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    The Gate to Women's Country
    The Gate to Women's Country
    The Gate to Women's Country
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Gate to Women's Country

    Written by Sheri S. Tepper

    Narrated by Emily Durante

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Women rule in Women's Country. Women live apart from men, sheltering the remains of civilization. They have cut themselves off with walls and by ordinance from marauding males. Waging war is all men are good for. Men are allowed to fight their barbaric battles amongst themselves, garrison against garrison. For the sake of his pride, each boy child ritualistically rejects his mother when he comes of age to be a warrior. But all the secrets of civilization are strictly the possession of women. Naturally, there are men who want to know what the women know. And when Stavia meets Chernon, the battle of the sexes begins all over again. Foolishly, she provides books for Chernon to read. Before long, Chernon is hatching a plan of revenge against women.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 5, 2018
    ISBN9781541485082
    The Gate to Women's Country
    Author

    Sheri S. Tepper

    Sheri S. Tepper is the author of more than thirty resoundingly acclaimed novels, including The Waters Rising, The Margarets, The Companions, The Visitor, The Fresco, Singer from the Sea, Six Moon Dance, The Family Tree, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Shadow's End, A Plague of Angels, Sideshow, and Beauty; numerous novellas; stories; poems; and essays. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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    Reviews for The Gate to Women's Country

    4/5

    597 ratings34 reviews

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    • 3/5
      In the post Convulsion future, women and men are segregated, by the ordinances of Women's Country. Women and children stay behind the walls. Men live in garrisons outside. Sometimes the men plot against the women; but they have a deeper strategy. The protagonist of this book is Stavia who grows up the daughter of a Councillor. She has a childhood infatuation with a boy called Chernon, who is being manipulated by the head of the garrison to try to seduce her. The story is an exploration of gender roles; which are innate and which are learned.There was a twist to this tale but it took a long time to get to it. Stavia was quite a passive participant in her life until near the end of the book, when new characters and settings were rapidly introduced.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. The only glaring fault is that, unlike other feminist separatist authors like Charnas and Russ, Tepper seems to be homophobic, at least in this book. But that said, she comes up with an interesting idea about how a dystopic country organizes society to deal with male aggression.One thing you can say for the FLDS (fundamentalist Mormon church), it is the basis for some great storytelling.
    • 5/5
      Tepper's story takes place in a dystopian future following an unnamed apocalyptic event. The new society functions in such a way that the men and women live mostly separate lives with the woman doing most of the administrative and labor work of the civilization and the men living in "Warrior Barracks." The two get together for recreational purposes twice per year, but otherwise do not socialize. However, some men have chosen not to remain within the ranks of the warriors and they are known as Servitors and perform the rest of the town's labor duties. The men of the barracks suspect the women have some great secret and plot to discover this. The story is told from the point of view of Stavia, with chapters alternating between Stavia as a child and her experiences as a woman. There's a great revelation towards the end that changes the reader's entire paradigm of the book, which is fortunate, because for most of the book, I was alternately confused and horrified by this society that emerged from the wreckage. A great deal of the book is also concerned with the annual theatrical production of the story of the Trojan War with a focus on Iphegenia. I was only passingly familiar with the tale, though it seems to have been distorted a bit for the purposes of this book. A reader more familiar with that story might find the first part of the book more enjoyable or comprehensible. I love a good speculative fiction book that also causes deep contemplation of gender roles, societal trappings and the ways in which people strive for a more Utopic future, I just wish the tale had been more compelling prior to the revelation.
    • 3/5
      This is very well-written, and an enjoyable read, but it's based on a totally faulty premise. It's so second-wave feminist: all the world's evils are caused by men, through something innate in men's biology/psychology. Not enough thought has been given to what actually causes patriarchy. No thought is given at all to any other forms of oppression. Homosexuality has been totally erased - "bred out". The solution presented, which will supposedly stop women's oppression, is eugenics(!).

      Also very second-wave feminist - in the post-apocalyptic USA, the major foundational texts are the Odyssey and the Bible. Totally Eurocentric, Western Canon, old ideas. A feminist reading of the Odyssey is the ideological basis of Women's Country, as though that millenia-old text is a realistic universal example of men's behaviour.

