Intelligent, Manipulative, and Lovers: Women Throughout Literature

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Women have played a significant role throughout time and this is portrayed in many works of literature, including Thousand and One Nights and the Canterbury Tales. In both of these works, women are shown to be very intelligent, experienced, manipulative, lovers, and fighters. Women since the beginning have been thought to be liars and both characters in Thousand and One Nights and the Canterbury Tales have all these characteristics and similar themes. The main characters are Shahrazad and the Wife of Bath, Shahrazad is fighting to live while the Wife of Bath is simply on a journey playing a story telling game. Although in very different situations they both have the same strengths and similar characteristics, and this adds up to show the role of women at the current time of the works and now.
In the Thousand and One Nights, Shahrazad tries to change the Kings ways of killing the woman he sleeps with the night before. She lies to him and begins to tell stories each night for the next three years. She manipulates him into wanting to hear these stories for three years, and they end up having kids and the King decides to let her live. Even though she lied it was for her life, and any man or woman would lie to protect themselves from death. Shahrazad was intelligent in saving her life and the rest of the women in her city. Her role was significant in saving the women and helping them be able to keep reproducing and repopulating. If she had not done what she had done, the King would have killed every woman resulting in no way of reproduction for his people. Many women throughout history shared the same strength and intelligence in getting their freedom or point across even to men. For example, wives of presidents would give them idea...

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...Bath and Shahrazad are very significant female characters who play important roles off of each other in two different but similar stories. Both women chose to use love to capture the power they wanted, although one being young and the other being of old age they received exactly what they desired in the end. Shahrazad is fighting to command the King into not killing her or anymore women in the city for his pleasure, and the Wife of Bath is playing a game while journeying to her pilgrimage with a group of people. Their similarities are in their manipulation of men, lies to protect what they desire or love, and strength in their situations in the stories. If these women had not been intelligence, strong will, or pursuit of what they desired, Shahrazad would have died after her one night with the King and the Wife of Bath would be poor and miserable in her marriage.

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