Open Prompt Revision

When my peers commented on the first draft of this essay, they had a couple constructive pieces of feedback. In the introductory paragraph, my weak attempt at humor just served to confuse, so I changed that, and separated the exposition into a separate paragraph detailing the most obvious meanings of the red tent. They also said I had a pretty wimpy conclusions, largely due to the fact that I ran out of time, so I added some more connecting details that rounded out my conclusion and essay.

1970   Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

Anita Diamant's novel The Red Tent is a retelling of the biblical story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob. In this book, a specific inanimate object stands as a refuge for Dinah and her mothers, a connection to their ancestors, and a symbol of womanhood.You guessed it, the Red Tent! 

 

Every new moon, the wives of Jacob enter the red tent for their monthly cycle. According to their culture, women were to be separated from men during this time.When Dinah comes of age, she is accepted into the red tent as a young woman. Here, the fertile women spend three days in peace; resting, praying, and singing.  The red tent, in the tribe of Jacob, was the symbol for womanhood and fertility.

In a patriarch-dominated society, the red tent symbolized refuge from demanding and sometimes cruel men. Ruti, "whose eyes seemed permanently blackened, was the slave-wife of brutish Laban. She found sanctuary in the few days of the month that she spent in the red tent, where Laban could not follow her. Even for the wives with gentler husbands, women were expected to submit completely to their husbands, and could not talk and joke freely in the presence of men, "In their day along in the red tend, Jacob's wives spoke among themselves about their husband's dreams and plans". It was also here that they were able to plot without being overhear. When the tribe of Jacob choose to leave Laban, his daughters steal from him his idols (gods), to take with them to their new home. Leah hides them in the red tent. Laban searches for them everywhere except, "his eyes fixed upon the women's tent on the edge of the camp. It was unthinkable that a healthy man would walk inside that place during the head of the month, among bleeding women - even worse, his own daughters". The taboo of the tent protects them from intrusions; and makes trespasses all the more horrible. Once his idols have been "polluted beyond redemption" by laying in the tent, he believes their magic to protect him is lost, and he never bothers his daughters again. 

As well as being an oasis in a patriarchal world, the red tent is a place for passing on stories. These are the women's tales; being the only daughter of Jacob, Dinah "heard all the stories from her mother and mother-aunts, which her brothers wouldn't be bothered to hear or pass on". Dinah's aunt Bilhah tells her the story of how man first learned to spin wool into thread, and Rachael tells the stories of the births she has midwifed. Along with personal stories, the red tent is a place where Jacob's wives carry on traditions from their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, "The women sang all the welcoming songs while Rachael made fine wheat-flour cake in the three-cornered shape of woman's sex". The make sacrifices to their goddesses and welcome Dinah into the red tent with the traditional ceremony, "they put kohl on my eyes, and perfumed my forehead...painted my arms and legs with henna". The red tent is a place for the women's traditions to be carried on.

The red tent literally symbolizes the isolation of menstruating women, but within, it is a place for Jacob's wives to escape the controlling  men of their time, and share their personal histories and traditions.The strong feminine connotations of this object connect it to the goddesses who Jacob's wives worship, and make Laban's trespass more shocking and invasive. The red tent is the women's domain where they can speak freely and pass on stories to their daughters. The red tent is a very important object with many meanings.