“So He Set a Royal Diadem on Her Head”—Queen Esther in Contemporary American Jewish Midrashic Poetry

Abstract

Feminist poets and scholars have transformed Queen Esther from a relatively silent biblical figure into a complex literary character, yet systematic analysis of their interpretive strategies remains limited. This study examines how these poets employ feminist hermeneutical frameworks to reimagine Esther’s experiences and choices. Using a close-reading methodology, the analysis applies Alicia Ostriker’s hermeneutical modes (suspicion, desire, and indeterminacy) and Wendy Zierler’s hermeneutics of identification to poems by Janet Ruth Heller, Carol Barrett, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Stacey Zisook Robinson, Jill Hammer, Enid Dame, Yala Korwin, and Bonnie Lyons from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The poems organize into three thematic categories: transformation and identity formation during Esther’s preparation for queenship; the interior and moral costs of her heroic actions; and retrospective reflections comparing her strategic compliance with Vashti’s direct defiance. The analysis reveals that these poets challenge traditional binary oppositions between the two queens, positioning both strategic accommodation and direct refusal as legitimate forms of feminist resistance within patriarchal structures. By giving Esther a first-person voice and exploring her interior life, these works create a new literary midrash that addresses contemporary concerns about women’s agency while maintaining deep engagement with Jewish textual tradition.

1. Introduction

Queen Esther, the heroine of the Book of Esther, the Megillah, is one of the biblical female characters who has received extensive attention throughout history. The Megillah’s narrative opens with Queen Vashti’s refusal of King Ahasuerus’s command to display herself before his banquet guests, leading to her banishment and a kingdom-wide search for her replacement. Esther, an orphaned Jewish woman raised by her cousin Mordecai, is selected as queen after a lengthy beautification process, though she conceals her Jewish identity as Mordecai instructs. When Haman, the king’s advisor, secures a royal decree to annihilate all Jews throughout the empire, Mordecai appeals to Esther to intercede. Despite the capital risk of approaching the monarch uninvited, Esther agrees, declaring “if I am to perish, I shall perish!” (Esth. 4:16). After ordering a three-day fast, she appears before Ahasuerus, who receives her favorably. Through carefully orchestrated banquets, she reveals both her Jewish identity and Haman’s genocidal plot. The king orders Haman’s execution, elevates Mordecai, and issues a decree allowing the Jews to defend themselves, resulting in their salvation. The narrative thus moves from Esther’s passive selection as queen to her active intervention as her people’s savior, though the biblical text provides minimal access to her interior thoughts and emotional experiences. However, although many rabbinic midrashim were written on the Book of Esther, almost none of them considered Esther’s feelings and thoughts as a woman navigating complex personal and political circumstances. Esther, an orphaned girl raised by her uncle Mordecai according to the biblical text, steps into the shoes of Queen Vashti, who refused the king’s demand to “display her beauty to the peoples and the officials” (Esth. 1:11).1 Thus, in both rabbinic midrash and contemporary feminist midrash, the two queens are frequently compared and contrasted as representatives of different models of resistance and compliance.2

Midrash represents a rabbinic method of interpretation employed to address textual irregularities and provide exegesis for specific scriptural passages (Kugel 1983, pp. 131–55). Midrash aggadah, the non-legal strand of this tradition, “includes all non-legal material in rabbinic literature, including legendary expansions of biblical stories” (Baskin 2002, p. 4). Through this interpretive practice, the rabbis “found it necessary at times to reread texts in the light of their own contemporary values and beliefs,” filling gaps in the biblical narrative (Holtz 1984, pp. 181–82). Midrash thus operates as creative engagement with scripture that remains deeply connected to the source material while expanding its meanings to address the concerns of each interpretive generation. Rabbinic midrash typically portrays Vashti as an evil woman while Esther emerges as the righteous savior of her people. Nevertheless, rabbinic midrash, even when focusing on Esther alone, addresses her primarily for two specific purposes: first, to demonstrate her adherence to halakhic rules (Jewish laws) such as maintaining kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), observing Shabbat, and following menstrual laws within the heathen king’s court; second, to emphasize divine intervention in both her selection as queen and her subsequent actions (Segal 2020b, pp. 39–103). In later rabbinic interpretations, such as Panim Aherim B, the Purim narrative was increasingly reframed as a conflict between Haman and Mordecai, thereby marginalizing Esther’s role (Horowitz 2006, pp. 69–70).

Contemporary feminist interpretation has significantly complicated this traditional reading. While Vashti has been reclaimed as a “model of identification and imitation” in feminist discourse (Shemesh 2002, p. 366), Esther has often been viewed less favorably, with many feminists critiquing her apparent compliance with patriarchal structures in contrast to Vashti’s defiant resistance.3 Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s early proto-feminist commentary celebrated Vashti as one of the “grand types of women presented for our admiration” (Stanton [1898] 2002, p. 86), and this representation of Vashti as rebelling against patriarchal society appears frequently in feminist commentaries (Shemesh 2013, pp. 258–61). For many feminists, Vashti serves as Esther’s “mirror image,” preserving her dignity and challenging patriarchal expectations in contrast to Esther’s apparent passivity, meekness, and compliance (Shemesh 2013, p. 260).

However, some feminist scholars have developed more nuanced approaches that move beyond this binary opposition. In some cases, Esther and Vashti both serve as role models for women in abusive situations, representing two different but equally valid models of resistance to the misuse of power and authority: “One says an empathic ‘No!’; the other works within the structures of the system to achieve her goal” (Sakenfeld 2003, pp. 49–50). This reading recognizes that resistance can take multiple forms and that working within existing power structures—as Esther does—can be as subversive and effective as direct refusal. Rivkah Lubitch, who is a rabbinic pleader in Rabbinical court and contemporary midrashists, argues that Esther can serve as a role model for contemporary feminist women, demonstrating how the Megillah and rabbinic midrash recognize Esther as having two distinct phases:

Esther of the beginning of the Megillah (Esther 1) plays a typical feminine role. Yet, at a certain point in the story, she “snaps” out of the dream world she has been in, and assumes a role which is good enough for any feminist (Esther 2). Esther 1 is passive, obedient, dependent and silent. Esther 2 is active, assertive, tactful, independent, and holds political power in the real world

(Lubitch 1993, p. 438).

Nevertheless, Lubitch represents one of the few feminist readers who claims traditional midrash itself contains feminist elements. Moreover, even she does not argue that traditional midrash considered Esther as a woman with complex emotions, fears, and personal agency beyond her role as Israel’s savior.

It is precisely this lacuna that contemporary Jewish American women midrashic poets address in their reimagining of Queen Esther.4 These poets attempt to give her voice, allowing her to speak not merely as the savior of the Jewish people—organizing fasts, approaching the king, orchestrating Haman’s downfall—but as a complex woman with her own interior life, relationships, and emotional experiences. The poets consider Esther in different phases of her life: her time in the harem, her moments of terror before approaching the king uninvited, her complex relationship with power, and even her later years as a widow. Some poets explore how she might compare herself to Vashti, while others examine her navigation of identity and agency within the constraints of the Persian court.

This article systematically analyzes how different Jewish American women poets from various backgrounds and denominations interpret and reimagine Queen Esther within the theoretical framework of comparative Jewish studies. By examining their divergent literary portraits and interpretive strategies from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, I explore how each poet navigates the tension between challenging patriarchal traditions while staying rooted in the biblical narrative. Moreover, this analysis considers whether these poets engage with the different feminist exegetical perspectives on Esther that have emerged in contemporary scholarship.

Despite Esther’s central role in the Megillah, we rarely hear her inner thoughts or feelings directly from the text, except for her dramatic declaration to Mordecai: “and if I am to perish, I shall perish!” (Esth. 4:16), which can be interpreted as an expression of resolve, fear, or both. This relative silence creates precisely the kind of textual gap that contemporary midrashic poetry seeks to fill.

2. Theoretical Framework: Comparative Jewish Studies and Feminist Midrashic Poetry

Within the broader field of the Comparative Literature, the emerging subfield of Comparative Jewish studies offers scholars new methodologies for examining the multivalent nature of Jewish literary expression across languages, cultures, and national traditions. This approach proves particularly valuable for analyzing contemporary American Jewish midrashic poetry on biblical figures like Esther, as it allows us to situate these works within both American literary traditions and transnational Jewish literary practices while considering their relationship to ancient Hebrew texts and ongoing Jewish interpretive traditions.

The transformation of sacred Judaic content into literary objects of knowledge—what we might call the secularization of biblical narrative—represents a key concern within Jewish American literature (Cushing 2016, p. 321). When contemporary Jewish American poets reimagine Queen Esther, they engage in a complex process of cultural translation, moving biblical material across temporal, linguistic, and cultural boundaries while maintaining connection to Jewish interpretive tradition (Cushing 2008).

The poets examined in this study—spanning different generations, denominational affiliations, and backgrounds within American Jewish experience—demonstrate how comparative Jewish studies methodology can illuminate both shared interpretive strategies and distinctive cultural inflections. Their diverse approaches to Esther reflect not only individual artistic visions but also the varying ways American Jewish communities have engaged with biblical tradition, feminist thought, and literary modernism.

2.1. Feminist Midrashic Poetry: Hermeneutical Approaches

Following Judith Plaskow’s influential call for feminist midrash to serve as a tool for “reclamation of the Torah from patriarchal hands,” much contemporary literary midrash by Jewish writers has been authored by women seeking to counter the historical muting of female voices in Jewish tradition (Plaskow 1990, p. 28). This feminist midrashic enterprise serves multiple functions: challenging perceptions of women as inferior, strengthening Jewish female identity, and registering contemporary political and social concerns through engagement with ancient texts (Myers 2000, pp. 119–20).

