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horrors she has endured are the worst possible horrors one could endure until her conversation

with the old woman in which she learns of the old woman’s own vicissitudes. The old woman

shares her story with Candide and Cunegonde and humbly dissolves Miss Cunegonde’s naïve

perspective.

The old woman is the oddity of this odyssey. At first glance it seems almost impossible to

find reconciliation in her story, but upon a deeper examination I believe it is possible. Leonard

Marsh in his article “Voltaire’s Candide” writes of the old woman, “One character is unique in

that she enters the story immune to change, ready made, having already developed and

degenerated, her youth spent and beauty destroyed, her body already deformed,” but the old

woman is not immune to change and therefore reconciliation exists (Marsh 144). Voltaire

writes:

…the old woman ventured to say:-I should like to know which is worse, being raped a

hundred times by negro pirates, having a buttock cut off, running the gauntlet in the

Bulgar army, being flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fé, being dissected and rowing in

the galleys-experiencing, in a word, all the miseries through which we have passed-or

else just sitting here and doing nothing? (Voltaire 411–412)

This question clearly shows that the old woman has been through and experienced so much that

she now has become naïve, or to say she has forgotten how to lead an uneventful and dull life.

Reconciliation in this example comes from the old woman’s regression from worldliness to

naïveté, rather than a progression from naïveté to worldliness. Reconciliation like this can also be

found in Candide’s loyal valet.

Cacambo, Candide’s loyal valet, is another character who, much like the old woman, has

seen and experienced many things the world has to offer. Prior to becoming Candide’s loyal

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