Don't Mess With Esther

Just in time for both
Purim & International Women's Day
[& Easter 2024]

I was so pleased to come across this poem, because it answers the question that is always on my mind when reading the story of Esther: "What about Vashti?" The poem appears without a title, but the subtitle underneath the Bible Story Book illustration is perfect for the poem as well:

Sisters unite:
the revenge of Vashti and Esther!

When few could distinguish
Mordecai from Haman
(and the two gentlemen, themselves,
were passed out, arm in arm,
under the King’s throne),
Esther tied King Ahashverosh
to the horse’s royal tail
and dragged him through Persian streets
to the graveyard. There she swapped him
for his dead Queen and these two
cantered back to the palace,
where Vashti danced a wild tarantella
and stripped off her funeral shroud.
While the noblemen gaped and gangled
at the reawakened beauty,
Esther raced through the feast,
nailing each tongue to the table,
still flapping.
And she flaunted her Jewishness,
despite her drunken cousin,
and canted bentchlicht
for all the Jewish mothers,
while balancing Haman’s hat
on the King’s gold sceptre.
Then, the two ladies painted
on the soles of their sandals
and hopscotched
‘til they had stamped out
the names of Ahashverosh, and Mordecai,
and all those
who would have women
bury their souls in flesh.

Susan Charles Groth (b 1965)

Here's a more complete version
of the illustration . . .

The inhumane treatment of Vashti (through no fault of Esther's)
is often glossed over when the story is told to children,
as in this drawing from my mother's Bible Story Book:

My grandmother's writing (below).
My mom would have been 5 years old at the time.

My mother's writing
on the next page.

The two queens as depicted by British artist
Edwin Longsden Long (1829 – 1891)

Queen Esther, 1878

Vashti Refuses the King's Summons, 1879

Should you need a refresher course
on Esther's complicated dilemma,
click here for a helpful retelling.
In addition, you may want to memorize this little poem that I learned in Sunday School as a child, and have never been able to forget. You know how it is: put those little rhymes inside a kid's head and they are there to stay forever. Not to mention that Evangelical Protestants love a good revenge story:
"When Haman built a gallows high
For Mordecai's head,
God turned the tables and we find
That Haman hanged, instead."
Esther Denouncing Haman, 1888
by British artist
Ernest Normand (1857–1923)

P.S.
Happy Purim & Hamantaschen Season to my friend Igor!

P.P.S.
See also Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
standing up for Vashti since way back in 1911!
See poem in comments below . . .