1. My facetious suggestion (you know, the one that produced dead silence: that the old lady is quite deliberately presented as "half-assed") turns out to be anachronistic. Worse, it relies on a pun only available in English translation (the native-French-speaking friend I consulted tells me there's no equivalent French term that combines butts with the sense of things being poorly done or ill-considered.) In case you're curious, the term originates in American English, with a first recorded usage of 1938. It doesn't appear in British English ("half-arsed") until 1961.
2. People seem to name their cats after characters in Candide more frequently than one might expect. Or so I have gathered from searching Google Images for graphics to put on the blog.
Why doesn't the old lady have a name?
Deadline: Friday (4/29), start of class.
6 comments:
I'd argue that her namelessness comes because of her ideas. To me it seems that by not having a name, her ideas about "the middle road" path are being given a significant weight. Other minor, servant-related characters have names, but she does not. Voltaire wants us to pay closer attention to what she's saying, instead of who is saying it.
It also allows him to throw the character away easier. It could just as easily be convenience; or both.
I think that Voltaire did not give a name for the old woman to show that being born into a noble family isn't really important. It does not protect you or give you all the power in the world. Voltaire pokes fun at a lot of the political and religious authorities in the story and points out their many flaws. They are made out to be pompous and controlling of everything to their desires. The old woman was born into a noble class, but she was stripped of her life and her name. But if it weren't for her unfortunate happenings to make her end up as a servant and only half of an ass, would she have experienced everything and still found that the world was worth living in? It seems that Voltaire is saying that until you are able to detach yourself from your name, you will not living a meaningful life.
I think she's not named because she's not supposed to be seen as a "person" as much as an example for the philosophy she's proposing. I think we're supposed to believe that anyone put in her circumstances would come to the same conclusions as she does, so a name would detract from the ability of the reader to hear her story and understand how it applies to all humans. This is the point she's making -- that it's not only she who didn't commit suicide although she had suffered so much, that it's in human nature to keep living regardless of getting half of your butt cut off.
I honestly have no idea. I think if I were speculating I'd agree with the first suggestion that she's easy to throw away, but also with the second post that suggests that being from a noble family means nothing because that does not prevent suffering and hardships in the world.
None of the ideas presented by the old woman seem particularly specific or important as far as summing them up in one identity would go. She mostly stands as a symbol of hardship, which is emphasized even more by this title, both "old" and "woman" being labels of potentially heavy burden, and only highlighting the fact that she has an abundance of experience. A name would take away from her character and meaning.
Voltaire simply ran into that question which has stumped great minds throughout history: What can you call an old woman with half a rear end that would also be a good name for a cat?
Sadly, history will show that in the face of this challenge he blinked.
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