It's Over! (Almost)

Hello again, and welcome to my second-to-last blog post. I know my title is a little misleading, but I did finish the book for this blog post, so I'm pretty excited! In this post, I'll quickly let you know what happens at the end of the book and then I'm going to move on to talk about one of the major ideas of the novel.

In the last section, Dinah moves to live with Meryt and her family after Re-nefer dies. Meryt spends her time looking for Benia, the man who falls in love with Dinah when they meet in the marketplace. Meryt is successful, and Dinah and Benia get married. Dinah also reconnects with her son and through him, meets Joseph, her brother, again. He turns out to be a king, and they journey together to visit their father on his death bed. The book ends with the death of Dinah and her last word, "Selah," brings us full circle back to the prologue which also ends with the same word. 

 In my opinion, the biggest takeaway from The Red Tent is the understanding of the power and strength of women. If I were to put this into a theme statement (aka a full sentence), it would be: Strong women can adapt and persevere in any situation. Obviously, because it is a retelling of the Bible from the point of view of a woman, it seems like a pretty obvious meaning to discuss, but I think it's important. There are a great number of strong women in the novel, like Dinah and Rachel.

(Dinah and Rachel in the mini-series from Bustle)

Dinah and her mothers are all incredibly strong women, and this is shown in a variety of different ways throughout the book. The most noticeable way is through their actions and descriptions of their reactions to the situations they are put in. 

Rachel is definitely one of the strongest women (although they are all very strong). She has many miscarriages, and although they discourage her, she never truly loses hope. She dies giving birth to her second child, Benjamin. When Dinah tells Joseph of her husband, Benia, he replies, "'That was the baby-name for our brother Benjamin, the last-born of my mother, who died giving him life'" (Diamant 294). Rachel puts herself through the struggle of carrying children, even though she knows that she does not have the best track record with having children. This exemplifies her strength because she is strong enough to continue to hope for children and put herself through the difficulty of carrying a child.

Leah is also a very strong woman. She has eight children, which is a lot (in case that wasn't obvious). Leah was not originally planning to have Dinah because "her breasts were those of an old woman, her belly was slack, and her back ached every morning" (Diamant 65). Even so, she finds the strength to push through and have Dinah. She also has to take care of seven other children, which takes patience and strength.

Jacob's other wives Zilpah and Bilhah are also tough women, but they do not play as large of a role in the novel, so for brevity's sake, I'm going to skip over them.

Possibly the most important woman in the novel is Dinah herself. She goes through so much and yet somehow she finds the ability to continue to live. When she finds that Shalem, her husband, has been killed, she is devastated and can neither eat nor sleep. She says of herself: "I should have been defeated by grief. I should have been exhausted past seeing" (Diamant 206). Although she knows she should feel that way, she finds the power to stand up for herself, curse her father and her brothers, and leave to start her own life. Even after she starts her own life, her son is taken away from her by Re-nefer, but she learns to find comfort in other aspects of her life. Dinah perseveres through so many terrible things, and as Meryt puts it, her past life is a "story of pain and strength" (Diamant 298). Dinah is strong enough to try to find something good in everything, and as she grows old, her "feet ached in the morning and [her] hands were stiff, but [she] still counted [herself] lucky" (Diamant 319). Although she goes through many horrendous ordeals, she dies happy and at peace.

All of the women in this novel persevere through difficult situations. This is why, in my opinion, the meaning of the work as a whole is focused on how strong women can push through anything. This is something that my AP Lit class has seen in other books that we've read this year. For example, in The Handmaid's Tale, Offred has to persevere through the terrible society of Gilead. Offred says that she "must endure, keep [herself] safe for later" (Atwood 106). She endures the society of Gilead in the hopes that she will eventually be reunited with her family. This idea is also relevant to our world today. Strong women are obviously a very large part of our society today, and many women have to push through unfortunate circumstances. For example, (and this is an obvious example, but it is an important example) many women have been sexually abused. They have to deal with those terrible events and decide whether or not to come forward. Whether or not they come forward, they must carry on with their lives which takes a lot of courage. Their strength is very apparent; I don't think I have to explain how much it takes for them to persevere through their situations.

Thank you for reading my blog yet again! I look forward to writing my last post and wrapping everything up.