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Summary Of Women In The Thousand And One Nights

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The Thousand and One Nights, is a frame tale. A frame tale means that there are stories within stories, and all the tales included have a connection in one way or another. Some of the en-framed stories in The Thousand and One Nights portray women as being submissive to their men and always eager to please what their men desire of them. Also, in some of the tales they are looked at as simply mere objects, having near no value, and having no rights. However, the narrator, Shahrazad, differs from these women by using her courage and power against King Shahrayar, to save not only her life, but risking it to save those of other women.
In The Thousand and One Nights, we encounter wives that are cheaters, disobedient and concubines just wanting to please the men. For example, this frame tale opens up with the story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, the daughter of the King’s vizier. King Shahzaman sees his wife committing adultery. Seeing his wife do such an act, made him have no respect for woman, as shown when he said, “No. Women are not to be trusted” (The Thousand and One Nights 557). After this encounter, he kills her and the kitchen boy, who was the person that she was committing adultery with, and decides to leave the city and go with his brother, Shahrayar, who was living in India and Indochina. When he arrived to his brother’s palace, they conversed and enjoyed each other’s presence for a couple of days until his brother decided to take a ten day hunt. Shahzaman stayed at

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