''The Gate to Women's Country'' is a

post-apocalyptic novel Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astr ...

by American writer Sheri S. Tepper, published in 1988. It describes a world set three hundred years into the future after a catastrophic war which has fractured the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

into several nations.

Setting

The story is set in "Women's Country", apparently in the former

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

. They have evolved in the direction of

Ecotopia ''Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston'' is a utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture and the gr ...

, reverting to a sustainable economy based on small cities and low-tech local agriculture. They have also developed a

matriarchy Matriarchy is a social system in which women hold the primary power positions in roles of authority. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege and control of property. While those definitions apply in general E ...

where the women and children live within town walls with a small number of male servitors, and most of the men live outside the town in warrior camps.

Plot

''The Gate to Women's Country'' is set in the future, 300 years after a nuclear war destroyed most of human civilization. The book focuses on a matriarchal nation known as ''Women's Country'', and particularly the city of Marthatown. Stavia, the novel's hero, is the younger daughter of Morgot, an important member of the Marthatown Council. The book opens with Stavia as an adult, heading to meet her fifteen-year-old son, Dawid. He has spent the last ten years living outside the city walls with the warriors, as is customary for Women's Country boys, and is now old enough to decide whether he wishes to remain a warrior or accept a life of study and service among the women as a servitor. At the meeting Dawid formally renounces his mother and chooses to become a full-fledged warrior. Stavia also renounces Dawid. Afterwards, Stavia remembers when her younger brother was sent to live with the warriors. Much of the rest of the novel is told in flashback, following Stavia's life from childhood to adulthood. In the story's present, Stavia prepares for her role as Iphigenia in Marthatown's annual performance of ''

Iphigenia In Greek mythology, Iphigenia (; grc, Ἰφιγένεια, , ) was a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus a princess of Mycenae. In the story, Agamemnon offends the goddess Artemis on his way to the Trojan War by hunting ...

at Ilium'', a reworking of the

Greek tragedy Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...

The Trojan Women ''The Trojan Women'' ( grc, Τρῳάδες, translit=Trōiades), also translated as ''The Women of Troy'', and also known by its transliterated Greek title ''Troades'', is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced in 415 BC during ...

'' that weaves through the novel as a

leitmotif A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...

. While still a child, Stavia met Chernon, the son of one of her mother's friends. Although Chernon lives in the garrison with the other boys and men, he and Stavia form a friendship. They meet at the twice-annual Carnival, the only event in Women's Country where warriors and women can mix freely and during which time boys who have not yet chosen to become warriors can visit their families. Stavia eventually agrees to smuggle books to Chernon for him to read, even though this is forbidden for boys in the garrison. In fact, Chernon has been ordered by his commander, Michael, to learn more about the secrets of the women who rule Women's Country. After confessing to breaking the ordinances, Stavia is sent away from Marthatown for several years to train as a doctor. On her return, Chernon pursues their relationship again. When Stavia is selected for an exploration mission to the south, Chernon leaves the garrison (on Michael's orders) meets her there and rapes her. While away from Women's Country, Stavia and Chernon are captured by a band of "Holylanders", members of a struggling community to the south of Women's Country. They practice

polygamy Crimes Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is married ...

and a fundamentalist patriarchy with Christian underpinnings. The Holylanders are brutally misogynistic, treating women as slaves to their husbands, and children (both sons and daughters) are subject to severe corporal punishment which they term 'chastisement'. Chernon betrays Stavia after their capture, during which time she realizes she is pregnant by Chernon. She makes an escape attempt, and is struck a blow to the head and incapacitated. Upon her return to Women's Country, she finally learns the secrets of the Women's Country Council and the choices they have made to preserve their way of life. The secret of Women's Country is that the council has been engaged in a selective breeding program with the population, using select servitors to propagate desirable traits through artificial insemination amongst select women; additionally selective sterilization has been used among the women. Chernon also is changed by his experiences, and returns to his garrison promoting the ways of the Holylanders as an alternative to their current societal structure. The Marthatown garrison is soon sent to battle against another Women's Country city, and no survivors return.

Major themes

The story explores many elements from

ecofeminism Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in h ...

, which has been a hallmark of much of Tepper's writing, both in her

feminist science fiction Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist ...

and in her pseudonymous mysteries. The question of the causes of human violence is also a major theme, and in the novel Stavia's society hopes they are successfully breeding violence out of humanity. In the novel, violence appears to be biologically determined. By selecting only nonviolent individuals to breed, society is slowly increasing the number of such nonviolent members. Tepper is careful to demonstrate that it is only unreasoning violence, not the ability to learn to fight and defend oneself and others, that is being bred out. For instance, she shows the servitor Joshua and Morgot as skilled fighters—so skilled they are able to defeat the men who have trained as fighters their entire lives. So it is clear that it is only certain personality traits—violence, especially in men—that is being weeded out. Women are also given hysterectomies and tubal ligations at the discretion of the medical officers. The

biological determinism Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether i ...

of Tepper's world also controls sexuality, and the novel constructs

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

as a genetic and hormonal disorder which has been eugenically removed from the population. Jane Donawerth, applauding the depth and richness of Tepper's exploration of this theme, describes Tepper's approach as a "chillingly

homophobic Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, m ...

solution".Frankenstein's daughters
/ref> Tepper thus illustrates a world approaching a feminist utopia through the vision of a powerful leadership who impose rigid behavioral control on their society, and engineer the removal of those traits they consider undesirable (mainly violence) through forced sterilization. Their world remains vulnerable to ideological attack, as can be seen by the plots of the garrisons to take over the women's cities every generation and to force the women to serve them, as well as in Chernon's susceptibility to the violently misogynist ideology of the Holylanders. However, the Council's decision to interfere with its citizens' reproduction, without their consent or knowledge, is shown as a serious ethical issue—a "damned" choice as described by one of the leaders.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gate to Women's Country, The 1988 American novels Environmental fiction books Feminist science fiction novels Fictional future countries Fictional gates American post-apocalyptic novels Utopian novels Eugenics in fiction 1988 science fiction novels Single-gender worlds Polygamy in fiction Modern adaptations of works by Euripides Doubleday (publisher) books

Setting

Plot

Major themes

See also

References