Subject: THE GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY by Sheri Tepper

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Date: 25 Sep 89 21:06:43 GMT

THE GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY by Sheri S. Tepper
		 Doubleday, 1989, ISBN 0-385-24709-5, $17.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1989 Evelyn C. Leeper

     The premise of this book is that a nuclear war has taken place and
civilization has fallen back to a technology somewhere around the 14th
Century level (in general--more on that later).  There are no guns; wars are
fought with bows and arrows or close-contact weapons.  Children are raised
in the towns (the "women's country" of the title) until they are five years
old.  Then girls stay within the towns and boys are sent to their warrior
fathers in the permanent army camps outside the towns.  From age 5 through
15, the sons visit their mothers twice a year, during carnival.  In fact,
all the soldiers visit the town during carnival.  That's when the couplings
take place that produce children, because at age 15, the sons must choose
whether to stay outside the walls (except for carnival) or return to women's
country permanently as "servitors."  This option is open to them until age
25, when they become full-fledged warriors and cannot return.  Approximately
5% return.  Women seem to have no choice other than to join gypsy camps or
become prostitutes whom the warriors can visit year-round.

     Now I claimed, upon hearing a summary of the preceding, that it sounded
like the sort of book that promotes the philosophy "Women are all wonderful;
men are all horrible brutes (except for the ones who come over to the
women's way of thinking)."  But it was recommended by so many people that I
figured I would give it a try.

     Well, it does manage to rise above my first impression in parts.
Unfortunately, it takes a good three-quarters of the book to even attempt to
rationalize its theses (by showing a different post-holocaust society and
what IT would be like), and it is not until the very end that many of the
motivations become clearer.  At that point, much of what the reader may have
dismissed as ridiculous begins to make a certain sense, but it may get the
reader to that stage too late.  It seems less a logical sequence than a
magic trick, and magic tricks are notoriously poor things to base societies
on.

     And, along with others who have been less than bowled-over by this
book, I find that the book does seem to say "women are good, men are bad."
Though it shows some men as good (i.e., peace-loving), it does not show any
women as violent or war-mongering.  And the book's dismissal of
homosexuality as a having been discovered to be a hormonal imbalance in the
mother during pregnancy that is "easily corrected," strikes me as a
scientifically inaccurate premise, not to mention the "solution" being out
of line with the technological level shown in the rest of society.  In fact,
the plot seems to hinge on some technology being hundreds of years ahead of
the average technology, without an industrial infrastructure to support it
(or without much clue to the reader before the rabbit is pulled from the
hat).

     This is one of those "study war no more" novels that have been
increasingly common of late.  While I don't disagree with that philosophy, I
think assigning all the blame to men and all the hope to women is too
simplistic an approach.  As a post-holocaust novel, THE GATE TO WOMEN'S
COUNTRY works; as a philosophical look at the causes of conflict, it does
not.  If I were to compare it to another author's works, I would say it is
most similar to Heinlein's, for two reasons.  First, the story is
interesting, but the philosophical underpinnings may turn the reader off.
And second, the society portrayed works in the novel, and in fact characters
point out how well it works, but it works because the author wrote it that
way, not because the society really would work that way in real life.
Whether you enjoy THE GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY depends on what you're looking
for.

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 201-957-2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]