The Red Tent has been on my radar for a while, and on my bookshelf for maybe a year and a half or so now. I know that's a ridiculous time to sit on a bookshelf, but I very often have to be in the right mood for a certain kind of book, and I knew that this was going to be one of those books. In many ways, I'm glad I waited. Where I am in my life right now, what I'm feeling--this book made me confront a lot of those emotions. It reminded me that there are good things in life, and there are bad. That there are things that happen that you can forgive, and things that you can't, and even when you can't forgive, you can learn to accept. You can see how one situation can change how many people feel about something. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The story of Jacob and his beloved, Rachel, along with her sister Leah, is one that is very familiar to me. In one of my favorite movies, One Night with the King, Esther tells the king their story. The story of Joseph is also quite easy to recall, thanks to such productions as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or the movie King of Dreams. In all the tellings of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, in the tellings of Joseph, I didn't know that Jacob had a daughter.
Dinah is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and her story is used as a kind of "fear the strangers" type warning. She goes to Sekhmet and either marries and sleeps with or is raped by a prince of the city. Jacob demands the circumcision of the men of the city as payment, and two days after the ceremony, as the men are recovering, they are slaughtered by the sons of Jacob. After that, she kind of falls out of the narrative.
With The Red Tent, Anita Diamant has created a story between the lines of that story, and expanded it to give Dinah a past, a future, and a legacy beyond one of blood and betrayal. But the book is more than just Dinah's story. It's a story of women, of sisters, wives, daughters, friends, and enemies. It's a story about how women have a different understanding of birth, life, and death. The soul of this book lies in the relationships between women.
Dinah, as narrator, starts by telling her mother and aunts' stories. She tells how Jacob came to Laban's home and fell instantly in love with Rachel. But she also tells how he fell more slowly for Leah. When Rachel is afraid of her marriage night, Leah takes her place. This will create resentment between the sisters, but they are able to come together. She tells of how Leah was incredibly fertile (she had eight living children, seven boys and Dinah) but Rachel could not concieve and carry a baby. So it also becomes the story of Bilhah, who pledges to carry a child for Rachel and of Zilpah, who bears twins when Leah needs to rest. Dinah tells of each of her mother-aunts skills and beauty, but of their faults as well. When Dinah is finally born, the women are estatic to have a daughter to carry their stories. The stories of the four wives of Jacob are just as important as Dinah's, because the relationships in this world of women shape who Dinah is. For instance, if Rachel had not been a midwife, it is unlikely that Dinah would have been.
When Dinah tells her own story, it feels short in comparison to her mother-aunts'. Dinah is in love with Shalem, the Sekhmet prince she marries. Simon and Levi, her second and third oldest brothers, murder the men of the city without their father's knowledge. At the death of her beloved, Dinah curses the house of Jacob and leaves them. She travels with her mother in law, Re-Nefer to Thebes, where she bears a son. Re-Nefer claims Dinah's child as her own, and Dinah is lost for many years. Eventually, thanks to Meryt, Dinah begins to live again, and to serve as a midwife, something she hadn't done for many years. She even remarries, although she bears no other children.
But Dinah must face her past, and that happens when her son, in the employ of the powerful Zafenat-Paneh-ah, comes to beg her help on behalf of his master's wife. Dinah goes to help the woman, and discovers that the powerful vizier is her brother, Joseph. As milk-siblings, and being only a few months apart in age, they had been very close as children. Dinah had not known her brother's fate. At the same time, she cannot forgive a son of Jacob who, to her, stood by as her future had been killed. Dinah finally gets closure when she travels to her father's home as he is dying. She does not go to see Jacob, but to see the lives of her brothers, and their children and grandchildren--the fruits of her mothers, long since dead. When one of her nieces sits down and tells her the story of the many children, she also brings up the story of Dinah. While her niece does not know Dinah's fate (or that she is, in fact, talking to the subject of her story), she shares that Dinah's name is remembered, as is the travesty that befell her. This brings Dinah peace.
And that's the end of the story. Normally, I wouldn't tell you how it ends, to encourage you to read the book for yourself, but in this case, I felt I had to. It's the lesson in the end, for me, that makes all the tears I shed reading this book worth it (I'm having an emotional week. I don't think I'd have cried so much otherwise, don't worry!). Forgiveness comes in many guises. Sometimes, it only comes in acceptance of what happened. In that case, you don't necessarily forgive the person who harmed you, but you forgive yourself for things that only make sense to you. For holding that grudge. For not being able to forgive. I don't know.
I also think this is a great book for any feminist to read because it emphasizes the power of women. It may seem--thanks to the fact that they so rarely appear with full, fleshed out stories--that women of Biblical times had no power, but they did. The power they held was just intrinsically different than what the men of the Bible held. Even today, I think it's important to remember that yes, women and men should be treated equally in all things, but there are some things that men are more capable of, and have an easier understanding of, and some things that women have the easier understanding of. Equal doesn't always have to mean the same. Yes, two quarters are equal. But, a two dimes and a nickle are also equal to a quarter. They're worth the same, but they are different.
I really hope, man or woman, you read this book. It's a truly wonderful, humanizing look at some of the popular Biblical characters. While it is a work of fiction, it makes many people, such as Rachel, Leah, and Jacob, as Issac and Rebecca, as Joseph, to appear more real. They weren't perfect, but they were real.
The book has also been made into a mini series starring Iain Glen as Jacob and Rebecca Ferguson as
Dinah.
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