Dark, and Dear, and Passionate Desire: Before and After the Feast at Shushan

Abstract

This article is a comparative close reading of two poems, one from the nineteenth century by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the other a dramatic monologue from the twentieth century by Anne Spencer. The poems both deal with the abuse of patriarchal power in the story of Queen Vashti, contextualizing the story in both centuries, showing how, with masks firmly in place, women writers delivered powerful messages of protest to the male communities using an ancient story that speaks powerfully to their present as well as ours.