The Red Tent
by Anita Diamant
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Book Reviews of The Red Tent
Book Review: a powerful story of ancient feminine strength
Summary: 4 Stars
The Old Testament, Genesis saga of Jacob and his family is transformed by Anita Diamant into a powerful story of one woman. Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, mentioned in the Bible maybe only once, is the central character and the narrator.
Dinah recalls the events from the time before she was born, how Jacob came from Canaan to Laban, fell in love with Rachel and worked for Laban to marry, eventually, Laban's four daughters: Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah. Each one is an unique woman and possesses strong characteristics.
The women's domain is the red tent, where women spend their time away from men, being it menstruation, childbirth or post-partum rest and bonding with the newborn baby. The feminine rituals strengthen the bond between sisters, and Rachel, who is a midwife, is admired by many. The women rejoice in their family ties and support, in feelings towards each other, and in tradition, as they worship ancient gods.
The midwife profession is the one chosen also by Dinah, and after the clan moves back to Canaan, Dinah becomes Rachel's apprentice. She is moved by the personality of her grandmother, Rebecca, the priestess and oracle. When the family moves on again, because there is no place in Canaan foe both Jacob and Esau, they settle close to the palace of the Egyptian king, which ultimately brings the disaster and Dinah's estrangement and separation from her brothers and beloved mother and aunts, and ultimately her exile to Egypt and completely new life.
Dinah has to fend for herself, when she does not have family women by her side, but she does it exceptionally well and at the end leads a successful, fulfilled life. She experiences everything throughout her adult year, from friendship, hatred, forgiveness, physical attraction and deep, mature love for a man, maternal love, professional satisfaction and respect of others.
"The Red Tent" is not a book to be analyzed in literary categories; it is perhaps not even that well constructed and not novel in form. It has to be read with the heart, not with the brain. Besides being a biblical story told from a different point of view, it has a deeper meaning. Anita Diamant manages to move the reader, to evoke strong emotions, and to write about women who are strong and confident in their natural role, who can find happiness and to develop fully their abilities and characters. In this respect, it can be called a feminist book, although it represents the strength of women who do not fight for men's rights, but rather manage to be the best in their "conventional" life, to became matriarchs and to possess knowledge unfamiliar to men. The women admire other women, they are best sisters and friends and they believe in feminine power (however simplified it soiunds). Nevertheless, the novel tries also to be objective and contains criticism of both men and women. It moved me deeply and I could not put it down until the end.
Book Review: Writing at its Best
Summary: 5 Stars
THE RED TENT is what all fiction should be: powerful, beautifully written, brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed. It is a work that approaches genius. What an imagination Anita Diamant boasts! It is difficult to understand how she even came up with the concept. As her notes at the end of the work indicate, her research and her scholarship are of the highest order. This would be a particularly difficult opus for any author, to take a first-person narrative, told in hindsight and with a minimum of dialogue, and set it approximately 5700 years in the past. Yet Diamant's characters seem as fresh and real as one's next-door neighbor. Again, what an imagination!
Her "heroine," Dinah, was the only daughter of the biblical Jacob to have survived to adulthood. Jacob was the son of Issac, grandson of Abraham, brother of Esau, father of the Joseph of "The Coat of Many Colors." Women, it is obvious, were an afterthought to the information handed down about these patriarchs and prophets. Yet THE RED TENT is Dinah's story, the story of a person who was a footnote to history, just as Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern were footnotes to HAMLET. In both cases, authors with fertile imaginations have plumbed the lives of these minor characters for their significance.
In Dinah's case, Ms. Diamant reveals the truth about the story of Jacob. In Sunday school, we are taught about his being tricked into marriage with one sister, Leah, when it was the younger girl, Rachel, whom he had loved. So this book solved a mystery I had wondered about all these years, what had happened to Leah when Jacob finally married Rachel. In THE RED TENT, I finally learned that Jacob, in keeping with the custom of the times, had two wives plus two concubines. No, my teachers never mentioned that detail.
