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Representation of Women and Femininity in She and Arabian Nights

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She written by H Rider Haggard is a novel about two men, Holly and his adoptive son, Leo set out to search for a mysterious queen, Ayesha who killed her lover, Kallikrates. After finding the queen, both of them hopelessly fall in love with her and remain in her control not until she dies. Her beauty is legendary that no man can look up upon her and keep his own will. Arabian Nights is a collection of Arabic short story told by a woman, Shahrazad who willingly to marry her lustful King. The King marries a virgin woman every night and kills them the next day because he is once being cheated by his late wife but not until he is married to Shahrazad. Her generous nature to save other women in the kingdom that motivates her to the marriage. The dominant themes in the two novels are heroism, courage and ever-present sense of danger. Ayesha and Shahrazad are two different women in different situations. Both of these characters have shown the themes of female authority and feminine behaviour but in their own ways. Feminism can be explained in a very simple way that women are equals to men which means that they are as intelligent, as competent, as brave and as morally responsible (Decter 45). Ayesha is a terrifying and dominant figure uses her beauty to seduce and have power over men while Shahrazad uses her intelligence by telling tales to teach the King lessons. Most of female characters in the tales also represent femininity as they have power over male characters. They are both viewed as heroes in the stories. The similarity in them is they uses their femininity as a threat to the masculinity of male characters in the novel and become the causes of the male characters’ downfall.
Feminists can be described as an ideal woman who posses...

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