Will I love The Gate to Women's Country?

I’m just a sucker for books where characters who don’t seem to have power or agency within their society wind up sneakily subverting power for their own ends while letting the “power-hungry” think they are in charge.

In this case, women once again have figured out a way to get what they want and essentially take down patriarchy (in a dystopian setting) without using the tools of the aggressor. It’s a surprising, potent, and beautiful book (though there are some outdated concepts/ideologies, given that it was published in 1988).

What I liked most was the stunning, unanticipated-by-me revelation at the end. I had to sit there and rethink the whole book: all the little hints that I missed because I thought this was a book about survival after an apocalypse. Which it is. But it also takes the question of survival to a different level.

While generally considered science fiction, this one of Tepper’s books is centred on a society where men and women live separately – and why, and the effects of such a divided society on the lives of men and women. Although the divided society in my book owes more to Sparta than Tepper’s book, she gave me the idea to examine the consequences of such a society in my pseudo-post-Roman world.

The Gate to Women's Country is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which women and (most) men live largely separated from each other in town and garrison. (Can you tell yet that I like thought experiments that deal with sexual roles and mores?) The men are responsible for war and defending the city, while the women raise the children and try to protect what is left of civilization. The final revelation is both disturbing and thought-provoking.

Tepper’s book harks back to the social speculation of classical Greece: Plato’s Republic and The Iliad. It shows a world where men live as warriors in barracks outside the villages of women. The women determine which of the men are worthy of reproducing. The story treads the line between utopian and dystopian. It presents “a feast of reason,” as it explores the no-man’s land between men and women.