The Red Tent

I must be on a biblical fiction streak, because, wow, this was another fabulous read… at least for me.

The story of Dinah (she gets chapter 34 of Genesis, kind of…) is told from her point of view in this massive book of her life. We are given background, shadows and highlights, details and grand scheme images, all of which I was fond of. This kind of exploration of a character, who on a read-through the Bible might not (and didn’t for me, at least) garner any further questions, is breath-taking.

Not only are we given a peak into Dinah’s life, though, we are given a possible universe in terms of female relationships in the times of Jacob and Joseph. What it means to be a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a mid-wife, a wet-nurse, a widow, a wanderer… these are what it means to be Dinah. But Diamant’s exploration of this girl (and this woman) goes beyond the gender roles she plays, and allows me to see the omnipresence of femininity, in terms of growth, dreams, and desires.

There are claims that this novel is a bit too free with the sexual descriptions of Dinah, her mothers, and the workings of female lives in general (birthing, feeding, caring, pleasuring), but this could not be further from my read of the novel at all. Instead, I think the book could not have worked without all of these snapshots of a woman’s body and the creation of a niche for that body in the every day lives of the people of the Old Testament.

This is a powerful book for any woman interested in the historical period of Jacob and Joseph, for any woman interested in interpersonal relationships between women (and how they might have a constant structure in time), for any woman interested in faith - how it can be viewed as intrinsic, irresolute, and increased over the course of a life.