SUBVERTING THE HEBREW MYTH: FEMININE WRITING IN ANITA DIAMANT’S THE RED TENT

Abstract

Anita Diamant’s first novel The Red Tent (1997) retells the story of Dinah, Jacob’s and Leah’s daughter, Joseph’s sister in the Genesis chapter of the Old Testament. In this revised story, Diamant creates Dinah, the silenced woman of the Old Testament, as the narrator of the novel. Weaving a different narrative than the Hebrew myth, the narrator tries to subvert hierarchical structures of phallogocentrism by focusing on women’s bodies, femininity, and sexual power. This study, basing its argument on post-structuralist feminist theory, examines how patriarchal ideology and discourse are challenged through female language and ‘feminine writing’. The analysis of the rewritten text reveals that feminine writing frees the female body and female sexuality from the authority of androcentric ideology. Additionally, the textual strategies, used by Diamant to deconstruct the patriarchal order and to create a gynocentric myth, present alternative definitions of female identity.