      No real criticism is given to the way Women's Country is run. Morgot is a total Machiavellian leader, but the book seems to say that any atrocities the Council commits, or lies it tells to its citizens, are necessary in order to achieve a utopia where women are not oppressed by men.
    • 4/5
      (original review, 1987)“The Gate to Women's Country”, remains the best written and most provocative of the lot when it comes to Feminist SF. It's one of the few books where I turned the last page and flipped back to the first and read it straight through again when I realized how deceptive the text, itself, was. I love when Septimus Bird tips Tepper's hand by noting that all good magicians keep us riveted on the left hand when the real trick happens in the right. That ends up being an ingenious clue about the ways we, as readers, are about to be hoodwinked. It's the very rare book that surprises me (my wife swears I have a seventh sense for foreshadowing; and I thought I was just a regular guy...) but this one did; once you know the secret it's everywhere. Having read it many times I continue to marvel at the superb architecture of the novel; its form holds up to the complexity of its vision. I always ended with a debate about whether what the women are really doing is justified, and those were among the most ferociously animated and intense moments in my class. It's like a torture test for those of us who are pacifists but who would have to test how far we're willing to go to prevent war. It's brilliant.A novel that could be imagined to be a kind of sequel to Atwood's “Handmaid’s Tale”, but much better written. Atwood’s seems pedestrian by comparison. In Tepper’s novel, the women don't run away, they take action. It's pretty draconian action, too, with a revelatory moment that comes down on the reader like a hammer.
    • 3/5
      A extremely well-written post-apocalyptic dystopian society and their highly gendered response to the man-made apocalpyse, as told throughout the life or Stavia. The story jumps perspective between Stavia as a an adult woman and a youth, and a few other POV's of important characters from her youth, connected by a fictional play "Iphigenia at Ilium" set immediately following the Trojan War. The quality of the prose and the unusual narrative style set this novel apart as a fantastic work of literature. I personally found it just as complex as "Six Moon Dance" while being significantly easier to navigate. That being said, I came to this book hoping for the sort of nuanced feminism that I got in "Six Moon Dance" and was sorely disappointed. I couldn't separate my enjoyment of the technical aspects of this book from the pervasive notion that men are inherently, innately more violent than women, and vice versa.
    • 4/5
      A quite lovely book, though sad in parts, speculating about life after a nuclear holocaust. Women and men live largely separately and the reasons why this is so only become clear after reading mosv of the book. Deeply wise in so many ways...
    • 5/5
      I have returned to this novel several times for the insights and questions Tepper explores in its pages. She covers a lot of ground in this novel of what seems like a post-Apocalypse world: male-female relations, violence, the nature of freedom. Big questions, well handled. This should be required reading.
    • 4/5
      Sometime in the future, the remaining people have created a new world. The book is focused in the woman's country, where women rule. Some interesting ideas about the roles of men and women, power and how the future can be managed.
    • 5/5
      Just finished the Kindle version. Didn't realize (until about a quarter of the way through) that I read (and loved) this feminist novel set in a dystopian future shortly after it was first published in 1988. But that's me. I tend not to remember the details of the books I've read-- even those I've really liked. Men aren't the villains in The Gate to Women's Country. Only warlike, stupid, selfish, arrogant men. The other kind are just fine. Sheri S. Tepper's vision is timeless.
    • 3/5
      The editing in this book is terrible! I don't know if it was because it was the Kindle edition but there were ALL kinds of typos - I saw "she'll" written as "shell" many times.

      The writing is clumsy and even bombastic at times. The saving grace of this novel is the story line, which although not well executed is an excellent idea, at the very least.
    • 5/5
      This was a book that was difficult to read in the beginning. It reads mostly from the main protagonists view and the author jumps from the present to her pas, building the world and explaining the complexity of the society they live in. The women's country is all about logic. It's governed by women and science, religion and superstition have no place in a world that is recovering from apocalypse.

      Yet when I progressed with the reading there was really surprising revelations that changed my view on the whole book and then I new - I will have to read it again!
    • 5/5
      Excellent fantasy! Thought-provoking and well-written
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this - even as a re-read where I had an inkling of the rabbit-solution that Tepper was going to pull out of the hat. This was not helped by the fact that when I searched for the in-story play "Iphigenia at Ilium" to check whether it was in fact a real historical play, varius of the webpages talking about it should have had spoiler warnings. I tried not to look and didn't remind myself of the outcome too much - to save you, dear reader, doing the same I can reveal that no, said play is made up entirely by Tepper and is not a classical source adapted.

