Women In The Thousand And One Nights

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Continuously in literature women take a backseat to the men; women are often portrayed to be incapable of fulfilling the roles “intended” for men by society. Usually in these stories women are illustrated as weaker or inferior to their male counterparts. Often characterized as helpless or as servant to the man, manipulative and untrustworthy, very rarely do we see woman in charge woman and with power like Clytemnestra in Agamemnon or women who are educating the man for a change like we see Shahrazad do with the many woman of her stories in The Thousand and One Nights. In both stories the doing of both women are seen as negative when actually they are trying to fight so that one day woman can be treated equal to men. Agamemnon takes place…show more content…
“And suddenly there were ten slave-girls and ten black slaves…Then the ten black slaves mounted the ten girls.” (Puchner Martin, 558) Another example comes from another one of Shahabad’s stories “The tale of the Merchant and His Wife “ in this story the merchant is capable of understanding animals, a secret that no one must know, but when his wife begins to threaten his life if he doesn’t tell her he has no idea what to do. For a little while the wife has control over her husband, but he I then reminded that he is the one with all the power because he could simply scare her into leaving him alone by beating her, giving him back his power over her. He gets this idea from the rooster who he hears say; “He should go on beating her until he cure her for life, and she will never oppose him in anything”. (Puchner Martin,…show more content…
She learned magic and cast a spell on the sun turned him into a bull and turned his mother into a cow then gave them to a Shepard. Who she planned to have butchered them, it was too late to save the mother but her son got lucky and was sparred, then later found out the truth and that’s when he decided to give her a taste of her own medicine and turned his wife into a
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