The Red Tent

“[Zilpah] told me that the presence of El hovered over [Jacob] […] El was the god of thunder, high places, and awful sacrifice. El could demand that a father cut off his son—cast him out into the desert, or slaughter him outright. This was a hard, strange god, alien and cold.”

In contrast to the nurturing mother-goddesses (like Inanna) whom Dinah’s four mothers worship, Jacob’s god (El) strikes them as cruel and cold. This quote foreshadows Simon and Levi’s violence and the alienation that Dinah will experience from her family upon her husband’s murder.

“Leah, too, said Laban had put his hand under her robes, but when she told Adah, my grandmother had beaten Laban with a pestle until he bled. She broke the horns off his favorite household god, and when she threatened to curse him with boils and impotence, he swore never to touch his daughters again.”

Men’s sexual violence against women is a pattern throughout The Red Tent, indicating the dangers that exist for women in a culture where they are regarded as the property of men. Dinah’s grandmother Adah uses a pestle, a cooking utensil, to threaten her husband Laban, and breaks a phallic symbol—the horns of a teraphim (household god)—to indicate she will punish any sexual advances he makes toward their daughters.

“The family’s good fortune and increasing wealth were not entirely the result of Jacob’s skill, nor could it all be attributed to the will of the gods. My mothers’ labors accounted for much of it. While sheep and goats are a sign of wealth, their full value is realized only in the husbandry of women.”

This quote observes how the world of women is separate from and often invisible to men. Women’s unpaid domestic labor, which determines a household’s prosperity and survival, is rarely acknowledged for its value.

“She dreamed of giving birth to a daughter, not a human child but a changeling of some kind, a spirit woman. Full-grown, full-breasted. She wore nothing but a girdle of string, in front and in back. She strode the earth with great steps, and her moon blood made trees grow everywhere she walked.”

This quote credits a supernatural power to women, rooted in reproduction and parturition. Zilpah, as the sister most invested in religious observance, wishes to give birth to a daughter, as she imagines femininity imbued with sacred power. Her dream of a powerful daughter might also indicate her longing for more respect for women, instead of their dehumanization by men.

“While Leah slept, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah took me out in the moonlight and put henna on my feet and hands, as though I were a bride. They spoke a hundred blessings around me, north, south, east, and west, to protect me against Lamashtu and the other baby-stealing demons. They gave me a thousand kisses.”

This account of Dinah’s birth shows the tender relationship between her and her four mothers (with Leah being her birth mother and her three aunts being mother figures). These bonds are celebratory, even reverent. This quote also illustrates Anita Diamant’s characteristic prose, which has an almost incantatory tone.

“My world was filled with mothers and brothers, work and games, new moons and good food. The hills in the distance held my life in a bowl filled with everything I could possibly want.”

The innocence and abundance of Dinah’s childhood create a sense of community that contrasts with her later loneliness. The bowl is an image of sustenance that illustrates how supported she feels at this time in her life.

“I was in awe of our numbers and what seemed our great wealth. Joseph told me that we were a small party by any measure, with only two pack animals to carry our belongings, but I remained proud of my father’s holdings and I thought my mother carried herself like a queen.”

Early chapters capture Dinah’s innocence as a child and contentment with her life, which is all she knows. Moving to Canaan is a turning point in the narrative, a new opportunity for Jacob’s family, and Dinah will mature during and after the journey as she comes into contact with other families and ways of life.

“It was unthinkable that a healthy man would walk of his own will inside [the red tent] during the head of the month. The men and boys stared to see if [Laban] would place himself among bleeding women—even worse, his own daughters.”

This quote frames the red tent as a place of seclusion, in which the cultural taboo of menstruation (and men interacting with menstruating women) is observed. It also comes to represent a community where women are briefly free of domestic labor and rely on one another. Laban’s entry into the tent shows his lack of respect for women’s bodies or spaces, which he sees as property, as he is driven to recover his other property (teraphim).

“From that night forward, [Joseph] began to dream with the power of our father’s dreams. At first, he spoke of his wondrous encounters with angels and demons, with dancing stars and talking beasts, to me only. Soon, his dreams were too big for my ears alone.”

This quote is one of the few places where Diamant contextualizes events from the Book of Genesis. Joseph’s dreams are the basis of his rise to power in Egypt. Diamant uses his prophetic power, once considered a gift, to illustrate how his maturation severs his childhood friendship with Dinah.

“It was the first time I had heard the distinctions between my brothers, or my aunties, made so clear or public. I saw the sons of the lesser wives whom the word called ‘handmaids,’ and I saw how their heads dropped to be so named.”

Traveling to Canaan is an initiation of sorts for Dinah, and in meeting her uncle, Esau, she understands her family’s judgment by the outside world. This realization of the difference in status for women marks the beginning of her loss of innocence.

“She was far away in the land of her story, a cold land of strange myths, where her own mother was buried. I felt the messenger’s loneliness, so far from home. I understood Werenro’s heart the way I understood the sun when it warmed my face.”

The messenger Werenro enchants Dinah with stories of faraway lands. Like Dinah, her life was changed by men’s violence, leaving her an outsider in Egypt. Thus, this longing for her mother and homeland foreshadows Dinah’s losses in Shechem by the men of her family.

“I was not surprised by Rebecca’s silence. I had stopped thinking of her as a woman like my mothers, or like any other woman for that matter. In the space of an afternoon, she had become a force of the gods, like a rainstorm or a brushfire.”

