The Red Tent – Anita Diamant

A friend of mine invited me to her book club and this was one of the novels. I have wanted to read it for years and I guess the right time finally arrived. I went to a second-hand book store, bought it, and then went to another second-hand store to find it for sale at a lower cost. When I opened the book at the second store, this was written in pencil inside:

To my beautiful wife, the mother of our newborn eldest daughter. With infinite joy and excitement. Celebrating your motherhood, womanhood and our parenthood. Love... (I couldn't make out the name).

The Red Tent takes place in biblical time and focuses on the lives of biblical females. Dinah, a midwife, daughter of Jacob and Leah, sister of Joseph, introduces her family and tells their stories. Then she moves on to her own memories and life story, describing in detail the fulfillment from the loves of her life and her own family, as well as the destruction from Jacob and her brothers.  As a child, Dinah has four mothers (aunties) who all have the same father but different mothers, and who eventually share the same husband, Jacob. I absolutely loved the descriptions of these mothers:

Leah is the alpha mom, Dinah’s birth mother. The story is she ruined her eyes over an expected marriage proposal by crying. Despite her mismatched eyes, she has perfect vision, and is very fertile, and eventually goes on to marry Jacob after he connects with her by looking her in the eye. She dreamt of a pomegranate with eight seeds and was told she would have this many children.

Rachel, the village beauty, who smells like water, is young and it was love at first sight for her and Jacob.  She goes through her own hardships, though, as she is too young to marry and has trouble conceiving. She turns her fate around by becoming a midwife and medicine women and eventually gives birth in a special way.

Zilpah remembers being in the womb and her own birth. She believes men are for making babies and moving heavy objects. She saw the presence of El (god of thunder) hover of Jacob on the day of his arrival. She talks of gods and goddesses only, and creates dances and songs for the new moon. Her mother was an Egyptian slave.

Bilhah was a child when Jacob arrived. She’s an orphan from a black slave. She hardly speaks or laughs, but she climbs trees and studies the nature around her, especially the animals and birds. Grandmother says “Bilhah sees clearly,” and she comforts many in the village because of her nature (she eventually falls in love with Leah’s son).

The Red Tent is a place for women to come together. A womb. A place to go while menstruating and to give birth.  Tales of pleasure, miscarriages, healthy and unhealthy babies, happen here, and wisdom is passed on such as “babies only come when women smile.” 

Although, this is not true because, Ruti, Laban’s (the father of all the mothers) slave, gives birth – twice – despite her unhappiness and ill treatment. This part was heartbreaking and I had to put the book down a few times because I became so moved hearing about the abuse she went through. It was described something like: she resembled a beaten down animal in comparison to the other women, appearing much older, despite being younger, and she was often avoided as a result. Laban is a disgraceful person.  Rachel steals his teraphim to get him back and he later retaliates and goes after Jacob.

Rebecca, mother of Jacob, wife of Isaac, and goddess, the great grandmother, is worried about what will happen to the tent and its traditions, and she predicts they will disappear in the future. She does not suffer fools lightly, can be unkind, and seems to be indifferent to the tragedies going on around her.  She tolerates only those who honour womanhood in the spirit of protecting future generations. She also seems to accept things just as they are (as IS), and I think it was her or one of her women who explains that everything goes back to the great tree anyway.

All of the characters in this novel struck a chord with me - why I can’t stop talking about them. At the beginning of the book there’s a bit of genealogy which seems to go back to the beginning of time, and the characters that spring forward from these origins are fascinating and filled with life.  For some reason, spontaneously, nearing the end of the novel, the song, The Wreck of Edmond Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot, came into my head:  “All that remains are the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.”

In essence, to me, this novel is about the strong bond women have had to each other since the beginning of time, sharing the wonderful times: marriage, pleasure, childbirth, friendship, innocence, and the hardships:  pain, death, migration, and torture and mistreatment, especially from men. The sadness the author brings forward, at times, is not depressing, but rather calming, a type of rawness, tender and exposed. The happiness and love stories are familiar to the heart, reminding that love makes everything worthwhile. 

During book club, on a patio in a made red tent, we talked about some of the topics in the novel: sharing husbands, circumcision, types of relationships between men and women, different bibles, traditions around food, and wondered if there is a similar book to this one for men, and what men would think about this novel.  Even though entering an actual tent during menstruation or birth is no longer a tradition for most women, I don’t think the tradition is lost completely. I’ve always communed with my friends, in a way, and received and given much knowledge and support over the years.  Knowledge about women, their hearts, minds, and bodies, and what goes on in relationships and what makes women happy. We all have this wisdom - even if it’s not transparent, and we try to make sure to pass this on to each other :)

This novel definitely has much wisdom and should be read by all.

“Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle when women discover the courage to become mothers? Bur of course, there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you are the women on the bricks, you have no idea how death stands in the corner, ready to play this part. Until you are a woman on the bricks, you don’t know the power that rises from other women – even strangers speaking an unknown tongue, invoking the names of unfamiliar goddesses.”