Applying Alicia Ostriker’s theoretical framework for feminist interpretation of canonical texts, this analysis employs her three frequently overlapping hermeneutical modes in feminist interpretation: suspicion, desire, and indeterminacy, with the latter being “most significant for the future” as it enables multiple interpretive possibilities (A. S. Ostriker 1993, pp. 66, 122).

The first mode, the “hermeneutics of suspicion”—the feminist’s “stock in trade”—pertains to power and powerlessness, wherein the poet who identifies herself as impotent mistrusts, resists, and attacks the embodiment of patriarchal power in both being and text (A. S. Ostriker 1997, p. 165). The second, the “hermeneutics of desire,” represents a type of eroticization involving “discovery in a text of what we need to discover, the citing of what we love and wish to find sacred, the bending a text to our own will” (A. S. Ostriker 1993, p. 66). The “hermeneutics of indeterminacy” proves particularly relevant for analyzing poetry about Esther because it acknowledges that “an act of interpretation is occurring” when we read canonical texts, creating space for alternative readings that privilege female experience and agency (A. S. Ostriker 1993, pp. 66–67). Although at first glance the three approaches appear independent, they complement one another, with the “hermeneutics of indeterminacy” subsuming the other two and enabling other interpretations and ways of reading (A. S. Ostriker 1993, p. 122). This approach allows poets to foreground contradictions in the biblical text, explore psychological and political dimensions of Esther’s story, and resist traditional interpretations while remaining “intensely engaged and entangled with precisely these texts whose meanings they resist, reinvent, and transform” (A. S. Ostriker 2011, p. 113).

In addition to Ostriker’s modes, Zierler’s “hermeneutics of identification” provides a complementary interpretive lens, offering “a form of biblical revision that places special emphasis on the stories of biblical women artists and poets… with which modern women poets can personally identify” (Zierler 2004, p. 49). This approach proves especially valuable for understanding poems that give Esther first-person voice or that explicitly connect her experiences to contemporary women’s lives.

Together, these hermeneutical approaches enable analysis of how Jewish American women poets fill biblical gaps, imagine scenarios and emotions absent from traditional sources, and create new narratives that speak to contemporary concerns while maintaining connection to ancient Jewish textual tradition. Through close reading of representative poems from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this article demonstrates how these interpretive strategies have evolved and how they reflect broader changes in American Jewish life, feminist thought, and literary culture. This close reading approach, rather than divorcing texts from their social contexts, enables detailed attention to how these poets employ language, form, and imagery to challenge patriarchal readings and recover women’s subjectivity within specific historical and cultural frameworks.

The poems examined in this study demonstrate these hermeneutical approaches in action, revealing how contemporary Jewish American women poets have transformed Queen Esther from a relatively silent biblical figure into a complex literary character with psychological depth and contemporary relevance. Rather than simply retelling the biblical narrative, these poets engage in imaginative reconstruction—filling the silences and gaps in Esther’s story while exploring her choices in comparison to Vashti’s path of direct resistance.

The analysis that follows is organized into three sections that trace Esther’s evolving relationship with power and agency. The first section, “Transformation and Identity,” examines her preparation for queenship and navigation between artifice and authenticity. The second section, “The Cost of Heroism,” analyzes the interior and moral burdens of her heroic actions. The final section, “Reflection and Comparison,” investigates poems in which an older Esther contemplates her choices alongside Vashti’s alternative model of resistance. Through this progression, these poets create a new literary midrash that gives voice to previously silenced aspects of Esther’s experience while exploring how women navigate and respond to patriarchal power.

2.2. The Poets: Backgrounds and Perspectives

The eight poets examined in this study bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives to their reimagining of Queen Esther, ranging from Holocaust survivors to rabbinical scholars and from academic literary critics to poetry therapists. Understanding their varied contexts enriches our appreciation of how they approach Esther’s story through different lenses of Jewish experience and feminist consciousness.

Janet Ruth Heller (1947–2025) earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and served as past president of both the Michigan College English Association and the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. Beyond her academic achievements, Heller was deeply engaged in Jewish communal life, maintaining active involvement in both Temple B’nai Israel (Reform) and the Congregation of Moses (Conservative) in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She served on synagogue boards, taught in religious schools, was President of the Sisterhood twice, participated in the Chevra Kadisha (burial society), and chanted Torah and haftarah portions. This cross-denominational involvement reflected her broad engagement with Jewish tradition. Her poetry collection Exodus (2014) features biblical dramatic monologs, poems she had been working on since the 1970s. Heller’s deep immersion in Jewish communal and ritual life informed her midrashic approach to biblical women’s voices.

Jill Hammer (b. 1969) is an ordained rabbi (Jewish Theological Seminary, 2001) who also holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Connecticut. She serves as Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion and co-founded the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, which trains women in Jewish feminist earth-based spiritual practices. Hammer is a prominent figure in contemporary Jewish feminist spirituality, and her books include Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women (2001) and The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership (2015). She has been called “a Jewish bard” for her mythic and ritualistic approach to reimagining biblical narratives, blending ancient texts with earth-based spiritual practices. Her prominence extends well beyond Jewish circles, making her a significant voice in contemporary feminist spirituality more broadly.

Enid Dame (1943–2003) earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. She taught at both Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She co-edited Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal and co-founded Home Planet News with her husband Donald Lev in 1979. She co-edited Which Lilith? Feminist Writers Re-Create the World’s First Woman (1998). Dame published seven poetry collections, including Stone Shekhina (2002), which consists entirely of midrashic poems. On the back cover of Stone Shekhina, Alicia Ostriker praised Dame as “one of the great midrashists of our time” (A. Ostriker 2002). Dame’s work is characterized by her use of persona poems to locate feminist rebellion within biblical stories, giving voice to women silenced by traditional interpretations.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (b. 1959) served as Kansas Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas with a focus on poetry, women’s studies, and mythology. Mirriam-Goldberg is a professor at Goddard College, where she coordinates the Transformative Language Arts program, and she is a certified poetry therapist. Her first poetry collection, Lot’s Wife (2000), reimagines biblical and mythological heroines. Her work bridges creative writing with therapeutic and transformative practices, bringing a unique interdisciplinary perspective to biblical reimagining.

Stacey Zisook Robinson (1961–2021) served as Poet/Scholar-in-Residence, creating workshops that connected poetry, prayer, and sacred texts. She published three books of poetry: In the Beginning, A Remembrance of Blue (2017), and Dancing in the Palm of God’s Hand. She was a regular contributor to Kveller, the Reform Judaism blog, and Ritualwell. Robinson was working toward becoming a rabbi at the Hebrew Seminary rabbinical school in Skokie, Illinois, when she died of COVID-19 at age 59. Her poetry reflects both deep engagement with Jewish textual traditions and contemporary social justice concerns.

Yala Korwin (1933–2014) was a Holocaust survivor born in Lvov, Poland. She survived a Nazi labor camp and immigrated first to France and then to the United States in 1956. Korwin earned her master’s degree summa cum laude from Queens College. A poet, artist, and teacher, she authored six books, including To Tell the Story: Poems of the Holocaust (1987). She also created over 400 paintings and sculptures, some of which are in the collection of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Her father was a poet and editor. Korwin favored the sonnet form and often wrote about Jewish themes and women’s experiences. Her survival of the Holocaust deeply informed her perspective on Jewish history and women’s resistance.

Bonnie Lyons (b. 1944) earned her Ph.D. in English Literature from Tulane University in 1973 and is a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of a scholarly book on Henry Roth and co-author of Passion and Craft: Conversations with Notable Writers. Lyons has published more than 60 articles and interviews in journals including The Paris Review and Contemporary Literature. Her poetry collections include In Other Words (2004) and the chapbooks Hineni (2003) and Meanwhile (2005). She has served as a Fulbright professor in Greece, Barcelona, and Israel, and has recorded a CD titled “Miriam Talks Back and Other Voices from the Hebrew Scriptures,” demonstrating her commitment to giving voice to biblical women.

Carol Barrett completed her Ph.D. in creative writing in 1998 with a dissertation titled The Unauthorized Book of Esther: New Poems and Commentary on Revisionist Biblical Literature, which engaged explicitly with Alicia Ostriker’s feminist revisionist approach to biblical texts. Her poems on Esther have been published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies and Bridges, contributing to feminist conversations about biblical women and revisionist interpretation of scripture.

These diverse backgrounds—spanning Holocaust survival, rabbinical training, academic literary scholarship, poetry therapy, and feminist activism—demonstrate the breadth of perspectives contemporary Jewish American women bring to reimagining Esther. Their varied approaches reflect different denominations, generations, and modes of engagement with Jewish tradition, yet they all share a commitment to recovering women’s voices from biblical narratives and exploring how ancient stories speak to contemporary concerns about agency, power, and resistance within patriarchal structures.

2.3. Transformation and Identity

Having established the theoretical framework for analyzing contemporary Jewish American women’s midrashic poetry on Esther, I now turn to poems that address her story from her own perspective during her transformation from orphan to queen. The poets examined in this section employ Zierler’s “hermeneutics of identification” to give Esther first-person voice, allowing readers access to her interior thoughts and emotions during her transformation from orphaned girl to queen. These poems explore fundamental questions of identity and agency: How does Esther navigate the tension between compliance and self-preservation? What does it mean to assume power through patriarchal structures while maintaining one’s authentic self? To what extent can a woman shape her own identity when that identity is being actively constructed by others? By filling the silences surrounding Esther’s preparation for and assumption of queenship, these poets recover a complex subjectivity absent from both the biblical text and traditional midrashic interpretation. Through dramatic monolog and first-person narration, they transform what the biblical narrative presents as a series of external events—Esther’s selection, beautification, and coronation—into deeply personal experiences of transformation.

