LITERARY CRITICISM

Comparison of Main Female Characters

Comparison of Main Female Characters

This paper compares and contrasts main female characters in The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant and King Schahriar and his Brother from the Arabian Nights. The Arabian Nights' (sometimes called 'The Thousand and One Nights') is the most famous collection of stories in the world. It was originally written in Arabic over a thousand years ago. 'King Schahriar and His Brother' begins the cycle of stories and sets the scene for the rest. On the hand in “The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant” Mat Hilde Lisle was one of those pretty, charming young women who have had the ill-fortune to be born into a wage-earning family. She had no dowry, no prospects, no opportunities of getting to know some rich and distinguished man who might have understood her, loved her, and made her his wife (Roberts, 1991). Consequently, she let herself drift into marriage with a junior clerk in the Ministry of Public Instruction. Though her tastes were simple, anything else having been out of the question, she felt as unhappy as though she had come down in the world.

King Schahriar and his Brother from the Arabian Nights

In the chronicles of the ancient dynasty of the Sassanid, who reigned for about four hundred years, from Persia to the borders of China, beyond the great river Ganges itself, we read the praises of one of the kings of this race, who was said to be the best monarch of his time. His subjects loved him, and his neighbours feared him, and when he died he left his kingdom in a more prosperous and powerful condition than any king had done before him (Rudden, 2008). The two sons who survived him loved each other tenderly, and it was a real grief to the elder, Schahriar, that the laws of the empire forbade him to share his dominions with his brother, Schahzeman. Indeed, after ten years, during which this state of things had not ceased to trouble him, Schahriar cut off the country of Great Tartary from the Persian Empire and made his brother king (Rudden, 2008).

The blow was so heavy that his mind almost gave way, and he declared that he was quite sure that at bottom all women whereas wicked as the sultana, if you could only find them out, and that the fewer the world contained the better. So every ...