      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.
    • 4/5
      Jesus Christ.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Wow. Maybe I'll have more to say later once this has digested.
    • 4/5
      300 years after what the people call 'the convulsion', a devastating apocalyptic event that has left areas of devastation around the countryside, women and men now live mostly separately, although alongside one another. The men reside in garrisons outside the town walls, ready to defend their women and living a warrior life, one of games, parades and mock battles, the only exceptions the few men that choose to return to inside the towns when they reach the age of fifteen. Scorned and ridiculed by the other men, they are welcomed with open arms by the women and take on the role of servants. The women do the rest, producing food, power, materials and objects for both the women and the men, governed overall by the Council, a group of women chosen to rule and strictly controlled by a set of rules known as the ordinances. It is seemingly a clear cut society, with each person knowing their position in the world.However, it is never as simple as it seems. As Stevia, the daughter of a councilwoman, grows she finds herself caught up in a scheme by the men to learn more from the women and her own desire for friendships and information, as well as her disagreement with some of the ordinances, set her down a path with potentially catastrophic consequences and revealing the truth not only about their own society, but others far different than her own.A fascinating look at the ways men and women function both together and apart, it is an accentuated and intensified but nonetheless entirely believable study of the way the sexes think and identify with each other. Both societies shown, the world Stavia lives in and the world she discovers, are exaggerated portrayals of ones that exist now, and are therefore both terrifying and intriguing.However, the feminist message behind the novel does leave a little to be desired, as perhaps it shows its age, being written in 1988. The men are portrayed as simple and uncomplicated, wanting their basic desires met and seeking power whenever they can. Men are also blamed for the downfall of the previous world. As a twenty-first century woman, I felt offended on behalf of men in general. While it is clear that men and women are very different from each other, I don't believe the overall message portrayed. It is certainly a fascinating and intriguing read though, and I'd be interested to hear other opinions, especially those of a man, as there is a lot to be considered within.
    • 5/5
      I love this story. It's an unnamed distance into a post-apocolyptic future, and men and women live in separate settlements. The womens' settlement is gated, and only a few select, non-violent men are allowed to live there. The men live in their own militaristic, phallus-worshipping village, where they are trained to fight and defend the womens' settlements. Outside of those settlements, though, there are still women suffering and dying at the hands of violent males... this book is worth a read, not only for the story and characters, but for the undeniable truths that lie within it. These truths are about mens' violent, unfeeling natures, and what may be necessary someday to curb their unending violence and wars and domination, abuse and murder of women.
    • 4/5
      This is the very first radfem novel I've ever read, and I really wanted to love this book. But I'm afraid that, as engrossing as it was, it's very goofy and joyless. I say goofy because it has things which are hard to see as anything but bizarre in such a setting (I will list them at the end of this review, in case you don't want spoilers). I say joyless because I cannot imagine any of the main characters ever having fun or even smiling (except perhaps Septimus, albeit sarcastically), only doing "their duty" while gritting their teeth (and no, I am not talking about sex) or feeling crass self-satisfaction. I have to question what is the point of their attempts to preserve their way of life, if it's so utterly, crushingly joyless?I came out of this book feeling very depressed, and I have only experienced this reading Kafka, so it takes a lot to get me depressed. A Greek tragedy is used as the framing device, and this is very appropriate because the story itself seems a Greek tragedy, in its own way, although I don't know enough about Greek tragedies to have an informed opinion. The author clearly has a great deal of psychological insights on gender roles. It's really too bad that they're sandwiched between goofiness and crushing joylessness.Here is the list of goofy things in this book:[spoiler alert]A Country-wide eugenics conspiracy involving thousands of people which somehow has never been uncovered, clairvoyants, clairvoyant ninjas, mutated fundamentalist Mormons, a phallic cult, blatant homophobia, and perhaps the most absurd one of all, thousands of men who don't have sex.[end of spoiler alert]
    • 3/5
      I love Sherri Tepper but this one is quite heavy handed. It is inventive, and I did enjoy reading much of it. But the characters are so black-and-white, so all good (the women) or all bad (the warriors)that it made me laugh. Not a subtle futuristic tale but interesting nonetheless.
    • 5/5
      [The Gate to Women's Country] by Sheri S. Tepper. Four StarsI probably would not have finished this book if it were not for two things: 1) Jim recommended this to me during his Portland visit and 2) after I got bogged down around page 90 or so, I cheated and read towards the end, which is something I never do. Between Jim's high opinion and my renewed interest after reading further on, I finished the book and I am glad I did. This is a post-apocalyptic book in which the roles of men and women are very clearly defined. In fact, the two sexes do not even live together, only meeting up for Carnivals. Women live within walled cities, preserving what's left of culture and past civilization; the warrior men live outside the walls in garrisons. The two groups are separated by the stone wall and by the greater differences of their competing dreams. But there is a gate into Women's Country. Can the two groups ever reconcile and live in harmony?The roles and fates of men and women in war are further explored by the reenactment of the story of Helen of Troy, which the women perform each year as a reminder to themselves. One of the warriors contemplates the story:" 'Put the people to the sword.' That meant they'd killed the men, killed the children, too, likely. And then they took the women, but Odysseus didn't say anything about [the women's] faces. Nothing. "Why? Why didn't Odysseus say how the women felt? How they looked? Why didn't any of the sagas talk about that?"
