The Oriental Beast: The Sheik and Fairy Tales

Here's the abstract:

The Sheik’s popularity taps into Europe’s lingering interest in both the exotic and the fantastically non-human. This article begins with two arguments: that the infamous dangerous romance hero, embodied by Sheik Ahmed’s violence, has mythical and fairy tale origins. Secondly, the Sheik belongs to an undefined category I call the ‘Oriental beast’. This figure emerged out of the union between fairy tale and Orientalist influences during the eighteenth to nineteenth century in France and England. I propose a connection between The Sheik and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ that exposes a racist fusion between the meanings of ‘foreign’ and ‘animal’. Both stories share the main themes of female sacrifice and reward, but also stress the ultimate superiority of the beastly lover. I argue that Ahmed, as the 'Oriental beast', takes this comparison one step further by symbolising the power of primitive, 'unspoilt' nature. In the second half of the paper, I explore the shared themes in the romance's desert setting and the more complex character transformations. My conclusion positions the Oriental beast as a return to traditional and ‘natural’ ways of living, especially in terms of gender roles.