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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
In eight pages this paper compares and contrasts how gender relationships are depicted in each text as reflective of different perspectives and cultural backgrounds. There are no additional sources listed in the bibliography.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGguestone.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
period between the 8th and 13th centuries A.D.) in Arabia and Iraq during the late 1950s. Surprisingly, despite the patriarchal cultures in both eras as depicted in the anonymously
written Tales from the Thousand and One Nights and the late Elizabeth Warnock Ferneas Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village, gender relations are treated very differently
in these texts. Arabian women are portrayed as strong, cunning, and highly sexual creatures that are the intellectual equals of their male counterparts. Iraqi women, however, are subservient
sex objects to their men. The women in the Arab collection of stories are strong and surprisingly independent whereas the Iraqi women have no identity beyond that of their
husbands. Their fathers and husbands dominated the women to the point of passive submission. However, while the Arabian men certainly possessed considerably more social and political power than
did women, these clever females would not submit quietly. Their relations with men appear to be rooted more in mutual respect. As anyone familiar with the classic Tales from
the Thousand and One Nights, they are stories the viziers (a high-ranking Muslim who serves as a chief official to the King) daughter Shahrazad (Scheherazade in some translations) told her
husband King Shahriyar over 1,001 nights. These tales were designed to spare Shahrazad the fate of her predecessors, virgin wives Shahriyar beheaded as retaliation for the infidelity of his
first wife. The women in these tales had self-confidence, with one proudly observing "how cunning we women are."1 Shahrazad herself "possessed many accomplishments and was versed in the
wisdom of the poets and the legends of ancient kings."2 Although her husband may have controlled his previous wives and orchestrated their deaths if they displeased him, he seemed
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