The women had to suffer rape while still virgins, which must have been a horrible time in their lives. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in the old woman's case it happened several times. Cunegonde's response was to scream, fight, bite, claw and try to gouge out the Bulgarian soldier's eyes (Voltaire, 31). Cunegonde tried to resist the rape but was overpowered and stabbed, which would be expected in such a situation. From the way she narrated the events to Candide you can see how strong she is in being able to overcome this, on the other hand she didn't have much time to dwell on it as the events around her forced her to move on. The old woman did not describe too much what happened when she was raped but said that “The princess of Palestrina and I certainly needed all our strength to resist everything we suffered...(Voltaire 40)” From this we can deduce that the women were raped several times during the journey. from what we read next, however, we can say that it must have taken great strength to keep going, even though there were times when he thought about committing suicide. Women were strong and had a good ability to adapt to situations they found themselves in a little better than