The Princess and the Objects

The Arabian Nights is a collection of fictional stories of ages past. The book in itself contains many variations of plots, scenes, story elements, and characters. Honing in onone of the many, the focus of this dissertation is to present a scene in The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water. The scene in question is of Perizade, one of three main characters, successfully gathering all three items and saving all of the men who tried their hand at the task before her. This scene is a clear example of how women can match men eye for eye and succeed in areas that men cannot.

The writer’s desired response was for the reader to be nervous of what would happen to Perizade – at first, at least. It is clear that the woman would be in despair if turned back from the objects. In addition to the above, there is language that suggests she was both nervous and determined. It is heavily implied that the harsh remarks do not affect her while she is on the path due to her extreme focus on the goal at hand. On the other side of things, the Talking Bird is portrayed as somewhat of a sympathetic character from the beginning. Though it is trapped in the cage it is still beholden to no person. It could act of its own free will. The bird had no way to tell whether the person approaching it was benevolent or malicious. Therefore it reacted instinctively in spite, as most creatures do when their freedom is threatened. The bird warms to Perizade once she approaches and it sees that she means no harm to it.

Before the scene in discussion, an old woman arrives at Perizade’s home when her brothers were not present. The old woman is impressed with the home, but she mentions that it is lacking in three objects; the Talking Bird, the Singing Tr...

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...ll the siblings is an unexpected twist of things that works out splendidly. Though the story does continue on and reaches another happy conclusion, if the story had ended immediately following the scene presented here then it would have been a satisfactory ending. It also demonstrates Perizade’s complete determination to finally achieve her goal and that she was more than capable than the many men who had tried before her, if only because she attempted a new approach that no one had yet thought of. Therefore, this scene was one of, if not the, most important scene in the story. Many things before in the story lead to the events of the scene and many things after hinge upon it. Leaving with that, it presents an interesting question of morals – with woman being capable of just as many things as men, why are they still often treated as the inferior of the two sexes?