Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

1997

Novel

Revisionist

This vibrant reimagining of the biblical story of Dinah (DEE-nah) has been characterized as a feminist reading of the violent events recounted in Chapter 34 of the Book of Genesis, in which Dinah herself is silent.

Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, is the only surviving daughter among Jacob's many children. Leah and Rachel, the legitimate daughters of Laban, are Jacob's wives; Laban's illegitimate daughters Zilpah and Bilhah are Jacob's concubines. Cherished by all of the women, Dinah inhabits a female sphere profoundly separate from that of the men. In Jacob's household the men have complete dominion over the women, whose lives are circumscribed by a variety of customs embodying their subservience. As she matures, Dinah is initiated into the female society of the red tent, where women are sequestered during menstruation, childbirth, sickness, and the approach of death. Female rituals and the women's relationships among themselves offer their deepest emotional satisfactions. The novel opens with Dinah's retelling of the history of her four “mothers” along with her own; only by being passed down from one generation to the next are women's stories preserved. Rachel becomes a midwife, and she teaches Dinah her skills.

After years of tending Laban's flocks, Jacob returns to Canaan and eventually moves to lands near the city of Shechem. Dinah and Rachel are called to assist at the childbed of a concubine of Hamor, Shechem's king. Dinah meets and immediately falls in love with Shalem, a prince of Shechem, and he with her. Dinah and Shalem later consummate their love. Shalem declares Dinah his wife, and Hamor offers Jacob a royal bride price. Jacob's sons, however, ask that all the men of Shechem be circumcised so that the two peoples can live as one. As is recounted in Genesis, when the king complies, Dinah's brothers Simon and Levi and their servants enter the city and kill all the men of Shechem as they sleep.

Genesis presents Dinah's relationship with the prince as a rape and has no more to say about Dinah's fate. But the novel carries her story forward as she flees to Egypt with Re-nefer, the queen, and gives birth to a son, Re-mose, who is brought up as Re-nefer's son. Befriended by the midwife Meryt, Dinah returns to the practice of midwifery. After Re-nefer's death, she and Meryt go to live with Meryt's son in the Valley of the Kings. There, Dinah marries Benia, a master carpenter. Summoned to attend at the birth of the vizier's son, she discovers that the vizier is Joseph, her favorite brother. Having learned of the murder of his father, Re-mose threatens to kill Joseph, a capital offense. Dinah convinces him to accept exile in punishment; she does not see him again.

Years later Joseph persuades Dinah to return with him to Canaan to be reconciled with their dying father. She finds that although Jacob and her brothers have forgotten her, her story is alive among the women, in the red tent. Content, Dinah returns with Benia to Egypt, where she lives out her days.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Diamant, Anita. "The Red Tent." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0457.
APA 7th
Diamant, A. (2015). The Red Tent. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Diamant, Anita. "The Red Tent." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.