Introduction
- Thesis: Despite the patriarchal society of its setting, demonstrating a world in which men hold power and authority, the women of One Thousand and One Nights possess a surprising amount of strength and conviction.
- Men in The Arabian Nights are possessive, vindictive and petty, particularly if they are rich.
- Ex. The king wanting to put Scheherazade to death
- The king represents the doubtful man who does not believe women are to be trusted
- Women in The Arabian Nights were often concubines and slaves, or old shrewish wives.
- Morality of women varies – some are good, some are bad
- Scheherazade is the hero of the book; her overall goal is to repair the King’s mistrust of all women
- Women are equally as cunning as men – in “The Tale of the Enchanted King” the queen drugs the king in order to have an affair
- Most of these women are shown as worthy of treachery, but Aladdin’s mother in “Aladdin in the Enchanted Lamp” "sold the shop with all its contents and took to cotton-spinning in order to support herself and her child" (p. 165).
- Unlike in The Arabian Nights, women are no longer forced to be concubines and slaves, but there is still a patriarchal sensibility to today’s world.
- The cheating wife/girlfriend is still a fundamental fear among men, which leads them to be possessive and capricious.
Conclusion
- Restate Thesis
Works Cited
Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Dawood, N. J. (trans.) Penguin Books, 1954. Print
