Dinah pretty much has to deal with her husband's people-well, all of the men, at least-hating her because she's the reason they all have to go through painful circumcisions. But come on-anyone would have these thoughts if they were in her situation. Uh, okay, so she's still a little bratty. I hated my husband and his father for agreeing to pay it' (2.7.149). I hated my father for asking such a terrible price. No more spoiled brat here: 'I lay there alone, counting my hatred. She marches right up to her mom and says, Hey, I'm a woman. And I was a woman.' (2.6.18).ĭinah knows that bleeding for the first time is a huge deal, and in her culture, it's the sign that she's no longer a child. And she was doing a pretty good job of it, too: 'For a moment, I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, but the thought passed quickly.

Then she has to leave her homeland and pretend to be someone else for most of the rest of her life.īut before she was tragic, Dinah was just a normal girl going through puberty.

For starters, here's a woman who wakes up one morning covered in the blood of her dead husband, and her brothers are the ones who killed him. When you think of tragic women in literature, you might think of Antigone or Cleopatra, or Juliet or Dido, but Dinah is right up there. Did we mention she' s the only daughter of Jacob? Yeah, thought we'd just say it again. And let's be real: she really was that important. Mess with her, and you mess with everyone.Īll right, so enough bashing on the little girl-she was just a child, and we can't blame her for feeling so important. Hey, she is Dinah, only daughter of Jacob. She feels entitled as the only daughter, and she places herself on a pedestal because of her situation. After all, I was the female heir of her favored son' (2.4.66).Īs you can see, Dinah has a streak of immaturity as a child.

For example, when visiting her grandmother, Rebecca, Dinah thinks: 'And I imagined myself her pet, her favorite. She is important, and she knows she is important. Now, little kids do this all of the time, but Dinah is different. Leah merely made a comment about how Dinah wasn't too good at spinning, so this is a bit of an overreaction. My face grew hot as tears came to my eyes, and I threw a whole day's spinning into the dirt' (2.1.15). She gets all of the attention, and pretty much all of the love.īut you know what happens when someone gets the attention all to him- or herself? Yeah, that person totally turns into a spoiled brat: 'For the first time in my life, I hate my mother. Dinah is the only female born to Jacob, and for that reason, girl is absolutely positively spoiled. So she has seven brothers and four boy cousins-as a girl, she kind of stands out.

Dinah in the red tent