Silencing Leah: The Construction of Idealised Femininity in The Book of Jubilees

This paper examines the depiction of the matriarch Leah in the Book of Jubilees. It argues that, through a careful rewriting of the Leah tradition found in the Book of Genesis, the author of Jubilees transforms Leah into the model wife, and in doing so provides a discursive reconfiguration of notions about idealised femininity. The silencing of Leah’s voice is central to the transformative rewriting through which the matriarch becomes the perfect wife and the embodiment of idealised femininity in Jubilees.