ABSTRACT
A number of scholars have addressed the reasons why Tamar as a character might seduce her father-in-law. Solutions typically focus on her economic desperation and her anger at being sidelined. They also focus on her resourcefulness. This chapter intends to explore the possibilities of new insights into Tamar's motivations with a view to finding an explanation as to why a woman might behave in this way. It utilizes two different approaches that offer explanations of how women behave: the first approach comes from queer theory (the idea that gender is performative) and the second comes from evolutionary psychology. The chapter refers to Genesis 38's themes of incest and prostitution. The dark side of the story is that, in the material world, incest is a crime of violence committed by fathers against daughters, and that many women working as prostitutes have been sexually violated in childhood.