Life then was very hard, another fact which is glossed over in Biblical study, but which should seem obvious when contemplated. Ms. Diamant exhibits just how difficult it was, in every way, by modern standards. There was no notion of sanitation, no medications, women frequently died in childbirth, dental care was six millennia in the future, etc. Even if a reader understood all of this before reading THE RED TENT, Ms. Diamant demonstrates these realities with heart-stopping detail.
These people were so primitive that, properly, they were not Israelites; perhaps they should be known as Canaanites or Semites. Still, from them flowed monotheism, leading directly to the Jewish religion which, in turn, gave rise to both Christianity, in all its permutations, as well as Islam. Yet the reader of THE RED TENT will find it unavoidable to examine the entire meaning of religion once it is set into it this framework of the concepts which fostered it.
Ms. Diamant deserves the highest commendations for THE RED TENT, on every basis: concept, execution and prose. This book is the highest category of fiction.
Book Review: Every woman should read this book
Summary: 5 Stars
What an amazing, powerful book. It left me stunned and awed after reading it. It's one of those books that is so emotionally charged you need to stop every once in a while to take a breath. Anita Diamant is one of the best writers of today, and I hope she will write many more novels in the future.If you're already familiar with the Genesis story of Jacob and his sons (or have seen the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version), be prepared for a surprise. Diamant takes a familiar and oft-told tale and turns it on its ear. Essentially, she takes the male-dominated story of one of the patriarchs of Judaism and tells it through the women's perspective. Though entirely fictional, Diamant explores what it may have been like for the wives and daughter (Dinah, the main character) of Jacob. Her tale harkens back to a time when a woman's life centered around the stages of her reproductive life--menstruation, sex, and childbirth. The red tent symbolizes all of these (the color red is an obvious symbol of the blood of life). This is where the women congregate once a month to have their periods (since during this time they are considered "unclean" and unable to perform their normal household duties) and to give birth.
Some have complained that the male characters are too one-dimentional. I think that's the point. For so long, the women's characters have been one-dimentional, and now Diamant is giving them their due. In "The Red Tent", they are so much more than "the wife of..." or "the daugher of..." They have a unique history, culture, and religion not shared by the men. In fact, many will be surprised that the women worship goddesses and household dieties, not the Judeo-Christian God that the patriarchs worshiped. Diamant is not being sacreligious here--the Bible does say that the women had household gods. She explores their personal religion with great depth. Essentially, Diamant fills in the holes of the women's stories that the Bible left out, but she does so in a historically-accurate way, which gives the story some credibility.
The reason why so many women have responded so well to this book is that it reaffirms what makes us women in the first place. Women today often see their periods as a hassle, and childbirth a necessary evil in order to have children. "The Red Tent" reminds us that women have a sacred place as the "life givers", and we should celebrate what makes us female. The book has started a movement among women to celebrate their sexuality (much like "The Vagina Monologues"). This book allowed many women to get in touch with themselves and celebrate being women.
Whether you're 14 or 94, every woman should read this book. Besides the thematic elements, it has an emotionally-charged story and strong female characters. And it will make you wonder what other untold stories the Bible holds. An excellent piece of work, and one of the best pieces of modern fiction.
