Woman in Sacred History / A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical, and Legendary Sources

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is at the court of this monarch, proud, vain, passionate, and ostentatious, that the story opens, with a sort of dazzle of Eastern splendor. "Now it came to pass, in the days of Ahasuerus, which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and twenty and seven provinces, that in those days, when King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace, in the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the powers of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: when he showed them the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty."

On the last seven days of the feast the royal palace is thrown open to the populace of Shushan. The writer goes on to amplify and give particulars: In the courts of the king's garden were couches of gold and silver, on a pavement of colored marbles, with hangings of white, green, and blue, fastened by cords of purple and fine linen to silver rings in marble pillars. There was wine poured forth in costly goblets of very quaint and rare device. Vashti, the queen, at the same time made a feast to all the women in the royal house which belonged to the king. In the year 1819 Sir Robert Ker Porter visited and explored the ruins of this city of Shushan. His travels were printed for private circulation, and are rare and costly. They contain elegant drawings and restorations of the palace at Persepolis which would well illustrate this story, and give an idea of the architectural splendor of the scenery of the drama here presented.

Of Shushan itself,—otherwise Susa,—he gives only one or two drawings of fragmentary ruins. The "satyrs have long danced and the bitterns cried" in these halls then so gay and glorious, though little did the king then dream of that.

At the close of the long revel, when the king was inflated to the very ultimatum of ostentatious vanity, he resolves, as a last glorification of self, to exhibit the unveiled beauty of his Queen Vashti to all the princes and lords of his empire.

Now, if we consider the abject condition of all men in that day before the king, we shall stand amazed that there was a woman found at the head of the Persian empire that dared to disobey the command even of a drunken monarch. It is true that the thing required was, according to Oriental customs, an indecency as great as if a modern husband should propose to his wife to exhibit her naked person. Vashti was reduced to the place where a woman deliberately chooses death before dishonor. The naïve account of the counsel of the king and princes about this first stand for woman's rights—their fear that the example might infect other wives with a like spirit, and weaken the authority of husbands—is certainly a most delightful specimen of ancient simplicity. It shows us that the male sex, with all their force of physical mastery, hold everywhere, even in the undeveloped states of civilization, an almost even-handed conflict with those subtler and more ethereal forces which are ever at the disposal of women. It appears that the chief councilors and mighty men of Persia could scarcely hold their own with their wives, and felt as if the least toleration would set them all out into open rebellion. So Vashti is deposed, nem. con., by the concurrent voice of all the princes of the Medes and Persians.

Then comes the account of the steps taken to secure another queen. All the beautiful virgins through all the hundred and twenty-seven provinces are caught, caged, and sent traveling towards Shushan, and delivered over to the keeping of the chief eunuch, like so many birds and butterflies, waiting their turn to be sent in to the king. Among them all a Jewish maiden, of an enslaved, oppressed race, is the favored one. Before all the beauties of the provinces Esther is preferred, and the crown royal is set upon her head. What charmed about Esther was, perhaps, the reflection of a soul from her beautiful face. Every one of the best class of Jewish women felt secretly exalted by her conception of the dignity of her nation as chosen by the one true God, and destined to bring into the world the great prince and Messiah who should reign over the earth. These religious ideas inspired in them a lofty and heroic cast of mind that even captivity could not subdue. At all events there was something about Esther that gave her a power to charm and fix the passions of this voluptuous and ostentatious monarch. Esther is the adopted daughter of her kinsman Mordecai, and the narrative says that "Esther did the commandment of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him." At his command she forbears to declare her nationality and lineage, and Mordecai refrains from any connection with her that would compromise her as related to an obscure captive, though the story says he walked every day before the court of the woman's house to know how Esther did, and what should become of her.

In these walks around the palace he overhears a conspiracy of two chamberlains to murder the king, and acquaints Esther of the danger. The conspirators are executed, and the record passes into the Persian annals with the name of Mordecai the Jew, but no particular honor or reward is accorded to him at that time. Meanwhile, a foreign adventurer named Haman rises suddenly to influence and power, and becomes prime minister to the king. This story is a sort of door, opening into the interior of a despotic court, showing the strange and sudden reverses of fortune which attended that phase of human existence. Haman, inflated with self-consequence, as upstart adventurers generally are, is enraged at Mordecai for neglecting to prostrate himself before him as the other hangers-on of the court do. Safe in his near relationship to the queen, Mordecai appears to have felt himself free to indulge in the expensive and dangerous luxury of quiet contempt for the all-powerful favorite of the king.

It is most astounding next to read how Haman, having resolved to take vengeance on Mordecai by exterminating his whole nation, thus glibly and easily wins over the king to his scheme. "There is a nation," he says, "scattered abroad throughout all the provinces of the king's kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the king's laws, therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them." "If it please the king let it be written that they may be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of them that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king's treasury."

It is fashionable in our times to speak of the contempt and disregard shown to women in this period of the world among Oriental races, but this one incident shows that women were held no cheaper than men. Human beings were cheap. The massacre of hundreds of thousands was negotiated in an easy, off-hand way, just as a gardener ordains exterminating sulphur for the green bugs on his plants. The king answered to Haman, "The silver is given thee, and the people also, to do as seemeth to thee good."

Then, says the story, "the king's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and there was written according to all that Haman had commanded, and the letters were sent by post into all the provinces, to destroy and to kill and cause to perish all Jews, both old and young, little children and women, in one day, of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, to take the spoil of them for a prey. The posts went out, being hastened by the king's commandment, and the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed." And when Mordecai heard this he rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went into the midst of the city, and came even before the king's gate, for none might enter into the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. The Oriental monarch was supposed to dwell in eternal bliss and joyfulness: no sight or sound of human suffering or weakness or pain must disturb the tranquility of his court; he must not even suspect the existence of such a thing as sorrow.