Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

Satire is used in literature to criticize or expose fraudulent activities within an individual or society. It ridicules the weaknesses one may have and in return, have it corrected. The purpose of using satire is not to amuse readers but to get a response from them that could possibly lead to a political and/or societal change. In Candide, the main character, Candide lived in the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia, where money was no issue and everyone inside the castle had a pretty happy life. Candide’s mentor and tutor, Pangloss taught optimistic principles without any troubles. Candide had stayed pretty sheltered living in Thunder-ten-tronckh and didn’t have to concern himself with wealth or other hardships of the outside world. But after he was caught by the Baron, who found him kissing his daughter, Cunégonde, he was banished from the castle. He then goes on a journey to get back his love and her freedom. Throughout the novel, Voltaire uses symbolism to portray satire.

Voltaire’s satire contains a strong sense of witful irony and parodies meant to elicit disgust at the topics he is criticizing. “Candide’s” sense of satire is largely derived from the Juvenalian satire which was created by the Roman satirist Juvenal. By using absurdist and ironic images of characters, satirists intend to invoke disgust or laughter at a topic to the point where it is rejected a legitimate. Thi is the point with Voltaire’s mockery of optimism in “Candide”.

   Voltaire successfully uses satire as a means of conveying his opinions about life.  In his novel, Candide, Voltaire satirizes the philosopher Liebnitz's philosophy that this is the best of all possible worlds.  In the novel, the perpetually optimistic and naive character, Candide, travels around the world, having various experiences that prove, at least to the reader, that evil does exist.

Satire is the sarcasm of the writing world, a way to talk or write about serious, normally political, issues in a comedic way that gets through to the people, this is the main writing technique in Candide or Optimism. Through the ironic death of the Anabaptist and the resurrection of less than savory characters in Candide or Optimism, Voltaire satirizes the juxtaposition of the resurrection of the immoral and the death of the virtuous. The Anabaptist, Jacques, the overtly optimistic, Pangloss, the vain and fickle, Cunegonde, and the elitist Baron are all character that meet and untimely “end” but, not all stay dead. Candide or Optimism is a great satirical piece written in 1759 by François-Marie Arouet under the alias Voltaire. This piece, one of the best in the time period, is written

Mary Wollstonecraft emphasizes morality throughout the letter to Edmund Burke. Wollstonecraft quotes that “customs were established by the lawless power of an ambitious individual” (Mary Wollstonecraft 212). This means that even though someone of greater power entrenches laws into a society does not determine the justification of the law itself. Although laws are created to establish sense of order, not all laws are made proper. Wollstonecraft expresses herself to Burke in a moral manner, but Wollstonecraft also attacks Burke 's political theories in a cruel manner. Wollstonecraft continues on by saying “a weak prince was obliged to comply with every demand of the licentious barbarous insurgents, who disputed his authority with irrefragable arguments at the point of their swords” (Wollstonecraft 212). This refers to the current society Wollstonecraft lives in. Wollstonecraft states that the society she lives in corrupt and rotten. The society itself is forced to follow unspoken rules by “the point of

Voltaire, one the Enlightenment's greatest leaders was well known for his use of satire to expose and criticize vices of the 18th century. Through his writing, Voltaire successfully uses irony and parody as a means to satirize what he believes is wrong with 18th-century life. In his novel Candide, Voltaire focuses on many topics, specifically the pitfalls and dangers of optimism, the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, and political injustice. Although humorous, the irony and parody that exists in the novel serve the purpose of exposing the Enlightenment’s widely accepted views of political, philosophical, and religious practices through the eyes of Candide.

One of the primary targets of Voltaire’s satire was the theory of optimism. He opposed the position of philosophers such as Leibniz, who argued that our world is “the best of all possible worlds” (Candide, 2nd Ed, 2). Through, Candide, Voltaire satirizes the absurdity of this theory with the absurdity of Panngloss’ philosophies versus the circumstances that Candide and the other characters experienced. Candide learned the doctrine of optimism from his tutor, Pangloss, whose one of central convictions was that “everything is made to serve and end, everything necessarily serves the best end.” (Candide, 2nd Ed, 2).

Satire is a very difficult strategy to understand in texts that authors often used to ridicule politics and social stands. Voltaire uses to satirize European Society in his book called Candide. The book’s name comes from the main character’s name of the book, Candide: a naive optimism person which represents the European due to their high status. Voltaire shows the corruption and hypocrisy of religion and philosophy through arguing that it is possible to challenge blind optimism without losing the will to live and pursue a happy life through Candide. Candide’s happiness is Miss Cunegonde because even after he get kicked out, he still looks toward “ the magnificent castle, where the fairest of young baronesses lived”(140).

