Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters
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Summary
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters considers the importance of selfishness as compared to altruism and raises questions about happiness, beauty, and gender.
Both of Mufaro’s daughters are beautiful, but one is bad-tempered, and one is kind. When the King of the land asks the daughters to appear before him so he can choose a queen, the prideful, bad-tempered daughter decides to set out in the night so she can get there first. Along the path are many opportunities to show one’s true character. The kind daughter who follows the same path the next day makes different decisions – with different results and a surprising ending!
Guidelines for Philosophical Discussion
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters is about two sisters, Manyara and Nyasha, who are outwardly very beautiful, but who have completely opposite personalities. Manyara is selfish and assertive, while Nyasha is selfless and charitable. Word reaches them that the King of their land is searching for the “Most Worthy and Beautiful” girls in the land so that he can choose a queen. Both set out for the palace, but along the way, are met with people of various infirmities who ask them for help. As it turns out, these people are placed there by the King to test the character of the sisters. Manyara, in her haste to get to the palace, is rude and dismissive of these people; Nyasha, on the other hand, stops to help each one by sacrificing something of hers. When they get to the palace, Nyasha is chosen to be queen.
The moral of the story, which seems to be that kind, selfless people are deserving of reward while selfish, power-hungry people are not, raises perhaps the fundamental philosophical question, dating back to the ancient Greeks, which is: “What is the best sort of life to live?” We want the kids to wonder about the ethics and function of personality. The issue is not a simple one: evolutionarily, for example, a personality like Manyara’s has probably been more helpful in the persistence of human beings than Nyasha’s. If the meaning of human life is survival and reproduction, it seems we might want Manyara’s personality. But what is the meaning of human life? And is there something wrong, ethically, with Manyara’s sort of personality? What might that be? In Plato’s Republic, the argument is made that everyone, at their core, is like Manyara and that we behave like Nyasha simply because we are afraid of social censure. But if nobody would find us out, how would we behave? Is it better to be wealthy and predatory with a reputation for kindness and generosity, or kind and generous with a reputation for the reverse?
Another surefire way to arrive at a philosophy question is to take a concept and ask, “what is the nature of that concept?”. In this story, Nyasha is rewarded with power, with becoming queen. Accordingly, the question suggests itself: “What is the nature of power?” What, precisely, is it that kings and queens have that ordinary people do not? And what do they lack that ordinary people have? Leo Tolstoy, in War and Peace, argues that leaders have no real effect on their subjects since subjects will only follow orders that do not violate their essential natures. That is to say, for example, if a leader one day decided to order everyone in the land (including the army and police, etc.) to walk into the ocean, nobody would listen because the orders are ridiculous and violate the essence of who people are (in this case, rational creatures). That is to say, if following orders is a choice a subject makes, much as anything one might do is a choice (whether it’s the result of an order or not), then what is the special property of the leader after all? If one thinks it is controlling the means of punishment (the police, let’s say) that constitutes a leader’s power, remember that the argument applies at this level as well. What is making the police officer comply, except, perhaps, that he fears punishment from a higher authority? But what is making that authority comply since ultimately the chain must end with the leader, who has no ability himself to punish?
The story also raises the twin questions of the nature of worth and its relation to beauty. In the story, the King desires ‘The Most Worthy and Beautiful’ daughters in the land. What does it mean to be worthy, and must one be beautiful in order to be worthy? If not, why does the King have this added request for beauty? Would he reject a worthy queen who was not beautiful or a beautiful queen who was not worthy? Which is better, and what do you think? Of course, we might interpret the King as meaning that he wants both a competent ruler and a person of outward beauty. But we might wonder whether this interpretation compromises the worth of the King. Is a king a worthy king if he would reject worthy, but non-beautiful women as queens? Finally, and connectedly, what does it mean to be a competent ruler? What qualities make a ruler a good ruler?
