The Gate To Women's Country
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by Heather Ferguson
__In the novel, The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri Tepper paints a picture of a future
dual society. It occurs 300 years after an apocalyptic downfall to our current civilization.
One society is the Women's Country, consisting of walled in towns controlled and
run by women. There is a secretive group of women that make the Country's decisions;
they are called the Council. Because this novel shows a society run by women, it
offers an interesting and different perspective that I enjoyed.
__There are some men that live amongst them. They are used as servants or "servitors".
These servitors like all other men were trained from the age of five to be warriors
and live in the garrisons outside of Women's Country. In this second society, boys
and men train for battle and cannot do much else. They are barred from reading and
learning. I thought it was an intelligent addition to not allow the violent warriors
or even would-be warriors to learn. Instead of becoming enlightened by education,
it has been the history of man to use their education as a way to control and dominate
people. They may read something and twist it to fit their means similar to how Adolph
Hitler used the work of Friedrich Nietzsche as an excuse to exterminate people.
__The women use learning to encourage men to return to their country. At age fifteen,
boys can make the decision to return home and become servitors. If they do choose
that route, the men are taunted then shunned by the warriors.
The two societies come together at an annual carnival mainly so the warriors may
breed. Once a child is born, it lives with it's mother for five years until it must
be given up to it's warrior father to train.
__Before and after these breeding sessions the women are checked to make sure they
have gotten any diseases. They are also given "vitamin" injections, or
so they are told. As the novel unfolds, it is realized that the women are actually
given birth control then are artificially inseminated by "the seed" of
servitors. The Council is behind these inseminations in hopes of breeding out the
violence of the warriors. Instead of allowing the men to procreate, they breed the
blood of the nonviolent servitors.
__This underhanded method of resistance is used rather than confronting the warriors
head on. The women could have refused to give up their children to the warriors but
would have had no way of defending themselves when the warriors became upset. The
men do not suspect why their armies are becoming smaller and smaller because so many
men are choosing to return home. The Council of Women believes there is no longer
a need for violence, as their was 300 years before when men destroyed much of the
earth.
__Overall, I thought that the novel was a good one. It was quite one sided, which
is a good thing, considering most books are coming from men's point of view. Often
people will disavow novels of this fashion by claiming that women can be just as
violent or power driven if they had that much control. This may be true, but until
women are given the opportunity to show how they would run things on a massive scale,
Tepper's view can be construed as realistic.