Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

  The main aspect of Andrew Lang's story that sticks out to me is its inaccurate portrayal of women. While I do note that I tend to focus on misrepresentations of women in the story, I do so for the reason that it is often an issue in older tales. Nevertheless, in Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, translated by Andrew Lang, women come across as passive, unintelligent, and somewhat inferior to men.
     In the story, the female character's mentioned (Aladdin's mother and the Princess) make few decisions on their own and do not complete many actions. Furthermore, when these characters do make decisions, it leads to trouble. To begin, Aladdin's mother is deeply upset about his character at the very beginning of the story. Nevertheless, she takes very little action to change his "careless, idle" character (1). In fact, according to the story she simply cries and prays for him to get better. Thus, Aladdin's mother lacks a sense of proactivity, as she simply waits and hopes for changes to occur. In addition, later in the story, we see , perhaps, the most obvious moment of depicting women in a negative light when the Princess trades the Aladdin's oil lamp for the magician's new lamp. Although only a few characters know of the powers of the lamp, and, as such, it is possibly unfair to think that the Princess should be wise enough not to trade it, she still comes across as unintelligent and incapable in the scene and the scenes that follow it. For example, the Princess does not only trade the lamp, but she does so with a sense of confidence and superiority: "The Princess, not knowing its value, laughingly bade the slave take [the lamp] and make the exchange" (7). Given the initial circumstances here, the Princess' action would normally be recognized as a simple mistake (and thus not reflect poorly on her image or the image of women), but her laugh seems to detract from such circumstances. The idea that she is confident that she is taking advantage of the magician, while he takes advantage of her (with a somewhat basic trick), attributes a lack of intelligence to the Princess. As the story continues, the Princess' mistake further serves to highlight her negative qualities -- as she comes across as incapable of saving herself when compared to her husband. After her mistake traps her in Africa with the magician, the Princess is reliant on Aladdin to save her. Despite evidence suggesting that she is aware of the magic lamp and its whereabouts, she is only able to get back home with the help of Aladdin's tricky plan. I do recognize that the Princess is able to perfectly execute the plan that Aladdin lays out for her. Nevertheless, her lack of ability to save herself, when considered in comparison to Aladdin's ability to swiftly help the couple, suggests a reliance on her husband and that she is somewhat inferior to him.
In short, throughout the story, the behavior of women consistently results in the attribution of undesirable qualities to the gender as a whole. They are manipulated on multiple occasions and unable to get themselves out of troubling situations. Furthermore, the Princess is also valued based on superficial qualities (her looks) and used by the Sultan as an object to be traded for more wealth. While I do recognize that the story likely would not have been scrutinized for such ideas in the time in which it was translated, it is still fair to scrutinize the story today, as it certainly relays incorrect, patriarchal ideas to the readers.