Voltaire presents his magnum opus Candide as a satirical assault onto Leibnizian optimism, a philosophy based on living in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire uses Candide to satirize the foolishness of overarching optimism, and persuades the audience to examine the philosophy pragmatically. Moreover, Voltaire’s most cunning use of satire is in chapter four of Candide in which Pangloss and Candide reunite. This scene encapsulates the entirety of Voltaire’s opinion and does so by justifying the “need” of syphilis in their society and through the anguish brought onto Candide from learning of his lover’s demise.

OPENING STATEMENT. During the 18th Century in Europe, there were many cultural and social differences between men and women. In her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft confronts the many norms of the time period that was a large intellectual and cultural movement. This period of Enlightenment spread throughout Europe quickly, especially through literacy. With people such as Wollstonecraft, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the cultures of then and now are capable of tracking the norms by understanding through reason and ultimately thinking for oneself (McChesney 02/02/2015). By using logic and reason, the evaluation of the social and cultural norms during the Enlightenment are evident in the novel.

Voltaire’s Candide is probably one of many satires or rebuttal against the culture of the enlightenment era. Yet today Candide is probably one of the only texts of the era that students read that speaks against the culture and believes of that time. In fact historian Johnson Wright in the Yale edition of Candide’s Introduction go so far to claim that “Candide has been ‘compulsory reading’ for nearly two hundred and fifty years”(2005). Regardless of what is gained and lost by Voltaire’s use of narrative in the writing of Candide, the tests of time and natural selection have chosen Candide to be a winner in Literature. The most celebrated example of the satire genre in modern literature (Wright, 2005).

Candide is a humorous, far-fetched story satirizing the optimism promoted by the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. Voltaire uses satire as a means of pointing out injustice, cruelty and bigotry that is commonly found in the human society. Although the tale seems light and comical, Voltaire has more serious intentions behind the laughable plot line. Candide can therefore be classified as a satire because it combines humor and wit to bring about a change in society’s view on matters such as religion, war, and the level of optimism one must contain.

In the novel Candide, Voltaire uses irony, exaggeration, understatement, sarcasm and other literary devices in order satirize flaws in society. There are two different types of Satire, that of Horace, which mild and lighthearted, and that of Juvenal, called Juvenalian, which is scornful and scathing, very rarely intended to be funny, but rather make a critique of a societal problem, to call for change. Both types are found in Candide, both characterized in the novel by ironic criticism of weaknesses in society. Voltaire’s main target is Philosophical Optimism, but he also makes commentary on religion, slavery, and war.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a perfect example of the advocacy of women’s equality of conformist feminism. This is important in the progress of many of her works. Her work examined the mixing process in the downgrading of women. Wollstonecraft detected that the social standards, morals, rules and traditional practices commanded and suggested detailed methods on how a woman should act. Women who don’t conform to these standards result in them being called freaks or witches. This is often known in Wollstonecraft’s incomplete novel, Maria, or the wrongs of woman, where the main character is a woman who is imprisoned for trying to leave from her unfortunate marriage. She wasn’t able to excuse her husband’s wicked actions, and did not agree on her title as his possession. Maria tries to leave to Italy with her infant to have a new life. But, she is taken and is put into an insane asylum and her baby girl is taken from her, and we learn later on in the novel that the baby does die. While at the asylum, she shares her life experiences with another patient, Henry Darnford, and her caretaker Jemima; who is of the lower class. After Maria leaves the asylum, she composes a text that was read in a court house stating her accusing Henry of infidelity and seduction. But, the judge reigned contrary to her wishes, because she is a woman. I argue that upon reading Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication to the Rights of Woman provided a feminist lens to read Maria,

Wollstonecraft displays the role of prejudice in the production of a strict code that ostracized women based on perception, rather than lack of virtue, and the effects it has had on society. She uses antithesis to create contrast between the lives of two women, by mentioning the common belief that “an innocent girl” who falls in love is “degraded,” but a woman who is married is capable of breaking the “most sacred engagement” without any consequences (Paragraph 4). Wollstonecraft effectively juxtaposes the ways in which various women are perceived by society, therefore highlighting the differences between them and the flaws in their characterizations. By contrasting two ideas- the possession of virtue and the