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Comparing Against Women In The Thousand And One Arabian Nights

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The Deceitfulness of Women “Against Women” and “The Thousand and One Arabian Nights” are literary works with great acclaim. Many parallels may be drawn between the two. One parallel between “Against Women” and “The Thousand and One Arabian Nights” is the deceitfulness of women depicted in each. In “Against Women”, the women are certainly deceitful in their words. In fact, the author of the work Juvenal quotes that “it takes her some time to strip down to her face, removing the layers” (Fiero 152). Even though it explains a literal process that Roman women were undergoing, it also shows the internal shading that was occurring and the webs of lies women formed. Women were telling lies to their husbands in efforts to keep their independence or …show more content…

As distinguished before, the two works display the deceitfulness of women. However, the implications that both depict from this feature are practically opposites. In “The Thousand and One Arabian Nights”, this feature is viewed as appealing. The Princess Al-Datma who is a woman in the story is described as very beautiful. She is a diamond to her father and kingdom. Moreover, the author exclaims that Princess Al-Datma had “no equal in beauty and grace” (Fiero 240). In conjunction with her physical beauty, it appears that the author places the feature of being deceitful in the same category. He claims that in addition to her beauty, she “took great pleasure in ravishing the wits of the male sex” (Fiero 240). Because of these features, the author states that the men from everywhere heavily seek after her, which supports the idea that the feature of deceitfulness was appealing to the author. In “Against Women”, this feature is viewed as detestable. The Latin women are a shame to the author because of their deceitfulness. He believes that when a woman is deceitful or beguiling, she becomes unbearable or inhuman. In fact, he asserts that as a result of all the treatments women were using to deceive it was hard to tell whether the woman was “a human face , or an ulcer” (Fiero 162). He despises the devious actions and hateful plots the women concoct against those distasteful to them. He believes that “there’s nothing a woman won’t do, nothing she thinks is disgraceful” because of her deceitful feature (Fiero

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