Devastmita In The Red Lotus Of Chastity example essay topic

The world is full of mystery, and women are at the center of it. Throughout history, women have fought to be placed at the forefront of things, but they were often placed in lesser, insignificant, and passive roles. Just as the men were to be brave and chivalrous, the women were expected to be beautiful and lady-like. The times of, Thousands and one nights, The Red Lotus of Chastity, and Shahanme are no exception. In each of these stories, the central female character struggles against ideas of chastity that have been created by male society; in each case the central struggle appears to be between the major female characters and a cultural ideal of what a woman should be.

The most famous of these tales is that of Shaharzad in A Thousand and One nights. Shaharzad, the spinner of tales, marries Shahrya, the King. Shahrya is embittered by an experience with feminine infidelity, so he devises a way to avoid further betrayal. Ensuring that no wife would have time to be unfaithful, the King marries a new bride everyday and then orders his Vizier to murder her the following morning.

Shaharzad volunteers to marry Shahrya, to save other women from being killed as the king's serial wives. This clever young girl, Shaharzad, devises a strategy for conquering the king's bitterness by using her talents. She is very eloquent and a delight to listen to. She "had read various books of histories, and the lives of preceding kings, and the stories of past generations". Shaharzad then prevents Shahrya from killing her by telling a tale each night and intriguing that the he allows her another day to live so that he can hear the conclusion of her story. Although Shaharzad is often held up today as a symbol of voluptuous Eastern beauty, in fact she is the victim of terrible violence.

This is a story about the brutality of men against women plays out in strikingly unadorned terms; the king selects women for his sexual pleasure and then assigns them to death. Shaharzad uses her intelligence, and her willingness to use her body, as a shield for other woman against the brutality of men and so becomes a heroic figure. Shahrazad is certainly a heroic figure by using her own courage and intelligence to protect others. She also upholds the status quo of her society by defending the chastity of women, she portrays, that this chasteness is indeed something that must be honored. Devastmita, in The Red Lotus of Chastity, is like Shaharzad, a somewhat ambiguous figure, or at least a complex one. The title of the story in which she appears evokes a common symbol in Asian literature.

The lotus symbolizes birth and rebirth, the metaphorical birth and rebirth of Buddhism and Hinduism as well as the literal process of birth. In this story, the fact that the lotus is red suggests that the birth that is being referred to here. Devastmita is a symbolization of both the virtue and chastity of women and a symbol for fertility and creation, as well as purity. When the merchant sons try to seduce her, she uses her talent to trick them as well as her physical power to attack them.

Devastmita is honest, faithful, and intelligent woman, thus she is seen as a true hero. In Shahanme, we have yet a different manifestation of female heroism in Gordafarid. Like both of the other two female characters, Gordafarid embodies elements of the ideal of female beauty. While the other women serve as figures that counteract the brutality of their societies, as a warrior Gordafarid is a part of this violence of the men's world. When Gordafarid approaches Sohrab at the battlefield she "Saw no match for him in war". Gordafarid is clever; she smartly uses her beauty to weaken Sohrab.

She snatches her helmet off her head and let her hair loose. Sohrab gets in awe when he sees such a beautiful maiden, thus saving her from being killed. There is some suggestion that simply by being female (and also perhaps by being beautiful) that she is able to counter this violence, the brutality of mortal combat. But there is also recognition in this story that all of those who are caught up in war are transformed by it. In this sense, the story is a radical one, because it suggests that neither femininity nor masculinity is fixed sets of traits; anatomy may not in fact be destiny here. Women are often seen and portrayed as beautiful, weak, and seemingly powerless in these stories.

However, Shaharzad, Devastmita, and Gordafarid prove, that not all women are totally powerless; some of them can in fact be quite powerful. Shaharzad uses her art of story telling to teach the king that not all women are the way as he thinks and to prevent him from killing her as well. However, like Devastmita, Gordafarid uses her beauty and physical power to conquer men. Also, the descriptions of the women by the authors enhance the mystery of the women, which also helps to conceal their power and control. I do not have a bibliograhpy.