Compare And Contrast The City Of Ladies And The One Thousand And One Night

In this paper, I am going to analyze the female characters that caught my attention the most in the three stories The Epic of Gilgamesh, Thousand and One Nights, and Candide. They all are important characters in each of the stories and their influence in the story is to help. These stories also depict how women were being treated during these times such as being used for their bodies or their wisdom. The characters that I will be analyzing in the paper are Shamhat, Shiduri, Sharazad, the Old Woman, and Cunegonde. In all three stories, they mostly share the same depictions of the role of women and how women weren’t really important besides their bodies.

Prior to and throughout the late middle ages, women have been portrayed in literature as vile and corrupt. During this time, Christine de Pizan became a well educated woman and counteracted the previous notions of men’s slander against women. With her literary works, Pizan illustrated to her readers and women that though education they can aspire to be something greater than what is written in history. Through the use of real historical examples, Christine de Pizan’s, The Book of the City of Ladies, acts as a defense against the commonly perceived notions of women as immoral.

From a plethora of many authors and compilations over many centuries comes the fourteenth century The Thousand and One Nights, a Middle Eastern frame story during which there are as many as four implanted stories. In the outermost frame of this tale, a king who is betray by his wife vows to take a new wife each night and kill her the next morning in order to prevent further unfaithfulness. The main inner frame are stories from one of his wives which she continues each night to keep the king interested and thus postpone her death. Through these stories, the reader can examine the role of men and women in this time, specifically how women function in conjunction to men in the text. The reader may assume the men are superior while the woman are inferior, but through close reading of the text, the reader will discover that women in the text are only treated subordinately by men in the story but are revealed to the reader as the more powerful of the sexes. Authors reveal the power of women by their prowess at trickery or “women’s cunning” (The Thousand 1181), and their ability to force the actions of male counterparts. The reader can examine men’s attempt to stifle this power, which further acknowledges the women’s merit, through the excessively frequent occurring instances of men treating the women as insignificant, as well as instances when women are turned to ungulate animals, such

A woman’s alternative would be becoming a nun, giving up all social freedoms and dedicating your life to serving the poor and God. Women who were subject to this life received a much more thorough education than other women, in order to properly learn religious concepts and theory. Otherwise, a woman’s education was limited to basic reading abilities paired with instruction on how to do homely activities. A woman of this time period had utterly no voice in politics. Law was man’s law. The life of these women were controlled by the men who surround them, their opinions meaning little to nothing. The life of a woman in medieval times was bleak and varied little. Romantic literature was on the rise, full of damsels in distress that only further perpetuated negative stereotypes of women during these times. These romances were full of helpless women in situations only a man could get them out of, or else they would be doomed. Despite this cultural oppression of women in this time period, some strong female characters were erected in medieval romances. A perfect example of an abnormally strong and independent female main character would be Enide from Erec and Enide written by Chrétien de

Night by Elie Wisel and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck are both books that have differences and similarities in the relationships of their main characters. These characters are Elie and his father, which are two Jews trapped in a concentration camp for the book Night. The other book Of Mice and Men includes two other characters, who are Lennie and George. These two characters have very close friendship, and take care of each other. These two relationships differ and coincide, in how they treat each other, and in how they care for one another even when they don’t have to. The relationships of the characters in both books are both fairly close, but still face many hardships along the way.

In the fourteen-hundreds women were seen differently by men than now a days. Women were viewed as a price or as an honor. Men would do crazy things in order to have that women they desire in their power. They would give up their lives for these special women who felt like queens around the men. Since woman were always being treated as a treasure, they started getting used and expected everything from men. In the Knight’s tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer describe how these things happened back then 1400’s. Both of these tales are similar of how women would act with men.