    • 3/5
      Even though this is the Tepper that I’ve heard of most, I think I liked it least of all of her novels that I’ve read. It’s set in the far future, a few hundred years after an apocalyptic event—probably a nuclear war—has nearly wiped out humanity. The new civilization still has limited access to electricity, antibiotics, steel and some books, but has for the most part reverted to pre-industrial life. The women live inside walled cities and run the government, as well as do all the work and receive all the education. The boys are sent outside the walls at age 5 to live in garrisons, play sports, learn martial arts, and when they are old enough, go to war—although at age 15, they may choose to come back inside the walls as “servitors.”The problem I had with this feminist novel is that all the male characters are essentially caricatures. The soldiers are basically grown children who perceive women as helpless objects needing protection whose main purpose is to provide their food and clothing and bear them sons. The servitors are the flip side of the coin: wise, calm, strong, but always in control of themselves—the “perfect men” in this women’s fantasy. Even when I got to the “twist,” I wasn’t convinced that this novel isn’t more preaching than storytelling. Nevertheless, Tepper is an engaging writer and this is a fast read, if a lopsided view of a potential world.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite Tepper noels that I read many years ago. My other favorites of hers it The Frescoe and Singer from the Sea. Excellent and highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Now here is an amazing book. This has been called a classic of feminist science fiction. I've read mixed reviews of this - mostly very positive, but a few quite negative. This is the first Tepper novel I have read. I'm a man - I'll be honest, I didn't think there would be much appeal to me in a book described as feminist science fiction. I was wrong with this one. I like post-apocalyptic fiction. I admire the amount of worldbuilding that Tepper put into this novel. The setting came to life within my mind. There are a number of very strong characters in here, virtually all flawed or damaged in ways minor or major. The story is told with a lot of jumping around in time initially, primarily as a series of flashbacks, but when in those flashbacks one forgets many times that we have indeed flashed back. The story is told in a rather unique way, and we get a bit of moral teaching I suppose by the nature of the telling, as well as certain premises which underlie the entire novel. Interwoven within the book are a series of scenes from a play being rehearsed by a number of major characters in the primary story, and when not within the play itself, we tend to see it from the view and feeling primarily of Stavia, the heroine and main character of the novel. The play, "Iphigenia at Ilium", is a greek tragedy about the Trojan women after the fall of Troy, and it is full of echoes within this novel to themes of the main story.We see Stavia initially in the novel being renounced by her 15 year old son who will not return to Women's Country, but who will pursue the warrior's life, as most young men do, and live in the garrison just outside the city walls of Marthatown. Through flashbacks we eventually learn how we arrived at this point in time and we see Stavia grow within a strongly maternalistic society from a ten year old to a late thirtysomething woman. There are secrets in Women's Country. I highly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Whether or not this is a great book, it is certainly a memorable one. The ideas presented shook me 30 years ago, and as others have said, affected the way I think as a woman and a member of society. I was glad to introduce my daughters to it; and yes, they treasure it as well for some of the same reasons. Although strictly speaking, the premise is implausible and the men are mostly two dimensional, I think most women love this book for it's "ought-to-be-ness." I love what other women have said below in other reviews. This is a book that unites females to a vision of a better society.
    • 4/5
      Top notch feminist science fiction, in which the characters are interesting individuals, not puppets with principals. In the world of this novel, women and men live apart, with two very different ways of life. Tepper creates believable societies, and the story keeps the reader hooked.
    • 5/5
      I am always recommending books to people, but I always keep a paperback copy of this book to actually GIVE to people to read- it is that important to me that people read and discuss this book. Yes, it is overtly feminist, but not in any man-bashing way. It combines the best of feminist theory against a dystopian backdrop, overlaying classic Greek literature, and written with the pacing of a well-written mystery. The ending blew me away, and this is one book I can re-read over and over again to find subtle details I missed during previous visits. If I could, I would make this a required text at the high school where I teach!
    • 3/5
      Hard for me to read, maybe because I'm not that into Roman/Greek mythology. Very interesting society she's built here. Her characters are interesting and she makes some really interesting observations through them.Apparently a classic of feminist fiction, so if you have any feminist leanings you should pick this one up!
    • 5/5
      I can no more pick a favorite book than I can pick a favorite breath of air, but this one would be a serious contender for the title. It has a message without being preachy. It's a "what might be" that feels completely plausible. The characters are for the most part complex, and products of their environment and civilization. A few plot holes are big enough to drive a truck through, but I didn't even notice until I was out of the grip of the story. Accusations of "man hating" are generally flung at this novel, but I invite the flingers to reread the story - a second reading turns up a great deal more nuance than the first reading provides. The worst men (and the worst women) were made, not born - their genes are stacked against them, but their society has deliberately created an environment in which only the truly dedicated can escape. As another reviewer said, it's difficult for me to review this novel without gushing, so I'll end with the observation that the book's meaning for me has changed as my life has changed. It was electrifying to me as a young college student, it was powerful when I was choosing a husband, and it breaks my heart when I look at my infant son.