Week 6 Reading: Arabian Nights, Part A

-I love how confident Scheherazade is in herself and her capabilities. And how brave too! She was willing to sacrifice herself for women all throughout her country, even though she was one of the few women who might have been safe. She had so much promise with her education and her beauty and she was not only willing to risk her life but she was willing to be married to the Sultan to do it. I cannot imagine the Sultan was young or good looking and he must have been kind of a monster to do the things he did. I understand its a bummer that the woman you loved turned out to be bad, and I know the story said he basically lost his mind, but that does not make it okay that it was his sole mission in life to rid the world of women. So this young, intelligent, beautiful, wealthy girl gave up her marriage prospects and was willing to risk her life in order to save other women from this fate. That is amazing! How traumatizing would it be to have to try to save your own life every single day. Thank goodness her sister was there to support her, that is the only way she could have gotten through it. I like to think the Sultan was not a monster, his grief just made him lose his mind.
-How impossible must it have been to be the grand-vizir, to have to collect women to die every day. I think I would rather die than do that job. I would run away with my family and live somewhere else, or I would just let them kill me. I don't think I could bring women to slaughter like cattle. But I love that a woman was able to save herself through her wit in this story, she did not have to use her beauty or anything else

Sheherazade and Sultan Schariar by Ferdinand Keller

Story source: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).