Janet Ruth Heller published her poem “Esther” in her book Exodus (Heller 2014, p. 70). The poem, which follows the biblical narrative (Esth. 2:16–17; 4:7–8; 11–16), is narrated by Esther, who recounts her story from being chosen by the king until her decision to comply with Mordecai’s request that she approach the king on behalf of her people. Although the poem contains no stanza divisions, it traces a transformation that fundamentally repositions Esther’s relationship to both Vashti and patriarchal obedience. The poem moves Esther from defining herself in opposition to the disobedient Vashti to ultimately embodying the very disobedience she initially rejected. Its movement through three distinct moments—lines 1–8, 9–13, and 14–17—enacts this shift in Esther’s self-conception, depicting what Lubitch describes as the transformation from passive “Esther 1” to assertive “Esther 2” (Lubitch 1993).

The opening section (ll. 1–8) establishes Esther’s identity entirely through contrast with her predecessor. The poem’s first two lines position her in direct opposition to Vashti, who was “divorced.../for disobedience” (ll. 1–2). Esther claims she behaves differently: “I’ve tried to please the king/with my love and loyalty” (ll. 5–6). These qualities—love and loyalty—define her, marking her as the compliant queen where Vashti was defiant. Yet Heller immediately begins to undermine this binary opposition. Although Esther “won the beauty contest” (l. 3) and maintains her loyalty, these virtues offer no protection or reward when it comes to Ahasuerus, who is a “moody” person. The consequence of his temperament is that Esther has been separated from him “for thirty days now” (l. 8). This revealing detail forces a reconsideration of what really caused Vashti’s banishment. Perhaps Vashti’s “disobedience” was not the actual reason for the king divorcing her in the first place; rather, his fickleness—the same quality that now keeps him from Esther despite her obedience—was the true cause. Obedience, Heller suggests, offers no protection within the arbitrary exercise of patriarchal power.

The poem’s central turning point arrives with “But” (l. 9), a single word that symbolizes the shift in Esther’s thinking and announces her transformation. From being submissive, Esther must now “defy his [the king’s] edict” (l. 9) in order to save her cousin, Mordecai, and her people. The crisis that demands this shift is portrayed through deliberately anachronistic imagery: Esther claims that Haman sees the Jews as “rats/that can be easily exterminated” (ll. 12–13). Through this language, Heller invokes Nazi propaganda terminology (Chapelan 2024, p. 77), specifically echoing the way Nazi rhetoric portrayed Jews as rats or pests to be eliminated. This deliberate anachronism collapses historical distance to suggest that the threat Esther faces resonates across centuries of Jewish persecution. This anachronism positions Esther not merely as the biblical queen but as a redeemer figure whose actions carry weight for Jewish survival more broadly. The role Mordecai identifies for her in the biblical text—“And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis” (Esth. 4:14)—becomes in Heller’s poem a recognition that Esther can “change the future of her people.” Her position as queen, achieved through the very compliance she initially celebrates, becomes the platform from which she must now practice defiance.

The final section (ll. 14–17) depicts Esther on the verge of this forbidden act, preparing to approach the king without being summoned. The three days of fasting have passed, and Esther readies herself. Here Heller makes a significant departure from the biblical text. Whereas the Book of Esther famously never mentions God’s name, Heller’s Esther explicitly speaks of her plea to God: “I ask God to help me/I risk my life/and disobey my mate” (ll. 16–17).5 This invocation of the divine reframes Esther’s action, but what proves most revealing is the specific focus of her prayer. Although Esther enters the king’s court to petition on behalf of her people, in her appeal to God she concentrates not only on her own mortal risk but also—perhaps primarily—on her ability to “disobey” without facing the same fate as Vashti. The parallel is explicit: both queens disobey the king’s will, yet Esther prays for a different outcome.

This brings the poem full circle in a way that forces reconsideration of its opening premise. The poem begins by distinguishing between the disobedient Vashti and the obedient Esther, yet it concludes with Esther herself becoming disobedient. Does Esther at the end of the poem identify with Vashti? The question remains suggestive rather than definitively answered, but the transformation is unmistakable. During the course of the poem, Esther is reshaped, her identity fundamentally altered by the recognition that survival—both her own and her people’s—requires precisely the quality for which Vashti was punished. Heller thus confirms Lubitch’s reading (Lubitch 1993) while adding a crucial insight: the evolution from passive acceptance to active assertion demands that Esther embrace the very characteristic she initially defined herself against. The poem’s power lies in revealing this transformation not as a simple reversal of character but as a painful recognition that strategic compliance and open defiance represent two responses to impossible circumstances. The line between Vashti and Esther proves far less clear than patriarchal narratives suggest, with both queens navigating the limited options available to women confronting arbitrary male power.

While Heller’s poem depicts Esther relating her identity change to the circumstances described in the biblical story, Carol Barrett portrays Esther in a different mode.6 Barrett’s Esther addresses Hegai directly, accusing him of attempting to manipulate her identity and persona.

Barrett published her poem “Esther Consorts With Hegai” in 2001 (Barrett 2001, p. 20).7 The poem contains four stanzas. Esther narrates the poem, and as the title suggests, she speaks to Hegai, “the king’s eunuch, guardian of the women” (Esth. 2:15). The first stanza portrays Esther’s preparations for her initial audience with the king; in the second stanza, Esther reprimands Hegai for instructing her to forget everything she was taught; the third stanza contains Esther’s memories; and in the last stanza, Esther plans her future encounter with the king.

The first stanza opens with the words “Such wisdom” (l. 1), as Esther depicts what she was taught by Hegai. Taking as its point of departure the biblical text’s statement that “she did not ask for anything but what Hegai, the king’s eunuch, guardian of the women, advised” (Esth. 2:15), the advice is transformed into detailed lessons on how to become a temptress. Beginning with dance movements of hips and ankles (ll. 1–2), the instruction continues with a dance that resembles Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils:

• …I unwind
• a river of scarves
• to play in perfumed rhythms
• across my face.
(ll. 3–6)

The Dance of Salome has symbolized seduction throughout the ages.8 Following the dance, the poem continues by describing Esther learning to adorn herself with jewels, precious stones, silver, and lace (ll. 6–9). The instruction then returns to sensual movements: pulling “sapphire silk from back/to thighs” (ll. 10–12) and threading “purple/satin soft between my legs/and snap it in the air” (ll. 12–14). This description of Esther as a dancing temptress resembles the way Salome is portrayed in art and literature (Malik 2008, pp. 139–59). Thus, Hegai teaches Esther how to capture the king’s attention by transforming her into an accomplished seductress.

In the second stanza, Esther’s anger becomes apparent, emphasized through the word “forget”: “And now you say, forget/such things?” (ll. 15–16, emphasis in original). Hegai, who prepared her to appear with all the implements of temptation, has a change of heart, asking her to obliterate all she was taught. His reason for this—reading “a map of stars” (ll. 16–17)—does not convince her. In the final lines of the stanza, Esther’s anger is explained:

• …You bid me go,
• empty of artifice, remembering
• who I am, only that, only that.
(ll. 19–21)

It seems that Hegai’s request for her to appear “empty of artifice” is not the true source of Esther’s anger. Her animosity derives from the fact that she feels manipulated: first, he masked her true identity through “artifice,” making her appear as something she is not and causing her to forget who she really is; then, he asks her to forget all that and remember her true self. The fact that Hegai believes he can mold her at his whim is what angers her. The words “remembering/who I am, only that, only that” can be read in two ways: they may be part of Hegai’s instruction (to go empty), but they may also represent Esther’s reaction to his words—through his demand that she forget, she remembers who she is. Hence, it seems that the obedient young woman who had acquiesced to patriarchal control begins to awaken to her own agency.

This idea is further developed in the third stanza, when Esther remembers her past. As opposed to the artificial devices she was taught to use in the first stanza, her memories are all connected to nature. Instead of the unnatural “river of scarves” (l. 4) comes “the rushes/in the shallows of brooks” (ll. 23–24); contrary to binding her hair with pearls, it “folds across [her] back like fronds/across a cloud” (ll. 25–27). She then remembers her childhood and the things she knew then: all beautiful and rich and contrary to the man-made luxury she learned to use in order to tempt the king. Instead of pearls, silver, amethyst, sapphire silk, and purple satin, there are pomegranates, grapes, oil of olives, eggs of pheasants, and bowers of grass, colorful as the gemstones and rich fabrics, but all natural. The description ends with the very vivid depiction of “the flutter of yellow birds/winding through evening cattails/like some embroidery all their own” (ll. 35–37), as if nature is creating its own fabric.

In this stanza, Barrett challenges the patriarchal construction that Hegai embodies—the opposition between masculine and feminine mapped onto the divide between natural and artificial. In patriarchal logic, masculinity represents the natural, authentic, and rational, while femininity is aligned with artifice, decoration, and performance designed for male pleasure. Feminist masquerade theory radically reframes this dichotomy: Joan Riviere argues that there is no distinction between ‘genuine’ womanliness and performed femininity—they are fundamentally the same thing (Riviere 1929, p. 213). Building on this, Mary Ann Doane demonstrates that by consciously performing femininity with awareness of its constructed nature, women can “manufacture a distance from the image” that enables them to manipulate representation rather than being trapped within it (Doane 1982, p. 81). The power of masquerade lies in acknowledging femininity as artifice while refusing patriarchal authority over which artifice to perform.

