Esther and the Politics of Negotiation

The primary question that this dissertation seeks to answer is, "How might we characterize the narrative depiction of Esther's political involvement in the affairs of the Persian state?" Many scholars have tried to answer that question with the regard to the degree to which Esther is either typical or exception to portrayals of biblical women: Does Esther represent an aberration from gender norms or an embodiment of male patriarchal values? The project undertaken here is to challenge the way in which the entire question has been framed because underlying it is a set of problematic assumptions. The results of the question framed thus can only lead to more interpretive difficulties, either denying the commonalities between Esther and other biblical women, or ignoring the dynamics at play when the very same descriptions are used of men. In addition, the reliance on these two categories has provided a kind of self-perpetuating logic so that scholarship about men and women and their respective roles tends to replicate two separate and divided spheres within academic discourse.