Female Roles In Homer's Odyssey And The Thousand And One Nights

There are many different portrayals of how society or cultures have viewed female roles to be weak. But unlike most stories the Thousand and One Nights has portrayed female roles to be brave and powerful. Characters such as Shahrazad, the demon’s wife, King Shahryar’s first wife, and king Shahzaman’s first wife play a fearless role. The two reading works that have stood out was the Homer’s Odyssey and The Thousand and One Nights. These two works show the different ways of how female and/or male roles have been portrayed before the Common Era.
The depiction of women in The Arabian Nights changes uncontrollably. Towards the beginning of the tale women were mostly portrayed as prizes but then later on it changed to trouble for the male protagonist. However, the tale does show some remarkable instances where a woman is revealed as superior to almost anyone around her. For example, Scheherazade, her high level of education and remarkable humor not only qualifies her as talented but also describes her as a person. The tales from the Thousand and One Nights starts off with king, Shahzaman, …show more content…
Every night she would begin with a tale, which she doesn’t finish, this leaves king Shahriyar curious to hear more and spares her to live another night in order to know the ending. Some of the tales are a form of entertainment, but are also also with meaningful messages such as morality and justice. Shahrazad takes her action wisely by being prepared for the task, having “read books and histories, accounts of past kings and stories of earlier peoples, having collected, it was said, a thousand volumes of these, covering peoples, kings and poets.” The post states that it is due to her intelligence, along with her courage that allows her to save both herself and other