Book Review: Rebuttal to May19th Review from Seattle
Summary: 5 Stars
I would like to take a moment to address some of the complaints made in the May 19th review. I did not experience THE RED TENT as male bashing. It's intent was to take a female view of the major women of the Old Testament and to breathe life into them. It is "over endowed" with a female viewpoint as a counterbalance to the bible's male view. Women in the BIBLE were often hardly more than property, so it is not too surprising that a fictionalized female character from this period might see men somewhat differently then we do. The BIBLE does portray Laban as a pretty disagreeable character, but in this book Jacob is portrayed as a tragic figure, not a negative figure. He is not the cause of the terrible massacre, but assumes the guilt of his tribe. Until then he is a respected male figure in the book. The women have their weak points as well. Rachel is vain, and the grandmother, Rebecca is a formidable figure of both arrogance and power. Isaac's trauma as a child, being nearly slaughtered by his own father, was treated with compassion. Diamant has Dinah speak of this trauma and how it left Isaac with a stutter for the rest of his life. Some of the women are weak in a way that makes them disagreeable. The carpenter husband of Dinah, Benia, is a truly admirable and loveable male figure and her young husband, the prince Shalem, slaughtered at the hands of her brothers, is as gentle and romantic a young man as you could want. As to the continual reference to pregnancies and childbirth, I believe this had a deliberate intent. During biblical times, childbearing is what gave women power. It is natural to assume that women of that period would indeed be obssessed with their own ability to bring children into the world - especially women of strength who would be able determine ways to use that ability to some advantage. The very nature of the Red Tent, was that it bonded women in a way that as a group gave them more leverage. Their "mysterious" ways were kept from the men who were somewhat fearful of their rituals and knowledge of childbearing. This was a woman's main source of power in a life that was in many ways powerless. Being a mid wife was as close to a career as a woman could have and it commanded respect from everyone. You have to remember that men and women did lead very separare lives at that time. Another source of power, still "mysterious" to men, was the role of a priestess and ordainer. Rebecca had this role down to a science in order to insure her place of distinction in the ancient world. I present these ideas as a difference of opinion to the previous reviewer, who is of course entitled to her opinion. I had my book group meeting last night and our book of discussion was THE RED TENT, so these themes were very much on my mind and I felt compelled to respond.
Book Review: Much more than just a Biblical retelling
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel is not a gripping, intense, fast-paced book. It's the story of one woman's life, and as such it encompasses periods of great change and periods of stasis, upheaval and peace, passion, contentment, and anguish. If you're looking for a book about monumental events with a larger-than-life heroine, this book is not for you. If you're looking to be utterly captivated by how one woman can change history and be changed by it, you'll love "The Red Tent".The title of the book underscores its greatest theme: that of the sisterhood of women that transcends generations, religions, and cultures. Dinah grows up secure of her place within this sisterhood, only to find herself cast adrift from it in one moment of savagery and violence. Her journey from her childhood home in Canaan to the home she makes for herself in Egypt parallels her search to once again find a place where she belongs as much as she did with her mothers in the tent.
Leah, Zilpah, Rachel, and Bilhah, the wives of Jacob and the mothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, are also central characters. Anyone who gets riled up by any suggestion that the Bible is not 100%, verbatim, word-for-word truth from the mouth of God should also avoid this book. Not that Diamant drastically alters the story - far from it. But she introduces crucial details that are lacking in the original, as well as resolving several inconsistencies and contradictions. (For example, Jacob working 7 months instead of 7 years each for Leah and Rachel. If he had worked 14 years before marrying Rachel, she would have been almost 30 and completely unmarriagable. Diamant's scenario only makes sense.) If an author doesn't add or alter any details from her source, than what's the point in writing a book at all? In addition, the women of Jacob's family are not Jewish - Judaism didn't exist yet. I've read several reviews that take offense to this aspect of the book and claim that it's pagan propaganda. Far from it. Think about it: Early Christians considered themselves a faction of Judaism for several generations after the death of Jesus. Likewise, the exclusive worship of El was simply a sect of the polytheistic Canaanite religion for years, until the followers of El wiped out the followers of every other god and goddess in the region hundreds (if not thousands) of years later.
Dinah's story is one of an ordinary woman caught up in events beyond her comprehension, who escapes from a life where she is pulled back and forth between the whims and desires of men, only to find that greed, like love, exists everywhere. Dinah's courage, like Leah's pride, Zilpah's spirituality, Rachel's beauty, and Bilhah's compassion, overcomes the boundaries of time and culture and underlines the universal nature of womanhood in a lovely, rich, and epic tale.