It is uncommon in ancient world literature to see fair depictions of women in relation to the male protagonists. The Thousand and One Nights is not a story that offers a fair depiction of women, however, it does offer the idea that women have a certain influence that men do not. Early on in the tale, we see a lesser king, Shahzaman, being cheated on by his wife with the kitchen boy, who then kills them both and throws their bodies into a trench. Directly after, we see his brother, a greater king named Shahrayar, have not just his wife cheat on him, but his entire concubine with slaves. When Shahzaman sees this from a guest room, he devises a plan with his brother to catch her in the act, as his wife and concubine only have their affair while he is gone. They fake leaving the palace to go hunting, return, catch them in the act, and then both leave to find someone who has it worse than them. They come across a woman who has rings for every man she’s slept with, using the threat of violence from her demon husband to force them into doing so. After sleeping with her, they come back to the palace, and Shahrayar has his entire concubine and wife killed, and then swears to take a new wife every night, sleep with them, and then have them executed in the morning. The common theme for men in the story is physical violence, whether it be the threat of or enacting of it. Shahzaman slays his wife and the man she’s cheating on him with, Shahrayar has his wife and concubine, and begins to marry and slay wives regularly, and the demon’s wife uses her husband’s physical strength to manipulate people into sleeping with her. The men of this story solve all of their problems by displaying their strength, there is no appeal to emotions or appeal to logic, there is a narrow solution.

This is exemplified later on in The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife, where the merchant’s wife believes that he laughed at her, when he was really laughing at a conversation between the ox and the donkey, because he can understand the speech of animals. However, he cannot tell anyone about his ability because he will die if he does. When the merchant explains the situation to his wife, she refuses to listen to reason, and insists he explain even if he has to die. He makes preparations for his death, and she still doesn’t budge, but he eventually overhears a conversation between a rooster and a dog, where the rooster suggests he simply beat her. He listens to the rooster’s suggestion, and it miraculously solves all of his problems. The story depicts women as completely unreasonable and violence as the solution to put them back in line. Shahrayar’s vizier is threatening to do the same to his daughter, Shahrazad, in an attempt to put her back in line. It is with Shahrazad that the message of The Thousand and One Nights becomes confused, as it is Shahrazad who perseveres through all warnings, all “reason”, to marry Shahrayar to stop him from taking more wives and slaying them to save the kingdom.

Shahrazad is a well-read woman, knowledgeable in literature, poetry, philosophy, and medicine. She knows her strengths as a woman, she knows the influence that her tales will hold over Shahrayar, her ability to emotionally move him being her most important asset. This exists in complete contrast to the “male solution” in The Thousand and One Nights, which would be to kill Shahrayar. Shahrazad decides to enrapture him, and with her tales, also turn him into a better leader. The Thousand and One Nights seems to suggest that the strengths of men and women, men with their physical strength and women with their emotional strength, are double-edged swords. The gift of strength can be used for good, such as defending your kingdom or but also evil, like slaying the women of your kingdom. The gift of emotional manipulation can be used for good, as Shahrazad pacifies Shahrayar, but also by the wives of Shahrayar and his brother and Shahrayar’s concubine to lure men into loving them. This is without getting into the hypocrisy of concubines themselves, but because the work portrays this as fair, it is not important to what we can take away from the tale. While I personally don’t believe that gender roles are set in stone, we can still see this dichotomy of gender in our every day lives, with the motherly and fatherly roles, along with the roles of a wife and husband to one another, with the societal view still being physical strength in men and emotional power in women. The story paints a decent picture of the good and harm we can do with the societal sway of our genders, despite its hypocrisies, and is still relevant to this day for that reason.