Note: I thought I'd accounted for every student guest blog entry from last semester, but I found one more. I think you will be glad I did, as Mary Jane has some interesting things to say about One Thousand and One Nights. Scheherazade, in One Thousand and One Nights is the victim of a powerful sultan. In the original tale the sultan finds his wife cheating on him. He beheads her and vows to take a new bride each night while killing her the next morning. Scheherazade asks her father to let her spend the night with the sultan. She goes to him and tells him 1,001 stories. She gave birth to three sons along the way. The sultan then decides not to kill her for then her children would be motherless.
The graphic novel, Fables, did a book containing a number of stories framed around the tale of Scheherazade. Snow White has gone to visit the Arabian fables and finds herself betrothed to the sultan, and she becomes our storyteller. For 1,001 nights she tells the back stories of the European fables, mostly main characters in Fable.
The tale ends with the maiden who was supposed to be slain 1001 mornings ago, Scheherazade. Snow gives her advice, the sultan loves stories.
But to get back to the sultans. These two are remarkably similar. Everyone around the sultan complies with his wishes. They both feel that virgins need to be killed the morning after their first time in order to preserve their honor. Women can’t be trusted. If left alive they would certainly sleep with anyone willing to.
These men are only trying to preserve their own skin. They don’t want to be cheated on again. They find themselves the most beautiful virgins to lay with each night and to slay the next morning.
Only virgins, for they are untainted. The sultan doesn’t want someone who’s been around the block because then he would be doing the same thing that the peasant folk did with his wife.
The sultan is reminiscent of the evil stepmothers who love their step children then once she and the father are married she turns into a witch and makes life miserable or kills them.
The sultan is reminiscent of the evil stepmothers who love their step children then once she and the father are married she turns into a witch and makes life miserable or kills them.
The Wazir is also a villainy figure. He is the silent father giving up his daughter to sacrifice. In the original tale the sultan only takes brides from his Wazirs’ daughters.
And you thought your father was hard!
The fact that in the Fables version the Wazir is willing to give up Snow White, while she unknowingly agreed is atrocious enough, but to give her up to save your own daughter, at least for one night gives him some kind of forgiveness. The Wazirs may get a pass because they are only doing what they are told the certainly do not model good fatherly practices.
The sultan is unforgivable but at least he does not try to hide his true intentions. To condemn every virgin to one night of pleasure before she is beheaded the next morning is so outrageous. However like other men they get a pass at the end of the tale. If Scheherazade had not birthed three boys during the almost three years it is safe to wonder whether or not he would have kept her as a wife.
Original tale in Arabian Nights. Image by Edmund Dulac
4 comments:
Interesting points. There are some pretty wicked characters in fairy tales though!
I wonder what made the sultan not want to behead Scheherazade. He fall in love with her? Was he overcome by her beauty? Did her telling him stories show him that she was smart and not like other women that may cheat? So he therefore trusted her to have his children; and kept her alive.
What made Scheherazade ask her father to let her stay the night with the sultan? Did she have some magical spell on him or see the future? This is an interesting tale.
MelissaW
I have come to notice that in most of these fairytales, there is almost all women having something terrible happening to them and the men are making out like bandits. In a lot of cases the men, “Making out”, is almost literally. I have had my moments when I have felt that I was ashamed to say I was a man.
One must always consider that their gender could be on the verge of outrage among the masses. After taking a gander at several of the “true” versions of some fairytales, I have come to the conclusion that man needs to be put into a torture device known as an iron maiden. He should be enclosed in it and left there until he realizes what evils he has betrayed upon women.
I have often wished that things were different for me as I am not only a man but a minority. The injustices that I feel I have endured are nothing when compared to the injustices women have faced throughout history.
Wallace Henderson
Great story but I still don’t understand why killing a virgin after the fist time make them any better or not killing the wife makes the wife any worse. The sultan is a little hard on himself just because his wife cheated on him doesn’t mean he has to go and kill his bride. I am wondering how Scheherazade was brave enough to go with the sultan that night. Was she that confident that she wasn’t going to get killed the next morning? Wondering if she has some kind of powers or magic spell? Were the stories the reason he didn’t kill her? Maybe he wanted to hear more stories and that’s why he didn’t kill her the next morning. Would he have realized that she is not like other women, that he actually enjoys her company?
Maria G.
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