Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels and Voltaires...

The author Joseph Conrad once remarked, Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. In analyzing Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels and Voltaires Candide, it is intriguing and revealing how these male authors deal with women. Through understanding how these seminal works portray women one can gain the literary criticism tools to examine similar social issues in other texts. In Candide, there are repeated accounts of the sexual exploitation of women. Voltaire seems to use the stories of these women to make a point that there are special dangers to which only women are subdue too. The male characters in Candide, seem to be that of very hypocritical context. They value sexual purity in the women but make it remotely impossible for women to keep it, exposing rather hypocritical aspects of morals. Not only in the book were women used as slaves, but so were the men. They were bought and sold as many times as one could possibly imagine. When Candide was entering England he saw an admiral being executed for the crime of fighting with insufficient audacity against the French. Candide, himself, is even enlisted into and abused by the army of the Bulgar King. Voltaire was a human rights activist, so the message he seems to be communicating is that the means that people are being treated are horrific, there complete injustices that should not be used under any circ umstance. In Gullivers Travels, the remarks regarding womenShow MoreRelated Satire in the Eighteenth Century Essay790 Words   |  4 Pagesinterpretations characterized the spirit of the eighteenth century. Science was flourishing, and therefore it brought new discoveries that challenged the traditional dominating force of religion.   Influential figures of the age, such as Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, and William Hogarth, strove to assure human betterment and advance human thinking through truth and humorous criticism.   They employed the use of satire in order to accomplish their common goal.    According to A Handbook of LiteraryRead MoreOptimism1666 Words   |  7 Pageswhich  Voltaire  famously mocked in his satirical novel  Candide. The philosophical pessimism of  William Godwin  demonstrated perhaps even more optimism than Leibniz. He hoped that society would eventually reach the state where calm reason would replace all violence and force, that mind could eventually make matter subservient to it, and that intelligence could discover the secret of  immortality. Much of this philosophy is exemplified in the  Houyhnhnms  of  Jonathan Swifts  Gullivers Travels. Panglossianism The term panglossianism