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Loading... The Gate to Women's Country (1988)by Sheri S. Tepper
 comixminx | Apr 5, 2013 |  Jesus Christ. (  )1  JenneB | Apr 2, 2013 | Excellent fantasy! Thought-provoking and well-written (  ) leslie.98 | Apr 1, 2013 | An interesting read. I had a bit of trouble at first following the way it jumped around in time, but that was just as much because I was reading it on a plane as the story itself. Tepper doesn't like men much… (  ) GinnyTea | Mar 31, 2013 | This book is a dystopian, post apocalyptic future with some interesting gender politics. It lacks the punch, I think I was expecting, but it was an interesting novel. In this future world, the main society featured is one where there are walled women's towns, ruled by a matriarchal council, and each town has a garrison of men that live outside the walls. The two only mix twice a year, for a festival that seems to be centered around procreation for the next generation. The novel showcases the power struggles of the stereotypically aggressive male garrison and the council that rules the town. I thought the morally ambiguous practices by the women were interesting, as well as how they dealt with the stresses with living in a low-tech world that was left devastated and short on available resources. Another kind of life that was briefly shown was a patriarchal polygynous system. The only part about the polygnous part of the book was that Tepper actually touched on the stresses within the system, where there are too many men and not enough women, due to the heads having too many wives and the practice of selective infanticide. Overall, it was a very interesting book and I really enjoyed it. ( ) suzemo | Mar 31, 2013 |
 "I confess this book defeated me. I didn't finish it and came away with a very low opinion of Tepper's work, which I had not previously read." "This is, unquestionably, a serious, ambitious novel, about the roles of the sexes ..." "My advice for the future is that someone, either Ms. Tepper or her editor, slog through the dense elephant grass of her prose armed with a blue pencil and, whenever wandering herds of adjectives appear - shoot to kill." Tepper's finest novel to date is set in a post-holocaust feminist dystopia that offers only two political alternatives: a repressive polygamist sect that is slowly self-destructing through inbreeding and the matriarchal dictatorship called Women's Country. Here, in a desperate effort to prevent another world war, the women have segregated most men into closed military garrisons and have taken on themselves every other function of government, industry, agriculture, science and learning. The resulting manifold responsibilities are seen through the life of Stavia, from a dreaming 10-year-old to maturity as doctor, mother and member of the Marthatown Women's Council. As in Tepper's Awakeners series books, the rigid social systems are tempered by the voices of individual experience and, here, by an imaginative reworking of The Trojan Woman that runs through the text. A rewarding and challenging novel that is to be valued for its provoc ative ideas.
No descriptions found. In a futuristic society where the sexes are separated, men are warriors, and women cultivate the arts, Stavia disobeys the group's prohibitions by loving a man forbidden to her, setting the stage for a momentous decision. |
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I could have saved myself the spoilerage, of course; reading further on in the book, as the play develops it is clear that it's a fairly savage feminist version of the Iphigenia story, such that no ancient Greek playwright would be likely to write. Specifically, both the play and the novel tear into warlike, macho notions of honour and highlight the way that sort of culture pushes women into abusive situations where they are treated as owned objects. I like a good feminist sf work meself, though I did wonder at points whether it might perhaps be larded on a bit thickly (the later section set in Holyland, an extremely repressive and abusive patriarchal society, is presumably there to make Women's Country look clearly much better than the alternative, even if there are troublesome aspects of Women's Country).
Anyway, I could hardly stop reading it, and have straightaway borrowed another Tepper book out of the library, as my own collection of her works is not huge. (