The primary dramas examined in this study are Vicente Garcia de la Huerta's Raquel and Felix Lope de Vega's La hermosa Ester. This thesis is a textual analysis that seeks both to challenge and complement the existing literary criticism that has focused on construction of the female protagonists and the theme of heroism and culpability. Raquel and La hermosa Ester demonstrate the centrality of their female protagonists in the socio-political macrostructures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through their ability to influence the functioning of a monarchy and its reigns of power. / The predominant theme that is explored is the ascension and descension to and from power as seen through the movement of the female protagonists within or beyond their social spheres. Other recurrent themes that are examined are the sin of pride, the virtue of humility, the vital interdependence between the monarch and nobility, the displacement of culpability and the fundamental role of the male characters. / Raquel and Ester, united in their tri-fold social marginalization as Jewish, lower class females, are juxtaposed with the dominance of a deeply rooted patriarchal, aristocratic and pagan society. While La hermosa Ester offers the possibility of ethnic, religious and political coexistence on the throne, Raquel does not achieve this ideal. However, Raquel's commanding presence is able to unveil the chaos that lies beneath the monarchical order. / The final objective of this thesis is to embrace the portraiture presented of two women who are catapulted into political realms, polarized in love, servitude, sacrifice and salvation, but who are uniquely bound by heroism, marked in a bleeding lover or blessed in the hymn of a nation.

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