Barrett’s move is more radical than simply preferring “natural” over “man-made” femininity. While Hegai dresses Esther in artifice designed for male pleasure, Esther’s memories collapse this binary structure. By reclaiming nature as inherently feminine beauty—where birds create their own “embroidery” (l. 37) and hair falls like “fronds” (l. 26)—the poet reveals that even natural femininity is a form of adornment and performance, but one that belongs to Esther rather than being imposed by patriarchal authority. There is no longer a clash between the feminine and the natural; both are revealed as constructions that can be consciously deployed rather than essential truths that determine identity.

This radical reimagining allows Esther to reject the false choice Hegai presents: she need not choose between artificial feminine performance and authentic selfhood because all femininity is performed. Her liberation comes from directing the performance herself. The natural imagery of her memories—complete and beautiful without male mediation—represents a self-authored construction rather than an essential truth. Through this conscious self-fashioning, she gains the power to manipulate her own representation rather than being passively inscribed within patriarchal images of femininity.

The last stanza brings us back to the coming encounter with the king. However, as opposed to the artificial temptation which Hegai taught Esther and then asked her to forget, Esther describes how she plans to go to the king when Hegai takes her to him:

• it will be
• the way I lift my face
• to desert rain to catch the drops
• upon my tongue, palms open
• to the splash, the wonder of God
• free for the taking.
(ll. 38–43)

The image of “desert rain” to which she completely opens herself—face, tongue, and palms—is a metaphor for her willingness to totally devote herself to the king. Like the rain for the desert, “the wonder of God/free for the taking” (ll. 42–43), so she will open herself to the king. The openness of the image is perhaps the complete opposite of the seven scarves dance, which is based entirely on a game of cover and reveal. Notably, this entire description unfolds as a single, flowing sentence with continuous enjambment between lines, a formal choice that enacts the very openness Esther describes—the language flows freely, uninterrupted by grammatical boundaries, mirroring the unimpeded receptivity of “palms open/to the splash” (ll. 41–42).

By this, Esther actually frees herself from Hegai’s guidance. Although on the surface she seems to accept his will—coming “empty of artifice” (l. 20)—it is only Esther’s remembering, as opposed to his command of forgetting, that allows her to free herself from him and what he stands for: the binding and boundaries of patriarchy. Crucially, what Esther remembers is not some pre-patriarchal authentic self, but rather her own agency in choosing which performance of femininity to enact. The “desert rain” image performs a particular version of femininity—receptive, open, devoted—but this performance belongs to Esther, not Hegai. She has achieved what masquerade theory identifies as the key to feminine agency: conscious control over the construction of her own feminine identity, the power to manipulate her image rather than being trapped within representations imposed by patriarchal authority.

Both Heller’s and Barrett’s poems portray Esther as a young woman undergoing a transformation that fundamentally reshapes her relationship to power and representation. In Heller’s poem, awareness of the danger to her people transforms Esther from passive obedience to Mordecai into active self-assertion. In Barrett’s poem, Hegai’s contradictory instructions—first training her as a temptress, then commanding her to go “empty of artifice”—prompt Esther to recognize the constructed nature of both performances and claim agency over which performance to enact. These two poets thus employ the hermeneutics of identification to explore the pivotal moment when Esther begins to recognize herself as an autonomous subject rather than merely an object shaped by male authority. While both poems depict transformation, they emphasize different catalysts: Heller focuses on external political crisis as the impetus for change, whereas Barrett emphasizes the internal awakening that occurs when Esther recognizes the contradictions inherent in patriarchal demands and understands that all femininity is performed—what matters is who controls that performance. Together, these poems demonstrate how the process of becoming queen—far from being a simple ascension to power—requires Esther to navigate complex negotiations between compliance and self-assertion, between the roles imposed upon her and the self-authored performances she consciously chooses to deploy.

2.4. The Cost of Heroism—Suffering and Sacrifice

While Heller and Barrett explore Esther’s transformation and emerging agency during her preparation for queenship, the poems in this section examine the ongoing emotional and moral burdens of her heroic role. Moving beyond questions of identity formation, these poets complicate any simple celebration of Esther’s success by foregrounding the personal toll of occupying power within patriarchal structures. Each positions Esther in states of profound liminality, revealing heroism not as a single decisive act but as an ongoing negotiation of impossible contradictions.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg published her poem “Oh, How Queen Esther Suffered!” in 2000 (Mirriam-Goldberg 2000, pp. 8–9). Her Esther, who is portrayed after the Megillah ends (she is “the one who saved her people” [l. 28]), finds herself between two worlds: the king’s world of relaxation and Mordecai’s world of suffering.

The first stanza serves as an exposition of Esther’s dilemma: although “The world at her feet” (l. 1),

• She didn’t know if she should relax
• or suffer. I mean there’s always a reason.
(ll. 23)

The second stanza portrays the king’s perspective. The king enjoys the good life, as evident in his description as “round as a robin/with belly layered and puffed” (ll. 5–6), indicating perhaps the midrashic portrayal of him as drunk (Segal 2020b, p. 264). He loves her and encourages her to relax and enjoy herself (promising he would love her even if she looked like him), but remains unaware of her feelings toward him: “suffer not/the smear of his body into mine” (ll. 9–10).

In contrast to the joyful king, the third stanza depicts Mordecai as one “who loved to suffer” (l. 11). He exists for suffering (“It was what he was carved into life for” [l. 12]). Mordecai attempts to make Esther sympathize with her people. He reminds her that she must remember that “God’s painted” (l. 17) her beautiful in order to help her people. This echoes, with a modification, what Mordecai says in the Megillah: “perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis” (Esth. 4:14). However, since the poem takes place after the saving of the Jews, what Mordecai asks of her is to remember that even though she is queen, she must recall that her people still suffer. Immediately following Mordecai’s words, Esther’s position is revealed. As Mordecai ordered, she remembers. However, her memory in lines 18–21 focuses not on her people but on her position as queen, symbolized through the image of the crown:

• and she remembered the crown on her head,
• glass spikes shining upward into a halo
• of bird dance and cloud partings.
(ll. 19–21)

Remembering her position does not evoke relaxing or comfortable images. However, the fact that her crown’s spikes are made only of glass and can be easily broken does not mean that being queen renders her powerless (as the first line claims, “The world is at her feet” [l. 1]). In fact, through the image of the shining upward and the creation of “halo/of bird dance and cloud parting” (ll. 20–21), there appears to be almost mystical power in her hands, as the halo and the bird symbolize spiritual energy, as do the parting clouds, which reveal the sun’s beams (Cirlot 1971, pp. 26–28, 135–36). This dual approach, which connects low and high, suffering and royalty, continues in the next stanza.

The fifth stanza portrays Esther as combining both sides of her world. On one hand, “she gave herself each day to suffering” (l. 22), but does so “upon the king’s golden mantel” (l. 23). Regarding her eating, there is a mixture of both sides:

• …She sat at the
• dinner table, careful not to stuff herself with pride
• or excess food, careful to remember
• the starving ones just beyond the palace gates
• who never could relax for long.
(ll. 23–27)

On the one hand, she enjoys eating and must limit herself from overeating; on the other hand, she remembers the starving people outside the gates. The repeated use of the word “careful” (ll. 24, 25) emphasizes the liminality of her position—both enjoying royal pleasures while keeping in mind that excessive pleasure may lead to “pride” and remembering, as her uncle suggested, the suffering of others.

The final stanza returns to the biblical story, opening with a reminder of Esther’s deeds in the past as “the one who saved her people” (l. 28). However, in contrast to the biblical text, which focuses on her “simply following her uncle’s orders” (l. 29), the poem adds divine intervention—her “happening to be pretty and a virgin” (l. 30), as mentioned earlier (“why God painted you/just so” [ll. 17–18]). Following this, the poem returns to Esther’s position in the present as the king’s wife. Again, as in the second stanza, the king is portrayed as one who sees reality but does not completely understand it. On one hand, he asks, “why do all you Jews have/to suffer so much?” (ll. 31–32), echoing what was previously stated regarding Mordecai (ll. 11–12); yet on the other hand, although he suggests that Esther should enjoy herself, by the end of his words it becomes clear that he thinks only of himself when he adds, “think of sweet things you want to do to me” (l. 33), remaining completely unaware of her emotions toward him. The last two lines of the poem reveal Esther’s liminal position once again, but this time perhaps employing self-irony: “She could only smile like a chandelier/and chide herself for being such a selfish girl” (ll. 34–35). The pun “chandelier”–“chide” again highlights the dilemma of Esther’s existence: married to a king who does not actually see her, her smile for him resembles a chandelier’s light—a false one, in contrast to the natural spiritual light portrayed in lines 19–21. Yet on the other hand, she knows her place is better than that of the people outside the palace gates “who never can relax” (l. 27); hence she “chide[s] herself” for being selfish, for not appreciating what she does have.

