Depiction of Women in the Arabian Nights Novels

Middle East Literature: Portrayal of women in the Arabian Nights
Introduction
Women play a significant role in the Arabian Nights. Many of the stories and tales in the collection explore the nature, potential dangers, and limits of the sexual drive or desires of women. The frame narrative about women and their sexual desires starts to emerge when in a tale about the wife of a sultan and her affairs with a slave. This calls into question the loyalty of women and puts into focus infidelity among women. This forces the storyteller, Shahraz?d, to use her storytelling skills calm down Shahrayar's rage against women by letting him know that other women like herself are different and do not in any way threaten marital institutions and families (Shamma, 239-260). So the work goes from the portrayal of women as bad or as lesser beings to their portrayal as princesses or good people. This current paper explores this dual portrayal of women in the Arabian Nights, which is very similar to how women are presently portrayed and treated in the Arab World.
In the Arabian Nights tales, women are generally treated as lesser beings by men. If they do not act in compliance with men's wishes, they are either discarded, transformed into something else, or killed. For instance, in the tale about King Shahzaman and his brother King Shahrayar, women are generally portrayed as evil. The tale begins by King Shahzaman finding his wife having sex with a slave while he prepares to leave his palace to go and visit his brother. This makes him very angry and enraged. He confronts his wife and declares that women should not be trusted. He then uses his sword to kill both the wife and the man she was having sex with before dumping them like trash from the roof of the palace to its outside walls (Haddawy 6)
The King then proceeds with his journey, and he is welcomed warmly by his brother when he arrives at his palace. Although enraged, the King Shahzaman is too embarrassed to share the story about his wife's infidelity and betrayal with his brother. However, while spending time at his brother's palace, he finds his brother's consort and concubines having sex with male slaves in one of the palace gardens. This makes the King less embarrassed about what happened to him. Sometime later, when his brother, Shahrayar, orders him to tell him what happened, the King tells him. Shahrayar is also angered by the betrayal and infidelity and tells his brother that he did a good thing killing his wife and the lover because they caused him anguish (Haddawy 9). Shahrayar then states that if he were in his brother's condition, he would have killed at least 1000 women. Shahrayar then further presses the King to tell him what happened. The King tells him what he saw in the garden between the King's wife, concubines, and slaves. Shahrayar is enraged but first decides to investigate. He and his brother pretend to leave the palace for a long journey to spy on his wife. The King witnessed the betrayal personally. He gets so enraged, and, together with his brother, he decides to leave the palace to go on a long soul-searching journey.
While on the journey/ venture, the kings come across the demon that has locked his wife in a chest that he hides in the sea. However, they quickly find out that when the devil leaves the sea, the wife escapes finding men to mate with her. The demon's wife encounters the two men and orders them to mate with her. The two kings refuse, but she says she will awake her demon husband if they don't do it. They do it, and when they are done, the demon's wife takes their sovereign rings. When the two kings discuss their encounter with the demon's wife, they cannot believe that she escapes from where she was locked to find men to have sex with. They conclude that no female can be trusted. They go back to their kingdoms, vowing never to marry again (Haddawy, 14). Shahrayar states that he will have sex with a woman every night and then kill her the next morning to prevent another betrayal. From this story, you can see how women are portrayed as evil, and they are condemned to death.
The Arabian Nights also portray women as good women. For instance, some women are portrayed as highly educated people. According to Shahrazad, the majority of women are very well studied. In numerous tales, they are requested to demonstrate their education by answering questions or recitals. A good example such a tale is \\\"The slave girl Tawaddud,\\\" whereby a rich and highly respected Baghdadi man spends his fortune on drinks, entertainment, and food to such an extent that he eventually becomes penniless owning nothing except for a slave girl called Tawaddud (Shamma, 239-260). To alleviate his suffering, she asks her master to present her for sale to the caliph (local ruler). Standing before their caliph, Tawaddud mentions that she is conversant with grammar, jurisprudence, poetry, philosophy, arithmetic, ancient legends, medicine, logic, and Islamic precepts, as well as dance, music, backgammon, and chess (Blythe).
The astute old woman is one of the commonest characters in these tales. She is frequently described as being extremely ugly with a huge nose, broken teeth, drooling mouth, and wrinkled cheeks. This astute old woman is at times good, at times an evil, and at times alternating between the two, with it being extremely difficult to predict at first sight which direction her acts will take (Zafar, 7-8). Such women are normally the greatest swindlers in the tales, tearing lovers apart, or bringing them together, performing rebellious acts against armies and kings, and in general always up to some mischief.
One good example of such a character can found in \\\"Dalila the Wiley.\\\" Dalila is portrayed as a mistress of deception, fraud, and trickeries, capable of tricking a snake out from its hole and coach Iblis (devil) in swindling. When the caliph appoints Hassan Shuman, and Ahmad al-Danaf are chosen as the city watch's joint commanders, Dalila immediately remembers that Hassan was chased out of Cairo because of his past interactions. Since Dalila's late spouse was the city watch's former commander, she views it as being unfair that these two men have plotted their way to this great position by being sycophants of the caliph (Blythe). She, therefore, decides to utilize trickery to soil the reputation of the two men in Baghdad. She starts with a long chain of trickeries that at first do not appear to be linked to her final objective, including deceiving a young wife into trusting that she could help her conceive, and then assure a young businessman that this young lady is her daughter and would is interested in marrying him. She then convinces a dyer that the businessman and young woman are both her children in search of a room to stay, and lastly, donkey owner into lending his donkey to her so that she can transport home the goods that she took from others.
Dalila's trickeries continue to increase in audacity, and she gets caught several times by the local authorities, only to escape from their grasp every time. She is once taken to the river and then tied up using her hair, but she manages to convince a Bedouin passing by that a baker is punishing her, and he will pass by later and force her to consume honey doughnuts (Blythe). The Bedouin agrees to take her place, and when the guards return in the morning, he yells at them, asking whether they have brought the honey doughnuts (Blythe). When Dalila is finally presented to the caliph, she gives back the goods she stole and declares that her tricks were not intended for money but to prove instead that she could be just as devious and sneaky as Hassan Shuman and Ahmad al-Danaf are. Upon hearing this, she is granted her request to assume her late husband's post as the city watch captain by the caliph. She even takes up the extra role of being the Kahn's (inn) doorkeeper.
In conclusion, The Arabian Nights treat women as princesses provided that they act according to the wishes and commands of their maters. However, as soon as they go against the demands of their male equivalents, they get disposed. The different women mentioned in these stories maintain their power and status because of their beauty and love. There is, however, another side of the coin that women are also depicted in these tales. They are shown to be constructive, and the forerunner of this particular subject is Scheherazade. Scheherazade presented herself as the champion and heroine of women. This way, she managed to seam out the loose patriarchy threads.
Works cited
Blythe, Andrea. Beyond Shahrazad: Feminist Portrayals of Women in the One Thousand and One Nights. Zoetic Press, 2019.
Haddawy, Husain, and Muhsin Mahdi, eds. Arabian Nights. English.; Alf Laylah Wa-laylah. WW Norton & Company, 1995.
Nicholas, Caleb, \\\"Living Subversive Narratives: Shahrazad's Stories of Women.\\\" Honors Projects, Bowling Green State University, (2016). 269.
Shamma, Tarek. \\\"Women and Slaves: Gender Politics in the Arabian Nights.\\\" Marvels & Tales 31.2 (2017): 239-260.
Zafar, Attiya. Arabian Nights: Seaming the Embroidery of Feminism in the \\\"Couch.\\\" University of Management and Technology, 2019.