Italy. At 14, she was young and beautiful and betrothed to the prince of Massa-Carrara, who is assassinated by his lover just before their marriage. She retreats to their estate near Gaeta with her mother, but they are captured by pirates who surprise them with a body cavity search, looking for hidden jewels, “a custom established from time immemorial among the civilized seafaring nations” (26). The girl is raped by the Corsair captain, and they are brought to Morocco where they encounter war. Her mother and handmaids are killed, “massacred by the monsters who contended over them” (27), but she survives and collapses “from shock, from fatigue, from hunger, from horror and despair” (28) under an orange tree. She is awakened by an attractive man rubbing himself on her and moaning “What a misfortune to be without testicles” (28) in Italian.
Chapter 12 Summary
The old woman continues her story. She is delighted to hear her native language but informs the man there are “greater misfortunes” (28) than missing testicles. She recounts her story to him and faints again, and he carries her to his house, feeds her and tends to her, flattering her for her beauty. He was born in Naples and castrated as a child, later becoming a soloist in the chapel of the Princess of Palestrina, her mother. He remembers having a hand in raising her until she was six, before he was traded to the King of Morocco as part of a treaty with one Christian power to “assist him in destroying the trade of the other Christian powers” (29).
He offers to take her back to Italy, but instead sells her in Algiers to the Dey. A plague breaks out and almost everyone dies except her, and she is subsequently sold in a series of exchanges, in Tunis, Tripoli, Alexandria, and Smyrna. She ends up with the aga of the Turkish janissaries in Constantinople and is brought along to their war against the Russians. In this war their fort is under siege and the janissaries begin to eat eunuchs and then the women. An imam persuades them not to kill the women, but “cut off one buttock from each of these ladies, and you will be well provided for” (30).
Soon the Russians attack and kill all the janissaries; the women are captured and the Russians’ French doctor heals her. He propositions her and tells the women to “cheer up,” for “this sort of thing happened all the time in sieges, and that was the rule of war” (30). She is then allocated to a minor Russian nobleman, where she is his gardener for two years. He is killed after a political intrigue and she flees across Europe, working in taverns from Riga to Rotterdam. She has lived in shame, wishing to kill herself, but she was “still in love with life” (31) and this “absurd weakness” (31) keeps her alive. As a servant to Don Issacar, she is assigned to serve Cunégonde, for whom she now has more concern than for herself. She suggests Cunégonde should invite the other passengers to tell their stories to pass the time, saying Cunégonde can throw her into the sea if she finds “a single one of them who has not repeatedly cursed his existence, who has not repeatedly told himself that he is the unhappiest man alive” (31).
Chapter 13 Summary
Cunégonde shows the old woman new respect “owing to one of her rank and quality” (31) and they invite all the passengers to recount their stories, eventually conceding “that the old woman was right” (31). Candide remarks that he might object to some of Pangloss’ philosophy if he was alive to lecture them. The ship arrives in Buenos Aires, where they visit the Governor, Don Fernando d’Ibarra y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza, who is intensely interested in Cunégonde. He asks if she is Candide’s wife, and Candide, whose heart is “too pure to betray the truth” (32) only admits she has agreed to marry him.
The Governor sends Candide to review his company, while he proposes marriage to Cunégonde. The old woman advises her to accept the proposal, given Cunégonde’s family pedigree and current poverty, reminding her of her previous misfortunes and advising her to forget Candide. At that moment, a ship arrives with a magistrate and policemen looking for the murderers of the Grand Inquisitor. They had tracked Candide and Cunégonde from Spain, following the confession of the Franciscan who had tried to sell the jewels he stole from Cunégonde in Badajoz. The old woman tells Cunégonde to stay under the protection of the governor, and for Candide to flee, warning that “within the hour you will be burned alive” (33).
Chapter 14 Summary
Candide is urged to flee by his valet Cacambo, the son of a “half-breed from Tucuman” (34). Cacambo, who loves Candide because he is “the best of men” (34), saddles their horses to flee. Candide bursts into tears, asking what will become of Cunégonde, and Cacambo replies “She will become whatever she can […] Women are never at a loss; God sees to that” (34), encouraging him to flee to the Jesuits in Paraguay. Cacambo describes their “kingdom” (34), where the Jesuits own everything and wage war against the same Kings of Spain and Portugal they serve as confessors to in Europe, “who kill Spaniards over here, and in Madrid send them to heaven” (35). He assures Candide they will be happy to meet someone who knows the Bulgar drill.
They arrive and are immediately surrounded by soldiers and disarmed. They are told to wait, but when Cacambo tells them Candide is German and not Spanish, he is welcomed and led to an arbor where they have lunch. Their weapons and horses are returned to them, and while they wait to meet the Reverend Father Provincial they speak with the commanding officer, who turns out to be Cunégonde’s brother. The two are tearfully reunited, and the latter dismisses his servants. Their reunion is happy as they reconnect and share their stories.