For Mirriam-Goldberg, Esther’s liminal position—between accepting the pleasures of royal life and remembering the suffering of the rest of the world (especially the Jewish world)—represents an ongoing condition. Moreover, although Esther is depicted as having the “world at her feet” (l.1), her world is in fact managed by two men who do not necessarily see her but expect her to obey their orders or do sweet things for them. Hence, it is no wonder that in the final lines of the poem she considers herself a girl. Nevertheless, when considering the poem’s title (“Oh, How Queen Esther Suffered!”) and the last two lines, there appears to be an ironic approach to Esther’s suffering—an irony perhaps already hinted at in the description of Mordecai as one who loves to suffer. The exclamatory tone of the title, combined with Esther’s self-chiding for being “selfish” (l. 35), suggests that the poem questions the legitimacy of Esther’s claim to suffering when compared to the genuine deprivation of those “just beyond the palace gates” (l. 26). Thus, this adds another layer to the poem and to Esther’s liminal position within it complicating any straightforward reading of her as either victim or villain, sufferer or beneficiary of patriarchal power.

Where Mirriam-Goldberg questions Esther’s suffering, Stacey Zisook Robinson positions her as a woman being used in a patriarchal world. Robinson’s poem ‘Book of Esther: A Poem’ appears in her collection A Remembrance of Blue (Robinson 2017, p. 46). The poem is narrated by Esther, who speaks to someone—probably Mordecai—blaming him for using her. The poem’s five stanzas can be divided into three parts. Part one combines the first and last stanzas through the same anaphoric question: “That blush on my cheek/cheeks?” (l. 1, 22). In part two, the second and third stanzas both open with the same anaphora, “You asked for no” (l. 8, 13). This structure makes the fourth stanza stand on its own as a separate part. It seems that the poem attempts to fill a lacuna in the biblical text, making us privy to Esther’s emotions regarding her use by the patriarchy.

As mentioned above, the first stanza opens with the question “That blush on my cheek?” to which the answer “It’s paint” (l. 2) can be read in two ways. On one hand, it is part of Esther beautifying herself as she was asked to do, and she complies; on the other hand, claiming the blush is paint makes it artificial, hinting perhaps that Esther sees it as false—a feeling enhanced by the final line of the stanza, “And whored myself for your salvation” (l. 7). The last stanza echoes this double reading. The anaphoric line is repeated—“That blush on my cheeks?” (l. 22)—and the final two lines mirror the first in a more condensed form: instead of the beautification (the painted cheeks, the glitter on the eyes, and the fine rich clothing and jewelry [ll. 2–6]), there is only the oxymoronic “stain of victory” (l. 23), and instead of the whoring (l. 7), there is also the stain “of my shame” (l. 24). As in the first stanza, Esther’s deeds and emotions are depicted as oxymoronic in their essence: on one hand, silent responsiveness; on the other hand, bitterness and anger bubbling underneath.

The same dual approach reappears in the second part of the poem. After the anaphora in the opening line of each stanza—“You asked for no thoughts” (l. 8)/“You asked for no ideas” (l. 13)—which demands Esther’s docility and obedience, each stanza represents one of the aspects mentioned previously. In the second stanza, there is a depiction of her passivity while Mordecai (whose name is not mentioned) “whores” her body and endangers her:

• You merely offered my body
• to the king–
• My life forfeit
• If my beauty failed.
(ll. 9–12)

Yet in the third stanza, the focus shifts to Esther, who, although still silenced (“And I gave you none” [l. 14]), admits to having underneath “a thousand/And ten thousand more” (ll. 15–16) ideas.

The fourth stanza focuses on Esther’s figure and its use by the patriarchy. It can be read in two ways. In the first reading, Robinson stresses the objectification of Esther through the metaphor “the field of my body,” on which “Diplomacy was played” (l. 17), as well as making the “curve of my hip/And the satin of my skin” (ll. 18–19) a place where “The battle [is] won” (l. 20). This makes her the center of “fevered dreams of lust” (l. 20), which eventually leads to “redemption” (l. 21). Although the consequences are positive for Mordecai (“your salvation” [l. 7]; “redemption” [l. 21]), they are all accomplished at her expense, through her becoming a mere object. The second reading sheds a different light on the stanza, interpreting it as part of Esther’s “thousand/And ten thousand” (ll. 15–16) ideas. Perhaps, in opposition to Mordecai’s expectation that she be only a silent body, the diplomacy and the “battle won” are her acts. Hence, the redemption is not only Mordecai’s but her own. In both readings of the fourth stanza, the stain of victory and shame in the final stanza can be explained. If we read the actions in the fourth stanza as stemming from Mordecai’s use of her body, the victory is the consequence of it, but Esther’s shame arises because she was used and abused through his treatment of her body as an object or a tool. Yet if we read the deeds in the fourth stanza as Esther’s own, then the victory represents her winning a double battle (saving him while redeeming herself by acting on her own), but at the same time she regards them as shameful because she acts against patriarchal oppression yet uses her body as a tool. Thus, she claims her own agency but does so by adopting patriarchal methods.

The dual stance of Esther as both silenced obedient woman and independent person with her own thoughts and emotions culminates in the double reading possibilities of the fourth and fifth stanzas. The anaphora “That blush on my cheek(s),” which opens and closes the poem, hints at this double reading by making Esther a rebel within patriarchal boundaries. Nevertheless, it also hints at the price she has paid (her shame). Moreover, the fact that the poem is told in Esther’s voice, in contrast to the enforced silence Mordecai expects her to maintain (highlighted by the second anaphora, “You asked for no thoughts/ideas” [ll. 8, 13]), stresses the breaking of patriarchal confines. Therefore, by employing Zierler’s hermeneutics of identification and giving Esther a voice, Robinson makes her an example for contemporary women of the possibility of defying patriarchy by using its own tools.

While Mirriam-Goldberg positions Esther in a liminal space between suffering and the pleasures of royalty and Robinson depicts her in a dual stance of accepting and defying patriarchy, Jill Hammer places her Esther between worlds. According to Hammer, her poem “Esther Descends into the Underworld” (Hammer 2017, pp. 158–60) commingles “the book of Esther, the ancient myth of the descent of Inanna, and the travails of modern identity crises” (p. 158). Hence, the poem combines a revisioning of ancient texts with contemporary milieu.

The poem opens with two epigraphs: the first cites a fragment from the mythological Sumerian text “The Descent of Inanna,” and the second cites a quotation from an article by Susan Schnur, who speaks of Purim from a feminist perspective, suggesting it as a celebration of womanhood: “Help me, great mother, full moon of Adar, wherein reside Vashti and Esther together, to carry no shame...” (Schnur 1998, n.p.). Schnur attempts to suggest that Purim can be connected to Inanna, the great Goddess, who in the myth, as a fertility goddess (among other traits), is portrayed as loving her womanly body, especially her vulva, and the hamantaschen (which she prefers calling “Womantasch”), which also resembles a vulva, thus making the holiday centered around women’s body cycle.

Following Schnur, Hammer connects the two stories in the poem. The Inanna myth, in its Sumerian version, portrays the goddess’s descent into the underworld to expand her realm into her sister Ereshkigal’s domain. Inanna’s descent consists of seven stages, marked by passing through seven gates. At each gate, she is stripped of one of her royal or sacred items, symbolizing the gradual loss of her power and identity. Ereshkigal kills Inanna, turning her into a corpse hung on a hook. After three days, Inanna’s servant Ninshubur seeks help from the gods. Enki, the god of wisdom, creates two genderless beings who enter the underworld, comfort Ereshkigal, and revive Inanna with the food and water of life. As Inanna ascends, the underworld judges demand someone take her place. When they reach her husband Dumuzi, who shows no grief for her absence, Inanna condemns him to the underworld.

Hammer combines this myth with the Megillah’s story for several reasons: first, in the Akkadian version Inanna’s name is Ishtar, from which Esther is a derivative; second, Inanna taking her sister’s kingdom resembles Esther taking Vashti’s place as queen; third, just as Inanna passes through seven gates, leaving behind at each door one of her assets, which are called in the Sumerian text “the Me” (Wolkstein and Kramer 1983, p. 53), so does Esther open five doors in the poem. While Inanna (a symbol for the living world) journeys to Ereshkigal (who symbolizes death) in order to rule over both worlds, and her mythological movement is ultimately alive–dead–alive, in the poem Esther’s movement is different; by the end it seems that she is merged with the dead Vashti.

The poem has eight stanzas. The first stanza functions as an exposition. However, instead of making us understand where exactly Esther is, it blurs her actual existence with her inner world:

• She goes past the subway
• and the basement of the tenements
• and the buried hopes of those with worn-out lips.
• She goes past herself—
• that blurred traumatic vision of herself on the way up,
• glimpses of past and future.
(ll. 1–6)

The stanza contains two grammatical sentences ending with a period. While the first two lines (ll. 1–3) start by portraying daily places of descent such as subway and basement, the last line turns inward, as if Esther passes not only actual places but also the inner feelings of the people within them, who have “buried hopes” and “worn-out lips” (l. 3). The second part of the stanza focuses more on Esther as she “goes past herself” (l. 4); her vision of herself is “blurred and traumatic” (l. 5), which hints at a beginning of mental fragmentation: before and after, “past or future” (l. 6).