Yet another philosophical question raised by the story is about the nature of happiness. The story claims that the girls’ father, Mufaro, is happy due to his pride in his daughters. But this happiness is based on a lie – he does not know Manyara’s true character. Is ignorance bliss? Can one be truly happy if one is living a lie? This question also dates back to Plato’s Republic, and his story about the cave, and was recently recast popularly in the movie The Matrix. Would you rather know the truth and be unhappy, or be happy with a lie? Is it, accordingly, right to lie to someone, if you think it will make them happy? Did Manyara do the right thing, then, by concealing her true nature from her father?
Questions for Philosophical Discussion
Morality
- What is Manyara’s personality like in this story?
- What is Nyasha’s personality like in this story?
- Whose personality is yours most similar to?
- Who becomes queen, and what do you think the author’s point is?
- Do you agree or disagree with this point?
- Do you think someone who is selfish is worse than someone who is altruistic/kind to others? Why or why not?
Gender
- What is Nyasha’s reward in the story?
- What do you think of this reward?
- What do kings and queens have that ordinary people do not?
- What do they not have that ordinary people have?
- Would you want to become king/queen? Why or why not?
- Do you think someone who is selfish is worse than someone who is altruistic/kind to others? Why or why not?
- Should a king have a different personality than a queen? If so, what should those differences be?
- Is Nyasha’s personality good for being a good queen? Why or why not?
Beauty
- What makes a king or queen “worthy”?
- What makes anybody “worthy”?
- What does it mean to be “worthy”?
- In the story, the King desires “The Most Worthy and Beautiful”.
- Does being beautiful make someone more or less worthy.
- Are beauty and worth different things?
- Why does the King want someone who is worthy and beautiful, instead of just worthy, or just beautiful?
Happiness
Mufaro, the girls’ father, is described as completely happy, because he does not know that Manyara is mean.
- Can one be truly happy if one does not know the truth about one’s situation?
- Would you rather have the happiness you could have by believing lies, or would you rather have unhappiness that comes from knowing the truth? Why?
- What about for someone you loved?
- Would you rather someone you love, like your parent, believe something that is a lie and be happy, or would you rather them know the truth and be less happy?
- Would you tell someone you loved the truth, if you thought it might hurt them?
- Should Manyara have told her father the truth? How about Nyasha?
- If Nyasha had told her father the truth, would she have been being nice to him, or mean?
- Do you agree that Nyasha is a very nice daughter since she does not tell her father the truth?
Ethics
The King deceives Manyara and Nyasha by pretending to be a snake and by having them pass tests without telling them.
- Was this a good idea?
- What was the purpose, and what did it accomplish?
- Was the King successful?
- If you were the King, would you have done something similar?
- Do you think the King was unfair to Manyara and Nyasha by deceiving them, or do you think it was okay to deceive them? Why?
- Is it okay, in general, to deceive people? If so, why? If not, why not?
- Are there special cases where it is okay, like the situation in the story?
- What makes this a special case?
- How do we know if a case is a special case?
Original questions and guidelines for philosophical discussion by Daniel Lowinger. Edited June 2020 by The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics.
Find tips for leading a philosophical discussion on our Resources page.
About the Prindle Institute
As one of the largest collegiate ethics institutes in the country, the Prindle Institute for Ethics’ uniquely robust national outreach mission serves DePauw students, faculty and staff; academics and scholars throughout the United States and in the international community; life-long learners; and the Greencastle community in a variety of ways. In 2019, the Prindle Institute partrnered with Thomas Wartenberg and became the digital home of his Teaching Children Philosophy discussion guides.
Further Resources
Some of the books on this site may contain characterizations or illustrations that are culturally insensitive or inaccurate. We encourage educators to visit the Association for Library Service to Children’s resource guide for talking to children about issues of race and culture in literature. They also have a guide for navigating tough conversations. PBS Kids’ set of resources for talking to young children about race and racism might also be useful for educators.
Philosophy often deals with big questions like the existence of a higher power or death. Find tips for leading a philosophical discussion on our resources page.
