The conventional wisdom is that all great literature - even all good literature - embodies conflict. The traditional forms that that conflict takes is humanity against nature, against fate, against itself. The conflicts that arise between people because of individual or categorical differences lie at the heart of a great deal of the world's literature and lie at the center of "The Red Lotus of Chastity", "A Thousand and One Arabian Nights", and Shahname. And while we are familiar with the overall arc of these stories because of their focus on conflict, the specifics come as something of a surprise to those who are used to reading contemporary Western literature. 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 characters in the story but actually occurs between the major female character and a cultural ideal of what that woman should be.
The most famous of these tales - at least to American readers - is that of Shaharzad (the charact
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