Sheri Tepper‘s story is personally encouraging: since her first novel was published in 1983, when she was 54, she has released over 30 more and has received a World Fantasy Award for “Life Achievement.” So, note to self, late-starting and incredibly prolific are not necessarily contradictory.
The Gate to Women’s Country (1988) is neither her first novel, nor her best-known, but it was the first I have encountered. It is the story of Stavia, beginning when she is a girl and ending in mid-life, and it is the story of Women’s Country, a territory that has survived an apocalyptic destruction several centuries earlier. It feels like Women’s Country is situated in North America, but it’s never clear; at the start of the novel, it seems like Women’s Country is all there is, by the end it is clear that it represents only one of many modes of survival in a landscape that is riddled with wastelands sown by the violent historical event, which is never fully described.
What is made clear is that–at least for Stavia, her mother Morgot, and the rest of the denizens of Women’s Country–the destruction of the old world was explicitly the fault of men, of their aggression, of their mechanized violence, of their need for warfare. The society that has emerged is cleanly bifurcated: women live inside the walls of small villages; men live in garrison’s outside the walls, determined to protect them. Except for servitors, men who choose to abandon the warlike garrison camps and serve inside the walls.
So, yeah, this is a novel committed to its own feminism. If that turns you off, avoid it. But if not (and, especially, if that attracts you), The Gate to Women’s Country is an engaging, evocative read. The politics are also not simple: indeed, the stance of Women’s Country towards homosexuality is simultaneously consistent with their internal logic and very problematic. I see that as a positive accomplishment: creating something in the society that readers will struggle with, a reminder that this is not utopia.
The plot is oddly meandering (to the point where I wonder if it would survive the contemporary editing process). There are characters and dramatic arcs that seem important initially that fade into the background, and it’s not clear that the story is actually Stavia’s (and her young love, Chernon’s) story until halfway through. Others may see them earlier, but I was pleasantly surprised by some major plot reveals, and while the dominant other culture that Stavia encounters is a bit of a caricature of the worst possible manifestation of gendered fundamentalism, the societies that Tepper envisions are well thought-out.
The denizens of Women’s Country perform a transformed version of ancient Greek plays each year, and perhaps 15% of the book is the text of the (re-conceived) story of Iphegenia. I found the plays distracting and while I could appreciate what she was doing, found Tepper’s prose more convincing than her drama.
Even with that, though, especially if you are looking for something that is feminist, post-apocalyptic, and not of the 21st century, this is a good and occasionally thought-provoking read.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Allegorize. I tend to make things far too complicated, which makes it harder to illustrate political situations through social structures. I blame Foucault: while perhaps in massively differing proportions, we are all both oppressed and oppressor.