In the time period of the 14th century, many woman faced inequality. Women were not viewed to uphold the same quota as men. Most females were viewed as passive to males and were not able to make many demands in their relationships or make any contributions to their own survival or life. In the “Wife of Bath Tale”, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, Chaucer gives an insight into the struggles of a woman. Chaucer gives a voice for women who cannot speak for themselves. He creates a tale for the Wife of Bath that includes and questions the societal views of women. Written in the words of a woman, Chaucer undermines what it means to be a female in the fourteenth century who desires independence and

Christine de Pizan’s view also aligns with Augustine’s medieval view of leadership. Machiavelli’s view, however, strays the farthest from Plato and Augustine. In The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine presents an allegorical city made up of great ladies from history. Allegorical characters Reason, Rectitude, and Justice guide Christine

Comparing a play to its movie adaptation is something that is hard to do since there is no tangible way a person can capture the original then change it to make the movie version of it up to par to the original. From the original play of A Midsummer’s Night Dream that was created by Shakespeare in the movie version of it created by Michael Hoffman, there are many similarities and differences that are in the movie some are very stark while others are very subtle differences.

In medieval literature, the role of women often represents many familiar traits and characteristics which present societies still preserve. Beauty, attractiveness, and grace almost completely exemplify the attributes of powerful women in both present and past narratives. European medieval prose often separates the characteristics of women into two distinct roles in society. Women can be portrayed as the greatest gift to mankind, revealing everything that is good, pure, and beautiful in a woman's life. On the other side of the coin, many women are compared to everything that is evil and harmful, creating a witch-like or temptress quality for the character. These two aspects of European culture and literature show that the power of

In the modern world women work, vote, run for office and the list goes on. In most aspects, women are equal to men. However, this was not always the case. In centuries past, women were not viewed as being equal to men socially, intellectually, or politically and were thought incapable of accomplishing anything of value. Consequently, many cultures held the view that women were possessions whose only purpose was to be subservient to men. The view of women as mere objects is evident in various works of literature throughout the ages. Two classic works of literature that exemplify this are The Thousand and One Nights and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of

Women have played a significant role throughout time and this is portrayed in many works of literature, including Thousand and One Nights and the Canterbury Tales. In both of these works, women are shown to be very intelligent, experienced, manipulative, lovers, and fighters. Women since the beginning have been thought to be liars and both characters in Thousand and One Nights and the Canterbury Tales have all these characteristics and similar themes. The main characters are Shahrazad and the Wife of Bath, Shahrazad is fighting to live while the Wife of Bath is simply on a journey playing a story telling game. Although in very different situations they both have the same strengths and similar characteristics, and this adds up to show the

A Tale of Two Cities Jarvis Lorry, an employee of Tellson's Bank, was sent to find Dr. Manette, an unjustly imprisoned physician, in Paris and bring him back to England. Lucie, Manette's daughter who thought that he was dead, accompanied Mr. Lorry. Upon arriving at Defarge's wine shop in Paris, they found Mr. Manette in a dreadful state and took him back to London with them. Mr. Manette could not rember why he had been imprisoned, or when he was imprisoned. He was in a state of Post Tramatic Stress Dis-order.

     One might believe that because capital punishment plays such a large role in Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, that Dickens himself is a supporter of it. This just simply is not true. Dickens uses capitol punishment as a tool to define the evil embodied in both the French ruling class, and the opposing lower class during the French Revolution; as well as comment on the sheep-like nature of humankind.

The women play a big role in the story The Book of the City of ladies and the movie The Lion in Winter. In the story The Book of the City of Ladies women are the main character. The role of the women in this story was to present an accurate portrait of the true and essential nature of women and show that the world that men and women are as good as one another. Feminism in 1405 was terrible and even now in 2017 still has a long way to go. The Book of the city of Ladies is not just a story but it’s kind of an anthology of women from ancient history doing crazy, amazing, and often gory things. This story revels the truth about women and how powerful we really are and how when we really put or minds to something we can achieve it. Christine de Pizan built a whole city from the ground up, if that alone doesn’t show you how powerful women are, that nothing will.