Chapter 15 Summary
Cunégonde’s brother recounts what happened to him when their castle was attacked and he was presumed killed. A Jesuit sprinkled holy water on him and it got into his eyes; when his eyelids moved the Jesuit saw he was alive and nursed him back to health. He says he was a pretty boy, and the Reverend father Croust developed a “most tender affection” (37) for him, initiating him as a Jesuit and sending him to Rome, and then to Paraguay where they prefer foreigners to Spanish, who “they can control more easily” (37). In Paraguay he becomes a colonel and a priest, where he fights against the Spanish. After asking about Cunégonde, her brother proposes they “enter Buenos Aires together as victors” (38) to rescue her, to which Candide agrees, admitting they are engaged to be married. The brother is suddenly outraged, recalling the “seventy-two quarterings” (38) on their coat of arms. He slaps Candide, who then plunges his sword into his former master’s belly. Horrified he exclaims, “I am the mildest man alive, yet I have now killed three men, two of them priests” (38). Candide exclaims to Cacambo it is time to die fighting, but Cacambo has seen worse and keeps his cool; he dresses Candide in the Baron’s clothing and they quickly escape in disguise.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
The old woman’s story is similar to Cunégonde’s but much worse. As if to confirm Cunégonde’s sarcastic comment in Chapter 10 that her suffering had to be doubled (raped by two Bulgars, stabbed twice, etc.), the old woman’s tale includes the same violations and tragedies Cunégonde experiences, but magnified in suffering. Her social status is much higher than Cunégonde’s, having been the daughter of a pope and a princess, and thus her fall into servitude twice as low. Her beauty in her youth is more than Cunégonde’s, but it makes her an even more valuable object, to be captured and exchanged from man to man across the Mediterranean into Russia. Her journey is longer and full of tragedy: from her mother’s violent death to her own rape, surviving the plague, war, and famine, and sacrificing a buttock during a siege in Azov.
Despite growing old in “poverty and shame” (30), she has reconciled herself with the fact that through an “absurd weakness” (31) she is incapable of killing herself. She is still in love with life, which is what keeps her going. Above all she is a survivor, and as she says, “I have lived, and I know the world” (31). This love of life is evident in Voltaire’s prose, whose use of irony makes her story both amusing and humorous despite the tragic chain of events. An example of this is when the French physician cures the women after the removal of their buttocks, only to proposition her and comfort the women by assuring them “this sort of thing happened all the time in sieges, and that it was the rule of war” (30). Voltaire’s satire is sharpest in these humorous moments, where the constant insistence that even the most violent and violating comportment is “normal” because it has always been that way, when clearly it should be unacceptable.
While the old woman’s story is arguably more tragic than Cunégonde’s, both women’s tales share the same types of suffering that are particular to women. Losing the protection of their families, they become simple objects of desire, passed between men, violated, sold and harmed, and sold for a profit when convenient. In Chapter 14, Cacambo remarks, “Women are never at a loss; God sees to that” (34), implying that the value of the female body as an item of exchange will keep women alive and cared for. However, as both Cunégonde and the old woman show, survival comes at a high price, and less assured once a woman loses her youth and beauty.
Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, Cunégonde is quickly identified as an object of desire by a Governor with an absurdly long name (Don Fernando d’Ibarra y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza), and Candide, still too naïve to guess the man’s strategy, is duped into admitting they are not yet married and is sent off to review his company. The old woman sees the opportunity as well and puts her experience to good use, pragmatically advising Cunégonde to attach herself to the wealthy Governor. In turn, Candide and Cacambo must flee the Inquisition, which has followed them to South America. The narrative leaves the women in Buenos Aires while Candide takes up travels with a new companion.
Juxtaposed to Candide’s inexperience in the world, Cacambo is a traveling companion with plenty of experience. He is loyal to Candide and considers him the “best of men” (34). As they begin their adventure together, he convinces Candide to keep moving and stay alive, despite his sadness at losing Cunégonde once again. He often acts as a cultural translator, helping Candide navigate their arrival among the Jesuits in Paraguay, and like the old woman, he thinks quickly to form an escape plan after Candide impulsively kills the Baron. Characters like the old woman and Cacambo assure Candide escapes when he is too caught up in emotion to consider his survival.
Candide’s arrival among the Jesuits allows Voltaire to criticize the settlements they established in South America in the 17th and 18th centuries, which were thought to be experiments in socialism (or socialist theocracies), but which were banned by the Catholic Church. Voltaire hints that these communes became too autonomous, professed austerity but profited well, and like a miniature kingdom, came into conflict with Spain. As such, to enter the “kingdom” peacefully Candide identifies himself as a German, after which he is graciously welcomed inside.
Continuing a common motif in Candide, Candide encounters another acquaintance whom he thought to be dead; here, the Baron reenters the narrative, if only for a moment. This encounter is an opportunity for Voltaire to satirize the Jesuits and mock their order. Among some of the hypocrisies in the Baron’s story, his recruitment into the order has obvious homosexual undertones, which would be incongruent with Catholic theology. Likewise, as a Jesuit, he trains to become a “colonel and priest” (37)— two positions that are antithetical to devout Christian teaching. On a personal level, the Baron is satirized for his inability to release values that have no meaning anymore; even though they have lost their family wealth and Cunégonde’s virtue has been compromised (thus her “value” diminished), the Baron still refuses to let Candide marry her. Ironically, Candide is likely his first cousin, sharing the same family line, and thus would be considered an acceptable match in the 18th century. The Baron is stuck on the superiority of their lineage, which belongs to an old value system and another time. Because of this, he is supposedly killed again, as Candide and Cacambo escape into the South American wilderness.
