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Vashti

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Biblical Character

The Resume

    Queen of Persia
    Wife of King Ahasuerus (possibly Xerxes)
    Appears in the Book of Esther
    Banished for refusing to appear before the King (succeeded by Esther)

Why she might be annoying:

    She is depicted as a vain and evil slave driver in some retellings (mainly the Midrash).
    Some claim she was banished for refusing to appear naked before guests at the King’s banquet.
    The origin of this interpretation comes from the passage: ‘And the king ordered his wife Vashti to appear before his guests wearing her crown, that he might display her beauty before them, but she came not’ (the implication being that he wanted her in nothing BUT her crown).
    Her banishment in the story led to the passing of an edict stating affirming the husband and father as the head of the household.
    The Esther episode of VeggieTales shows her getting kicked out of her castle for refusing to make the King a sandwich at three in the morning (you read that right).

Why she might not be annoying:

    She was described as almost incomparably beautiful.
    It is never specified what happened to her after she was banished.
    She indirectly set the stage for the Jewish people to be saved from annihilation by Haman.
    She was adopted as an early folk heroine by feminists, who preferred her open defiance to the more submissive and passive Queen Esther.
    Harriet Beecher Stowe called her refusal ‘the first stand for woman's rights.’
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton praised her actions, famously writing: 'Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.’

Credit: BoyWithTheGreenHair


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