Lines 7–21 speak of the descent through the first two doors. The first door continues the fragmentation of the self through the telephone image. Esther’s performance as the hushed queen—who was not supposed to reveal in the biblical story “her kindred or her people” (Esth. 2:20), thus her true self—starts to crack with the “telephone that rings/even in the middle of a hushed performance” (ll. 8–9). Hence, her mental detachment is described by the fact that she “almost forgets to open” (l. 11) the first door. The encounter with the second door continues her mental descent. The second door, “the door of the empty larder” (l. 13), symbolizes her inner collapse. The image of the empty larder is enhanced by her depiction as “hungry and cold” (l. 14), too fragile to open the door, to face herself. She awaits help from outside (“someone to give her a blanket” [l. 16]), someone who will see her desperate position (“she curls around herself” [l. 15])—a help that does “not come” (l. 17). She cannot help herself by reaching the doorknob because in her state “She does not see it” (l. 19). Her depression is stressed in the two final lines of the stanza:

• Only the eyes of the black seed in her core
• fix on the door until it swings into the darkness.
(ll. 20–21)

The depression (“the black seed in her core”) completely takes over her, and she imagines the door (which she could not have reached earlier) opening into complete darkness.

In the darkness, Esther’s hallucination takes her to the third door, which leads to the harem. Hammer suggests that Esther, who seems to live as a queen, in fact only performs her role (as was hinted at earlier in the interrupted performance): she “drapes herself in jewelry and lovers” (l. 23), surrounding herself with the trappings of queenship. Significantly, she writes on a “blank scroll.../a story of passion and adventure” (ll. 24–25). This act of writing represents Esther’s attempt to author her own identity, creating a romantic narrative that transforms her constrained reality into an idealized fiction. The blank scroll suggests both creative possibility and fundamental emptiness—Esther can write anything, yet what she produces is merely a performance, another layer of artifice. The reference invokes Esther’s role as author in the biblical text, where she records the Purim observances in a scroll (Esth. 9:32). Yet the contrast is striking: biblical Esther writes to establish authoritative religious practice and commemorate communal deliverance, while Hammer’s Esther writes ‘a story of passion and adventure’—romantic fiction that serves personal escape rather than collective memory. The writing becomes self-delusion rather than documentation. The story she creates is ‘so good’ that when she encounters the fourth door, ‘square and brown beneath the portrait of the queen’ (l. 27), the stark contrast between her romantic fiction and the crude reality beneath royal portraiture ‘makes her choke and reach for a cup of wine’ (l. 28).The writing thus becomes another form of performance, authoring a false narrative to mask the artificiality of her queenship. Even in her delusional state, she acknowledges her position as queen to be not genuine, and she opens the door ‘without knowing why’ (l. 29).

Behind the fifth and final door is Vashti, the reason for Esther’s mental state, since she is everything Esther is not:

• the one who said no
• all the times that you said yes, the one who was brave
• when you were frightened, the one
• you never wanted to hear from again
• because she shamed you.
• She makes all your carefully managed successes
• Corrupt.
(ll. 30–36)

Vashti is the opposite of Esther; she is not one to play the game, to perform. Because of her, Esther feels shamed and corrupted. Here Hammer changes the biblical story—it is not that Esther was crowned after Vashti was removed (or, according to some midrashim, killed); rather, it is Esther who killed Vashti because she felt that while Vashti lived, Esther would never be able to “carefully manage” (l. 35) her successes. However, it seems that Esther is no longer sure whether she actually killed Vashti, which is stated as aporia—a rhetorical expression of doubt masked as certainty—revealing her cognitive dissonance, since through her delusional state she meets Vashti beyond the fifth door.

Esther mental state is intensified in the next stanza, which describes her journey with Vashti in the underworld. In the first line of the stanza, Vashti is depicted as taking “her door off its hinges” (l. 38). Although on the surface it seems that what is being described here is the act of removing the door from its hinges and turning it into a kind of raft to ride on the “black river” (l. 39), by using this specific phrase Hammer hints at Esther’s mental state as “unhinged,” which according to the OED also means being mentally disordered (OED “unhinged”). Through this illusory journey, Esther loses herself—“Bit by bit Esther begins to melt away” (l. 42). However, she is not aware of this until even “the last bit of lace/flies into the current” (ll. 44–45). Her externality as a queen, draped with jewelry and lace, is lost. Thus, she can start her journey back, from a crumbled self into a new, stronger one. This is portrayed through her fusion with Vashti:

• Vashti takes in her hand
• the black seed that is left
• and swallow it.
(ll. 46–48)

It seems that Esther, who was portrayed as having a mental crisis with signs of depression and dissociation, starts anew, growing “into Vashti’s skin” (l. 53). Hence, when she returns, she is a different person.

In the last two stanzas we see a new Esther. When Esther returns to “her world” (l. 56), she passes “the bear dens and manholes” (l. 55)—two powerful symbolic thresholds. Bears, according to some mythologies, symbolize liminal existence and transformation between worlds, as well as resurrection and healing (McNeil 2008). Thus, the images of the bear dens (into which the bear descends to hibernate and from which it “resurrects”), as well as the modern manholes, which provide a modern, urban counterpart (contemporary openings to hidden depths beneath the city), create a journey through multiple layers: the ancient/mythological (bear dens) and the modern/quotidian (manholes), both serving as portals to the underworld that Esther must pass on her emergence back to consciousness and ordinary reality. The journey changes Esther, so “no one recognizes her” (l. 57). Instead of the frightened, depressed, “blurred and traumatic” Esther, we have her as a different person:

• She knows how to accomplish too many things.
• She does not know enough about disappointment.
• She looks too much like a tree, or a bird spreading its wings.
(ll. 58–60)

It seems that although she is no longer the person she was, she is still not totally stable. She is not completely human, being able to achieve more than others (“too many things” [l. 58]) and unable to understand other people (“does not know enough about disappointment” [l. 59]). Even the images of her as a tree (whose roots are in the ground but whose head is in the sky) and a “bird spreading its wings” (l. 60) (which still has not flown) symbolize her liminal place—between here and there, between being alive and dead, between being Esther and Vashti. The return has not resolved her internal contradictions; she has returned transformed into something unrecognizable, suspended between states.

This situation of her being “in between” is stressed in the final stanza. She even feels her own “strangeness” (l. 62); her face is not her face. She is startled by her own laugh (ll. 63–64). The final lines address her situation as she “begin[s] to search for a crevice/in the ground where she stands” (ll. 65–66), positioning her in a place between worlds, like the images of the tree and the bird in the previous stanza. The final line turns the spatial liminality into temporal liminality (“It’s almost time to go back” [l. 67]). This actually makes the poem almost cyclic, since although it seems Esther went down and up, in fact she still appears to experience dissociation and identity fragmentation, and she is about to descend again. Her fractured psyche cannot be completely healed. As Hammer claims in her introduction to the poem, the use of the biblical story of Esther and Vashti to read “the travails of modern identity crisis” (p. 158) turns the two queens into two faces of the same woman, who through traumatic experience (being expelled from the palace, or even killed, in the case of Vashti, and being forced into the palace and used by men in the case of Esther), becomes delusional and exhibits symptoms of PTSD and manic depression (the depression depicted in the third stanza, the mania in the unexplained laughter in the last), which can explain the cyclic dimension of the poem.

Mirriam-Goldberg, Robinson, and Hammer each depict their Esther as occupying a liminal position, yet each poet employs liminality differently to expose the costs of Esther’s heroism. Mirriam-Goldberg questions the authenticity of Esther’s suffering, using irony to suggest that despite being managed by men, her privileged position renders her claims to suffering ambiguous. Robinson positions Esther in a dual stance, simultaneously accepting and defying patriarchy, showing how she claims agency by using patriarchal tools yet bears the shame of that compromise. Hammer takes the exploration of psychological cost furthest, suggesting that Esther undergoes a mental breakdown, suffering from delusions and manic depression as she merges psychologically with the Vashti she has displaced. All three portray their Esther as paying a profound price for her position and actions—whether that price is existential guilt, moral shame, or psychological fragmentation. Together, these poems demonstrate that heroism within patriarchal structures exacts ongoing costs that complicate any straightforward celebration of Esther’s success, revealing that even when women work within the system to achieve their goals, the negotiation of impossible contradictions takes an immeasurable toll.

3. Reflection and Comparison

While the preceding poems explore Esther’s transformation and the costs of her heroism, the final group of poems examined here positions Esther as an older woman reflecting on her life and choices. Poets Enid Dame, Yala Korwin, and Bonnie Lyons employ retrospective first-person narration to give Esther a voice that looks back, allowing her to assess her decisions alongside Vashti’s alternative path. These reflective poems move beyond the moments of crisis depicted earlier, presenting Esther in a contemplative space where she can compare her strategic compliance with Vashti’s direct defiance. Through this retrospective lens, the poets explore whether Esther sees her choices as vindication or compromise, whether she feels pride or regret, and how she positions herself in relation to the predecessor whose throne she inherited. By giving Esther this reflective distance, these poets create a space for nuanced consideration of the different forms resistance can take within patriarchal systems. Enid Dame’s “Esther” was published in her book Stone Shekhina in 2002 (Dame 2002, pp. 64–65), where it is noted that it appeared previously in the book The Muse Strikes Back (Dame 1997, p. 18–20), as well as in Davka. Narrated by Esther, who looks back at her life while speaking, apparently to herself (“I told my mirror” [l. 2]), the poem divides into six stanzas and a couplet. The first stanza (ll. 1–16) and the couplet (ll. 63–64) employ the present tense, while the remaining stanzas recount the past.

