I stole that title from a one-liner I heard on The Blue Collar Comedy tour, but I feel it applies quite well to our readings. The knee-jerk reaction of the husband who discovers that his wife is sleeping with another man – as found in The Arabian Nights – is to kill them both, and with one stroke if possible. As you can probably guess, I’ve been wondering with exceeding wonder about the way adultery is portrayed in The Arabian Nights, and how that contrasts to the way we tend to see it in the west. In a traditional western story, when a wife commits adultery, it’s usually because her husband isn’t satisfying her. So she looks elsewhere – oftentimes to the village priest or some other “unlikely” figure – for gratification, and we all share a laugh over how she was able to get away […]
Original post by ebarn4wv