A Quick Glance

As I encountered the life stories of both Cunégonde and the old woman, a quite absurd situation once you connect it to the context, I made sense of the intentions. If you recall chapters eight through eleven, you will remember how Cunégonde narrated the story of her misfortunes and completely convinced took the role of ultimate martyr, to be contradicted by the old woman and her story as a sufferer. Cunégonde relates her absurd story as such: “Unless you have been ravished by two Bulgars, had two stabs in your belly, and two of your country houses demolished; unless you have had two mothers and two fathers butchered before your eyes and beheld two of your lovers flogged at an auto-da-fé, I don’t see how you can rival me, especially as I am a baron’s daughter with seventy-two quarterings in my coat of arms, and yet have served as a kitchen maid (p.48-49).” Up to the point it seems completely reasonable that the baron’s daughter challenge the old lady to come up with something better as an impossible deed, for nothing could be worse. The story just mentioned itself was quite absurd as it sounds, but it is a minimum level of absurdity considering the book, which soon comes up with the old lady’s story, absurd as this: “I am the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina. Until the age of fourteen I was brought up in a palace whose very stables were grander than all the mansions of your German barons..I daily increased in beauty… I was betrothed to a sovereign prince of Massa-Carrara assuredly the very pattern of al princes. He was my equal in beauty (p.49-50).” Up to that point it all went pretty well, apart from the absurd thought that this was the story of a servant, until the story meets an absurd downfall. She tells them how a lady who had been the Prince’s mistress poisons him to death, how in her grief she set sail in their magnificent yacht to an estate they owned near Gaeta only to be attacked by a Moorish pirate, how her whole family was torn to pieces in an African civil war, how she was presented as slave, and how she escaped from a pile of corpses. As absurd as it seems, her story in itself was quite more tragic and the amount lost greatly exceeded the first story, that without considering the irony of being the servant of Cunégonde.
If you found the entire previous situation quite unbelievable and impossible, don’t worry, so did I at first glance. Then I ran the stories through my mind a second time to conclude that their details were not important to the message. The third time I thought about it, it hit me that absurdity was exactly what was being emphasized by Voltaire. It is only to be expected that in the midst of a satirical novel the examples used turn up absurd, but that doesn’t discredit the message. In a realistic interpretation, Cunégonde thought of herself in a worse position than someone else giving for granted that the old lady hadn’t met so much misfortune in her life. Being so quick to judge and assume, she was proven wrong in the spot, which the author used to prove his point. The message being sent is the warning against quick and ignorant judgments. As I mentioned in previous blogs: we must understand all the details and “variables” that lead to the end product being encountered. It is said that those who are so quick to judge will be quickly judged themselves. Give yourself a fighting chance.