The opening stanza presents Esther gazing into the mirror, explaining her “skill” (l. 8): when men are “reflected in [her] eyes” (l. 3), the “clever pools” (l. 4), they see themselves “magnified and burnished,/rewritten heroes” (ll. 6–7). This skill, uniquely hers, enables her to win men. She then compares herself to Vashti: while her own eyes are depicted as pools and mirrors, Vashti’s are “gold eyes striking sparks” (l. 12). In contrast to Esther’s soft and absorbing demeanor, suggested by the “pool” metaphor, Vashti is “all joints and angles” (l. 11) and “She took a stand” (l. 13). However, Vashti’s stand led to her banishment and Esther’s assuming her place—again hinted at through the mirror metaphor. While Esther now stands in “[Vashti’s] bedroom” (before the mirror, as stated in the first two lines), “The mirror swallowed” (l. 14) Vashti. Vashti lost her place because she rebelled against the patriarchy, while Esther gained hers by employing other methods, making men believe what they want when they look at her. The stanza’s final two lines (ll. 15–16) reinforce Esther’s displacement of Vashti through jewelry imagery: although the jewels resemble Vashti’s sparkling eyes (“They glint like tiger eyes” [l. 15]), they suit Esther as well (“They suit my coloring” [l. 16]). This aligns with the feminist framework established in the introduction and developed by multiple scholars, wherein each queen defies patriarchy through a different strategy (Weems 1988, p. 99; Hess 1997, p. 25; Sakenfeld 2003, pp. 49–67).

In the second and third stanzas, Dame returns to the biblical story. Esther describes the time when “Uncle” (l. 17) approached her requesting help. Mordecai is portrayed as wearing “shabby clothes” and possessing a “sense of duty/(it smelled like ryebread)” (ll. 18–19). The synesthetic description of Mordecai—sense of duty rendered as smell—continues throughout the stanza’s descriptions. Esther begins relating what “she could have said” (l. 20), an expression that functions as a refrain, appearing three more times and emphasizing what Esther could have said to Mordecai’s request for help. She claims she could have said “Forget it!” (l. 20), stating she is “not a Jew. My family is Jewish” (l. 21), before proceeding to portray herself as a queen. Again in describing her queenly life, Dame employs synesthesia: in lines 22–24, she depicts palace life with its luxury using all the senses—touching (“lush-haired cats” [l. 23], “silken pillows” [l. 24]), hearing (“girl musicians” [l. 23]), and tasting (“my elaborate recipes” [l. 24]). She then describes her romantic life with the king, alluding to the biblical episode of the king’s book of memories being read to him in bed (Esth 6:1).

Both the third and fourth stanzas begin with the same expression: “I could have said” (ll. 30, 38). However, in the third stanza Esther speaks about the Jewish people (whom “Uncle” wanted her to help regarding the “sad news” [l. 18]), while in the fourth she speaks directly to them. The third stanza describes “the others” (l. 30), the rest of the Jewish people, the “jostling strings of relatives” (l. 31). Yet the description portrays not the Jews in Persia but rather Jewish immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century. First comes their negative physical portrayal: “their cardboard suitcases/their garlic breath their gold false teeth/their vulgar jewelry” (ll. 31–33), followed by their occupations, again described negatively: “skinny fiddlers,” “furtive poets,” and “sweat-palmed anarchists” (l. 33), all carrying their possessions in bags (their leaflets, worn instruments, and injustices). These are visualized through the striking image of items “that drop like feathers from goosedown pillows/their darting birds of hands” (ll. 36–37). This complex metaphor operates on multiple levels: the feathers suggest both the weightlessness with which Esther dismisses these Jews’ concerns and the chaotic disorder she perceives in their lives. The goose down pillow itself, a luxury item now torn or broken, releases escaping feathers that represent the exposure and visibility of their poverty and difference, which cannot be hidden or contained. The extension to “darting birds of hands” completes the metaphor, evoking their status as immigrants (“birds”) and strangers in Esther’s eyes. In stark contrast to Esther’s “silken pillows” (l. 24), their belongings scatter like feathers, emphasizing the gulf between her assimilated comfort and their precarious existence.

In the fourth stanza, Esther speaks directly to the Jews, the “mishpoche,” the family (l. 38). This returns to her earlier claims in the second stanza that she is no longer part of them: “‘Mishpoche, you have no claim on me./I knew you once. Not now’” (ll. 38–40). As in the first stanza, Esther asserts responsibility for her status as queen (“I made myself a Queen” [l. 41]). This is reinforced through a pun: “I know how to face the future/my face helped me construct/alone” (ll. 42–44). Esther recognizes that her position, gained through her looks, enables her to face the future. The stanza concludes with the same expression functioning as a refrain: “I could have said that” (l. 44), thus framing the three stanzas into one division discussing what Esther could have said but did not.

The fifth stanza opens with “But” to mark the difference between what Esther did not say and what she did:

• But I was good,
• A shayne maydele.
• I smiled at Uncle.
• I said, “I’ll do my best.”
(ll. 45–48, emphasis in original)

As in the biblical story, Esther accepts her uncle’s request for help. However, unlike the biblical narrative, in which Mordecai must scold her—“Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace” (Esth 4:13)—to prompt her action, in the poem Esther’s unspoken words actually echo Mordecai’s biblical admonition, while she herself decides to act. She requires no reprimand; she is a “shayne maydele” (l. 46), a good girl.

The sixth stanza returns to the biblical story with a modification. Esther approaches the king not at a feast but in private, exploiting their intimacy mentioned earlier. Knowing their aphrodisiac is storytelling (“my king/who loves to read/his story in my face./It’s our bedtime ritual our aphrodisiac” [ll. 25–28]), Esther presents her request as a secret she is about to share with him. Moreover, she employs her “skill”: “I widened my dark eyes” (l. 59) to charm the king. The consequences are described through fruit metaphor: “and all the fruit dropped in my hands” (l. 60). Although the poem does not explain exactly what Esther gained, we can assume it concerns reversing the “sad news” her uncle told her about, and she will “share it” (l. 61) without requiring gratitude (l. 62), being the good girl, “not selfish” (l. 61), that she is.

Unlike the biblical tale, in which Esther must be persuaded to help her people, the poem presents her own decision and acknowledgment of her own power as enabling the positive outcome. This is emphasized in the poem’s final couplet, in which Esther stresses this fact:

• But I didn’t have to do it.
• Always remember that.
(ll. 63–64)

By concluding the poem with these words, Dame emphasizes that her Esther is a strong-minded woman who exercises choice in helping her people. She is a woman who could have refused her uncle, could have separated herself from the rest of the Jewish people, but chose not to. She is a woman who knows her power as a woman in a man’s world and resolves to use it for the common good.

While Dame’s Esther looks back at her decision to help the Jewish people by using her womanly powers to influence the king, Yala Korwin’s short poem “Widowed Queen Esther Reminisces” (Korwin 2000–2001, p. 55) presents Esther wondering in her old age about her own behavior.

The poem’s epigraph is a quotation from the book of Esther 2:17, in which Esther is crowned instead of Vashti. However, there is a mistake in the quotation reference, which states 1:17—a verse in which the Bible refers to the warning that Vashti’s disobedience will cause all wives to despise their husbands, not to Esther’s coronation. This could of course be a typographical error, but it may also hint at Esther’s reminiscences, as the poem’s title suggests. The poem, narrated by Esther, divides into two stanzas: the first presents Esther’s comparison of herself with Vashti; the second addresses her thoughts on how she would have acted had she faced Vashti’s situation.

The first stanza opens with Esther’s description of Vashti:

• I often think of star-crossed Vashti,
• Proud with the pride of aristocracy.
(ll. 1–2)

The description of Vashti as “star-crossed,” a famous phrase from Romeo and Juliet’s prolog (“star-crossed lovers”), means she is fated for misfortune or doomed by destiny. Korwin’s description of her as possessing “pride of aristocracy” may be influenced by the rabbinical midrash, which describes her as descending from the royal Babylonian dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar (Cohen 1996, pp. 104–5; Segal 2020a, p. 263), and in some midrashim even portrays her as ridiculing the king as the “son of Father’s stable-keeper” (Segal 2020a, p. 264). In contrast, Esther portrays herself as a “poor orphan of humble descent” (l. 3), and instead of Vashti’s pride, which led to her poor fate, she is the one who actually knows how to operate within patriarchy (“in man’s world” [l. 4]), having her own way by “mix[ing] submission with flattery” (l. 5).

In the second stanza, Esther contemplates how she would have acted in Vashti’s place. Korwin again follows the rabbinical midrash when her Esther depicts the request for Vashti to come naked with “nothing but the [my] crown” (l. 7) (Segal 2020a, p. 257). However, although Esther asks herself whether she would have “obeyed, or refused” (l. 8) the king’s command, the answer is not given in the poem. Instead, in the last line Esther asserts: “My luck was this: he never tested me” (l. 10). Hence, although Esther first claims she is the one who knows how to act in a world of men, she does not provide a clear answer regarding how she would have behaved if she had been in Vashti’s shoes.

Like Korwin’s Esther, Bonnie Lyons’s Esther also compares herself to Vashti. However, whereas Korwin’s Esther leaves us with no actual answer to the hypothetical question of whether she would have obeyed or refused the king’s demand to appear before him naked, Lyons’s Esther is much more confident about her own way. The poem “Esther’s Way” (Lyons 2003, p. 240) is narrated by Esther after the biblical story ends. The first and last stanzas address both Esther and Vashti, while the second focuses on Vashti and the third on Esther.