Rebecca serves the goddess Inanna at her shrine at Mamre. In opposition to El, the god of her husband, Isaac, the prophetic Rebecca is served by handmaidens named Deborah and seems to laud female power. However, Dinah sees her as a forbidding figure, not a nurturing one like her mothers.

“In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new moon’s life, women give thanks—for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”

This quote emphasizes the importance, even reverence, of reproduction and parturition, which are considered women’s principal tasks in this culture. In contrast to women’s lower status in the public realm, their ability to nurture life is considered a sacred gift.

“The walls of Shechem awed me more than the misty mountains that inspired sacrifices from Jacob and Zilpah. The minds that had conceived such a great project made me feel wise, and the force of the sinews that had built the fortress made me feel strong. Whenever I caught sight of the walls, I could not look away.”

Dinah’s fascination with the city walls of Shechem foreshadows her fascination with its prince Shalem. After she enters these walls, Dinah’s later life will be lived in cities, a change from her childhood in tents. As opposed to a shepherding lifestyle, Shechem inspires Dinah with respect for human ingenuity.

“He looked at me with the same hunger I felt, and put a warm hand on my elbow to squire me back to the palace, the queen’s woman following us, wearing a big grin. Her mistress had been right; there was a light between the prince and the granddaughter of Mamre.”

The sexual desire between Shalem and Dinah is framed as an agreement of marriage, albeit informal. Dinah feels she is his equal both in attraction and ancestry. The harmony of their coming together is a startling contrast to the violence that parts them.

“My brother had been dispatched to see when I would be sent home, and had he been given a fine meal and a bed for the night, my life might have had a different telling.”

As a narrator, Dinah has the ability to navigate different points in time. Here, she pulls back from her consummation with Shalem to consider an alternate turn of events. The moment creates suspense through the contrast between Dinah’s honeymoon and Shalem’s future murder. Dinah’s image of her life as a story reinforces the power of storytelling throughout the novel.

“I was covered in blood. My arms were coated with the thick, warm blood that ran from Shalem’s throat and coursed like a river down the bed and onto the floor. His blood coated my cheeks and stung my eyes and salted my lips. His blood soaked through the blankets and burned my breasts, streamed down my legs, coated my toes. I was drowning in my lover’s blood.”

Throughout the novel, women’s blood has been revered, even sacred. Here, Shalem’s blood, a man’s blood, is framed as horrific. The image of Dinah drowning in blood contrasts with the peace she previously felt with Shalem, the repetition of “blood” extending the moment, the sense of violation. Her being drowned positions her as another victim of Simon and Levi’s slaughter.

“Barefoot, wearing nothing but a shift, I walked away from my brothers and my father and everything that had been home. I walked away from love as well, never again to see my reflection in my mothers’ eyes. But I could not live among them.”

This image of a shift-clad Dinah leaving Jacob’s camp shows the extent of her devastation. She was to be a happily married bride, living in a palace, and now, she is destitute and alone. Simon and Levi’s insistence that she was sexually assaulted by Shalem and their subsequent murder—all done to veil their own greed—are crimes she cannot forgive. Dinah ultimately sacrifices association with her mothers to find peace.

“We never wept or mourned over Shalem, nor did she tell me where my beloved was buried. The horror was to remain unspoken, my grief sealed behind my lips. We never again spoke of our shared history, and I was bound to the emptiness of the story she told.”

Dinah’s would-be mother-in-law Re-nefer refuses to speak of Shalem’s death, which defeats the power of stories to connect and heal. This silence, an emptiness and wound, exemplifies both women’s lives in Egypt for a while. Re-nefer’s avoidance of her trauma contrasts with Dinah’s catharsis upon sharing her history with Werenro, Meryt, and Benia.

“Like every mother since the first mother, I was overcome and bereft, exalted and ravaged. I had crossed over from girlhood. I beheld myself as an infant in my mother’s arms, and caught a glimpse of my own death. I wept without knowing whether I rejoiced or mourned. My mothers and their mothers were with me as I held my baby.”

In a novel where womanhood is defined by reproduction, Dinah’s childbirth is a turning point. She sees herself as part of a long lineage of mothers, with the quote framing the bonds between mothers as sharing pain and joy.

“I came to fear the very thought [of leaving the grounds]. I was certain I would be lost, or worse, somehow discovered. I imagined that someone would recognize the sin of my family upon my face and I would be torn apart on the spot. My son would discover the truth about his mother and about her brothers, his uncles. He would be exiled from the good life that he seemed destined to inherit, and he would curse my memory.”

One of the thematic concerns of the novel is lineage, as shared ancestry unites cultures and clans. Dinah fears her lineage is a curse that could steal her and her son Re-Mose’s futures.

“When Benia lay with me, the past vanished and I was a new soul, reborn in the taste of his mouth, the touch of his fingers.”

Dinah’s marriage to second husband Benia is a contrast to her brief life with first husband Shalem, a rewrite of their sorrowful history. Thus, her finding love again represents a new beginning for her.

“My son did not move from his couch or say a word, and I took my leave, brokenhearted but free.”

When Re-Mose learns of his father Shalem’s murder, Dinah finally confronts the past she wanted to escape and finds the truth liberating. Though the truth changes her son’s future, as she feared, she herself is finally free of its burden. This is an important step in her healing from trauma.