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Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: an Investigation of Public and Private Spaces in Relationship to Possibilities for Female Royal Counselors

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Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: an Investigation of Public and Private Spaces in Relationship to Possibilities for Female Royal Counselors Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: An Investigation of Public and Private Spaces in Relationship to Possibilities for Female Royal Counselors The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Hancock, Rebecca. 2012. Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: An Investigation of Public and Private Spaces in Relationship to Possibilities for Female Royal Counselors. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9560823 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2012 Rebecca Susanne Hancock All Rights Reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Jon D. Levenson Rebecca S. Hancock Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: An Investigation of Public and Private Spaces in Relationship to Possibilities for Female Royal Counselors ABSTRACT 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 this question with regard to how typical or exceptional Esther is vis-à-vis portrayals of other 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. This dissertation begins with a review of scholarship on Esther. Many scholarly assessments of her, whether they see her as typical or exceptional, rely on problematic assumptions; yet within the body of scholarship on Esther there were also a number of insights that suggest a more nuanced approach to evaluating her character. One problem of dichotomous assessments of Esther is that they rely on an assumption of gendered and separate public and private spheres for men and women respectively, a construct that suffers from a number of iii theoretical issues. In addition to the general problems with this language, the portrayal of Esther as a politically powerful and persuasive woman connects her to a wide variety of biblical literature, suggesting that she is not the exceptional figure that some have claimed but deeply embedded within a tradition. Moreover, the role that familial and kinship relationships and metaphors play in structuring political life opens up the historic possibility that women may have participated in the political arena, depending on their own family dynamics. None of the evidence regarding Persian women—Esther’s narrative portrayal, Greek historiography on Persian royal women, or indigenous Persian sources—provide any reason to assume that women were categorically confined to a private sphere. Thus, this dissertation proposes a movement away from the discourse on public and private, thereby opening up the historic possibility for women’s participation in the political role of royal counselor. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Methodology 5 Chapter Outline 6 Chapter 1: Introduction to the Problem: Esther in Scholarship 10 Introduction 10 Esther in Scholarship 15 Problems and Possibilities Posed by the Literature on Esther 32 Problems 32 Possibilities 38 Conclusion 41 Chapter 2: Theoretical Problems with the Language of Public and Private 42 Introduction 42 Public and Private in Biblical Scholarship 43 Problems with the Public/Private Discourse in Biblical Scholarship 54 Public and Private as Theoretical Categories 58 Conclusion 67 Chapter 3: Esther the Politician: Traditions of Counseling Women 70 Introduction 70 Women and Royal Counsel in the Bible 72 Women’s Counsel in the ancient Near East 88 Conclusion 96 Chapter 4: Implications of the Patrimonial Household Model on Women’s Participation in Politics 99 Introduction 99 Women and the Domestic Sphere 101 Patrimonialism and the Two-Sector Model 102 Assessing the Patrimonial Household Model 110 Implications of Patrimonialism for the Persian Period 115 Conclusion 120 v Chapter 5: Esther and Representations of Persian Royal Women 124 Introduction 124 Esther as a Source for History 125 Representations of Space and Gender in Esther 133 Counsel in the Book of Esther 137 The Status of Royal Women in Esther 139 Persian Royal Women in Greek and Persian Sources 141 Conclusion 151 Conclusion 155 Bibliography 170 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am profoundly grateful to my advisor, Professor Jon D. Levenson for all of his patience, insight, creativity, and careful reading of my work. At every part of the process he offered a great deal of encouragement and humor, both of which played a significant role in helping me to complete this project. It was during his course on the book of Esther that I first became so intrigued by book’s complexity and nuance, and it was his willingness to let me explore new ideas that gave me courage to develop this thesis. I owe a great deal to Professors Peter Machinist and Larry Stager, both of whom graciously served on my committee. In addition to their careful reading of my work, both scholars have helped to sharpen my thinking during my time at Harvard and the work of both has significantly influenced the way in which I approached this dissertation. I am especially grateful to of my colleagues in the Hebrew Bible program who carefully fostered a spirit of true collegiality. My successful completion of this journey was possible because I had a wonderful group of students with whom I studied and worked, including Jim Jumper, John Noble, and all the women in Hebrew Bible, among many others. I truly cannot imagine what the process would have been like without their constant encouragement. I also am grateful for all the support I have had from my family at home, especially my parents and my siblings: John, Patricia, James, Marcia, Jonathan, Johanna, and Nathan Hancock. So many friends have cheered me on by sending cards, care packages, and words of encouragement when I needed it most. I am grateful especially to Marty and Alicia McCabe and Katherine Shaner, who sustained me with wonderful meals and listened to endless stories over the past several years. Finally, I must express my deepest gratitude to Rodrigo Achurra for being so constant in his love, his willingness to listen, and his support through this process. vii Introduction “If it pleases the king, let a royal order go out from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes so that it may not be altered, that Vashti is never again to come before King Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she. So when the decree made by the king is proclaimed throughout all his kingdom, vast as it is, all women will give honor to their husbands, high and low alike.” This advice pleased the king and the officials, and the king did as Memucan proposed; he sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script and to every people in its own language, declaring that every man should be master in his own house” (Esth 1:19–22). The book of Esther introduces the problem of gender relationships in the first chapter. The private dynamics between the king and the queen, who refuses to do as her husband asks, quickly become a matter for which the royal sages are consulted. Immediately, the counselors express their fear that this minor dispute will set a national precedent, impacting the relationships between men and women throughout the kingdom. In the past several decades, a great of deal of scholarship has focused on the implications of patriarchy 1 for women. The primary way that this has impacted scholarly assessments of Esther is to evaluate the book in terms of the degree to which Esther conforms to or deviates from a set of gendered expectations. Biblical scholars have often argued that during periods of centralized authority, women are most often relegated to the domestic sphere. This viewpoint, however, is problematic because while patriarchy may in fact limit women’s roles in a variety of different ways, it is far too superficial to imagine that women, or men, operate in just one particular way within society. Individuals gain and lose access to power and status through a variety of means over the course of their lifetime and it is not always fixed along rigid gender 1My argument does not deny gender disparity nor wish to dismiss patriarchy out of hand. Rather, it is my goal to find a more nuanced way to talk about gender dynamics, specifically as they relate to a variety of other social factors. 1 lines. Furthermore, the notion of a separate and distinct public arena that can be clearly distinguished from the private is anachronistic to the biblical world. If the terms public and private in relationship to male and female roles served as a useful heuristic device to describe the limitations of patriarchy, it is also served to obscure the nuanced picture presented to us by the textual evidence that we have. One of the problems of focusing on separate spheres as a way of explaining gender dynamics is that the logic and the results of this work become self-perpetuating.
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