The first stanza resembles Korwin’s opening stanza in several ways: both poets establish the contrast between Vashti’s aristocratic pride and Esther’s acute awareness of her vulnerable position. However, while Korwin follows the midrash in emphasizing Vashti’s royal lineage, Lyons’s angle differs. The first stanza functions as an introduction to the whole poem, containing the basic comparison between Vashti and Esther. In the first two lines, Esther focuses on Vashti, who “Reveling in a queen’s power,/Vashti forgot she was a woman” (ll. 1–2). This crucial phrase requires unpacking: Vashti is portrayed as having overlooked the gendered limitations of her position, acting as if her queenly authority transcended her gender. In a patriarchal system, however, even royal women’s power remains conditional and revocable, subject to male authority. Vashti’s mistake, in this reading, was forgetting that her crown could not protect her from the fundamental vulnerability of being female in a male-dominated world. In contrast, Esther claims she always remembered who she was: “an orphan, grateful/to be adopted by my uncle,/a lowly Jew in Shushan,/and a woman in a man’s world” (ll. 3–7). This self-description emphasizes multiple layers of vulnerability and marginalization that Esther never forgot.

The second stanza concentrates on Vashti and her deeds. Following the claim in the first stanza that she “forgot she was a woman” (l. 2), Vashti is “Acting openly, directly/as a man” (ll. 8–9). Although her refusal to “display herself” (l. 10) is acknowledged as “a beautiful queenly gesture” (l. 11), its consequences were catastrophic not only for her but for “all women” (l. 17, emphasis in original), who were subjected to an edict “ordering all women/to honor their husbands” (ll. 17–18). Lyons thus complicates the celebration of Vashti’s defiance by foregrounding its material consequences for other women, a critique often overlooked in feminist readings that valorize her resistance.

The third stanza then focuses on Esther. Esther portrays herself as a woman acutely conscious of operating in a patriarchal world. She states that her position in a man’s world can be seen from the very beginning: “My marriage began with a beauty/contest: that says it all” (ll. 20–21). She was chosen for her “beauty/and feminine docility” (ll. 21–22). This phrase carries particular weight when considered through feminist theory’s analysis of beauty culture. As Susan Bordo argues, “All the cultural paraphernalia of femininity, of learning to please visually and sexually through the practices of the body—media imagery, beauty pageants, high heels, girdles, makeup, simulated orgasm—were seen as crucial in maintaining gender domination” (Bordo 1993, p. 182). Esther’s terse acknowledgment—that says it all” (l. 21)—reveals her awareness that the beauty contest represents not merely a selection process but the entire system of feminine performance designed to maintain male power. The beauty pageant reduces women to their visual and sexual appeal, ensuring their continued objectification and subordination within patriarchal structures.

However, unlike Vashti, Esther demonstrates strategic mastery of these constraints. The poem shows how she deploys the very tools of her objectification to achieve concrete results: “Valued for beauty/and feminine docility,/I used them cleverly/to save my people from annihilation,/to elevate my uncle to power,/to enjoy a queen’s pleasures/throughout my life” (ll. 21–27). The verb “used” is crucial here. It signals conscious agency and strategic deployment rather than passive acceptance. Esther explicitly claims to have “used them cleverly” (l. 23), transforming the attributes that made her vulnerable (beauty, docility) into tools for saving her people, advancing Mordecai’s position, and securing her own enjoyment of royal privileges. Thus, Esther uses her own agency within the patriarchy to gain power of her own, working within the system’s constraints to achieve outcomes that serve her community and herself.

In the last stanza, Vashti’s way is again compared to Esther’s. Esther claims Vashti “acted in a dream world/where women have equal power” (ll. 28–29), while Esther operated in a wiser way, “in the real world” (l. 30). Nevertheless, the poem’s closing lines reveal an ongoing tension that complicates any simple celebration of Esther’s approach: “Mine was surely the way/of wisdom. So why am I/constantly justifying myself/to her?” (ll. 31–34). Despite Esther’s confident assertion that her path was “surely the way of wisdom,” the rhetorical question exposes an underlying doubt. The word “constantly” suggests this is not a one-time questioning but an ongoing need for validation, hinting that perhaps Esther herself wonders whether strategic accommodation truly represents wisdom or merely rationalized compromise.

Although Esther acknowledges that both she and Vashti each had her own way to act within patriarchy, she cannot escape the sense that Vashti’s direct resistance carries a moral authority that makes Esther’s strategic compliance feel perpetually in need of justification. Lyons thus engages with the different feminist readings of the two queens discussed earlier in this article. While for many feminists Vashti represents the paradigmatic feminist approach of direct rebellion against patriarchy, Lyons suggests that Esther’s way is also acceptable, representing the kind of strategic resistance that feminist scholars like Sakenfeld (2003), Weems (1988), and others have recognized as a legitimate response to impossible circumstances. Yet by ending with Esther’s unanswered question about why she feels compelled to justify herself, Lyons leaves open the possibility that even legitimate strategic resistance bears personal costs that direct defiance, despite its material consequences, may not.

In each of the three poems in this section, Esther tells her own story, regarding it from a different angle. While Dame’s Esther stresses that her decision to act was her own, Korwin’s Esther questions her ability to respond if faced by challenges as Vashti did, although she does claim she has her own way in a man’s world. Lyons likewise suggests that both Vashti and Esther acted within patriarchy in two different ways. Although her Esther believes her way is more realistic than Vashti’s, she also feels she must always justify herself, since she does not rebel openly and directly as Vashti does. Together, these three retrospective poems complicate the binary opposition between Vashti and Esther that traditional readings have promoted. By giving Esther reflective distance and a first-person voice, Dame, Korwin, and Lyons reveal that resistance to patriarchal power takes multiple forms, each with its own costs and compromises. Dame’s Esther asserts an autonomous choice, claiming agency even within compliance; Korwin’s Esther confronts the limits of her knowledge about her own courage; Lyons’s Esther defends strategic accommodation while recognizing the ongoing burden of justification it requires. All three poems ultimately affirm that working within patriarchal structures—rather than directly defying them—constitutes a legitimate, if contested, form of feminist resistance. Through these comparative reflections, the poets position both Vashti’s bold refusal and Esther’s calculated compliance as valid responses to impossible circumstances, refusing to privilege one path over the other while acknowledging the different forms of suffering and success each entails.

4. Conclusions

This article has examined how some contemporary Jewish American women poets have transformed Queen Esther from a relatively silent biblical figure into a complex literary character with interior complexity and contemporary relevance. Through systematic analysis of these poems, I have demonstrated how these poets employ Alicia Ostriker’s three hermeneutical modes—suspicion, desire, and indeterminacy—alongside Wendy Zierler’s “hermeneutics of identification” to reimagine Esther’s experiences and choices.

Ostriker’s “hermeneutics of suspicion” emerges most powerfully in Robinson’s “Book of Esther: A Poem,” which exposes how Esther is objectified and “whored” by Mordecai, and in Mirriam-Goldberg’s “Oh, How Queen Esther Suffered!” which ironically questions the authenticity of Esther’s suffering compared to those outside the palace gates. These poems resist narratives that present Esther’s compliance as unambiguously heroic, instead revealing the compromises inherent in working within oppressive systems. The “hermeneutics of desire” manifests in Dame’s “Esther,” which celebrates Esther’s strategic intelligence and emphasizes her autonomous choice, and in Lyons’s “Esther’s Way,” which defends Esther’s realistic approach to resistance, transforming biblical compliance into agency. Most significantly, the “hermeneutics of indeterminacy” enables multiple, even contradictory, readings to coexist—as Hammer’s “Esther Descends into the Underworld” demonstrates by leaving Esther suspended between states and psychologically merged with Vashti, or as Robinson’s poem illustrates through its dual reading of Esther’s shame as both imposed and self-claimed. Zierler’s “hermeneutics of identification” proves particularly powerful in poems that give Esther a first-person voice, including those by Heller, Barrett, Korwin, Dame, Lyons, and Robinson. Heller’s Esther moves from obedience to disobedience; Barrett’s Esther awakens to her own agency through Hegai’s contradictory demands; Korwin’s aging Esther contemplates her choices in retrospect; Dame’s Esther asserts her autonomous decision to help her people; Lyons’s Esther defends her strategic path; and Robinson’s Esther confronts her objectification and shame. Through this first-person narration, these poets create connections between ancient and modern women’s experiences of identity formation under patriarchal constraints. The most significant contribution of these poems lies in their nuanced treatment of Esther’s relationship to power and resistance. Rather than positioning her simply as either complicit victim or strategic heroine, these poets explore her as representing a complex form of resistance that works within patriarchal structures. Her transformation from a passive object to an active subject, her navigation of impossible contradictions, and her strategic use of patriarchal tools to subvert patriarchal aims represent a legitimate path of resistance with profound costs.

Poems where Esther reflects on her predecessor Vashti reveal that the poets understand both women’s choices as responses to impossible situations, each carrying its own costs. Esther’s strategic compliance saves her people but requires ongoing negotiation of contradictions, bearing the “stain of victory” alongside the “stain of shame,” as Robinson writes.

Through their use of these hermeneutical frameworks, the poets avoid either wholly condemning or uncritically celebrating Esther’s choices. They expose the patriarchal structures that constrain her while recovering her agency and intelligence, maintaining productive tensions without collapsing them into simplistic judgment. By giving voice to previously silenced aspects of Esther’s experience—her fear, anger, suffering, pride, strategic intelligence, and psychological fragmentation—these poets create a new literary midrash that speaks to contemporary concerns while remaining deeply engaged with Jewish textual tradition. Their Esther emerges as a complex woman navigating impossible contradictions, paying profound emotional and moral costs for her choices, and representing one possible path for women resisting oppression. These poems ultimately argue that Esther’s strategic accommodation belongs in the feminist tradition, offering wisdom for contemporary women facing patriarchal power.