Comments on: Finally – The Gate To Women's Country

By: Jenn

Jenn — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:22:23 +0000

I finally made it through the book, but kept getting stuck on the idea of nature versus nurture. While I was certainly bothered by the idea of breeding out male qualities that are seen to be bad, I think I was possibly more disturbed that these were qualities that were “encouraged,” albeit in a somewhat roundabout way, but the society itself. If boys are sent off to be warriors, are taught to be violent and war like from the age of five, and then it’s made extremely difficult for them to come back (especially for those who are apparently torn by the choice), then it feels to me like the women are almost at a place where they’re justifying the breeding by setting up men to fail, by and large. I understand the point is to retrieve only those who are non-violent enough to return in order to continue that genetic heritage, but the way in which Tepper sets up the process I found to be problematic and, again, almost a self-fulfilling prophesy of maleness to justify genetic selection.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:58:16 +0000

I agree with Rosa – the idea that women would never give up their kids seems fundamentally wrong to me – of course they would, with the appropriate societal justification. We don’t much like acknowledging that something as basic as our feelings towards our children can be culturally constructed, but it certainly can. There’s good historical evidence that people have loved children through most of human history – and good evidence that they also haven’t very much, or that love hasn’t been enough to overcome other pressures.

Sharon

By: Susan in NJ

Susan in NJ — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:54:02 +0000

Marian, I agree that Tepper’s writing has a lot in common with bodice ripper fiction, and in some cases, seems to actually be a riff on it. Thanks for reminding of this thought, which I had when I first read her years ago.

By: Rosa

Rosa — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:16:51 +0000

It’s late in the conversation, but Hausfraus’ feeling that giving up sons is unthinkable and people wouldn’t do it…there have been a number of social groups where woman lose access to their sons at a pretty early age (men too, in some of them.) I didn’t find that unbelievable at all. Think of the British classes that sent sons off to boarding school at 7 (and I have met Americans from rich East Coast families that went off to boarding school at 8 or 9, and only saw each parent on alternate holidays after that.) In a lot of patriarchal cultures women lose their kids if they are divorced, and that was true in our own culture up through the 1890s at least, for formal legal divorces.

People sell their own children, boys and girls; they selectively nurture some over others; they routinely discriminate against kids in their care who aren’t their own flesh and blood, or decide that difficult infants are “born to die”, stolen by fairies, or inhabited by demons.

Other people buy children, steal them, allow them to die of overwork or starvation or dirty water. I think assuming that any culture won’t go along with giving up children is just a dream. Especially because in our own culture, young men and women are still commonly considered dependent children right up to the day before they are eligible to enlist in the armed services, and many parents encourage their own children to do that knowing there is a strong chance they will be damaged or killed.

By: marian

marian — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:43:55 +0000

what fun! to read a string of thoughts on Sherri Tepper, it’s been ages since I read ‘Gate..’ so can’t really remember much. I just get a charge from her fantasies with reality. ‘Just imagine if’……, I know her writing is not the most high-brow, but to me it is my secret ‘bodice ripper’ addiction with some substance thrown in. The last book I read was ‘The Margarets’ and it was worth reading the book for one line : two aliens discussing eating people ..’can’t stand the ones who have been smoking cigarettes, they taste terrible”!! I think this line sums up Teppers writing, it’s not to be taken that seriously, the other great bit in the Margarets is where Jerusalem is made to disappear …………how easy it is in one’s imagination to solve problems, love to all,from an Australian voyeur.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:58:07 +0000

Umm, Wolf, you do realize this is a novel, right?

Sharon

By: Wolf

Wolf — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:06:09 +0000

Breeding men to be more feminine? I think we already have that and what ahs that got us? A society of entitlement seeking, poor work ethic, in touch with their feelings generation.Let us see the end result of that….Here come a huge asteroid to hit the planet Earth. If we ask nicely and hope it joins the local feminist group it will decide to miss us. Yeah right….Men are men and women are women. Accept it as the many generations before us did. We can have better relationships through better understanding. You know…That small thing called communication. I think those who cant communicate should be “breeded out” of existence along with the “drama queens”. Life is hard enough….Why add extra drama with bad choices? Oh I’m sorry. I thought I was talking to an audience that could think rationally and logically. Ooops. My bad. Welcome to America.

By: Susan in NJ

Susan in NJ — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:18:49 +0000

I agree that Joshua and the gypsy patriarch were the sympathetic characters in this book. In this world, I think I would want to be part of traveling gypsy circus. I’ve read a fair amount of Tepper circa ’80’s and ’90’s; Grass particularly stuck with me. I found the format of this book a bit tedious but in the end it was a sort of intellectual mystery. It was a little hard to swallow that a survivor society founded by woman’s would make as it’s central ritual a variation on a Greek drama. I also liked the craft, science, art vocational structure but surely Myra was not the first to find this a poor fit for talents.

By: Brad K.

Brad K. — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:44:16 +0000

I read “The Gate To Women’s Country” several years ago. I started with Tepper’s “King’s Blood Four”, “Necromancer Nine” and “Wizard’s Eleven”, the first book of her long-running True Game sequence. So I may have taken Gate to have a slightly different feel to it.

I didn’t see a distinct statement about men and women. The pattern of writing that Ms. Tepper has used is similar to her True Game world – with distinct magical races tracing back to nine bioengineered war-game role races.

Women’s Country portrays several different social structures. While men are seen as more expendable, the ability to take part in many parentings makes the male side of the equation quicker, to propagate a characteristic through a group. We do this with livestock today, for the same reason. We select a healthy herd of females, and select a male to improve desired characteristics.

Like her other novels, the stark distinctions apparent at the beginning, and shaping the story for the protagonist, unravels. Gradually we see the role of the male servitors, we come to understand rationales (beyond mere petty tyrant syndrome). I didn’t come to accept all the roles, but there were fewer that were pure ‘evil’ by the end of the book.

Weird and creepy might apply to this novel. But psychological adventure might also apply. This is certainly not a prescription for utopia, and isn’t written to be that kind of story.

Now, I think I want to re-read Wen Spencer’s post-apocalypse novel, “A Brother’s Price”. There the catastrophe is a virus that genetically sterilized most men. Women band together to marry one of the ‘clean’ men, men are isolated from casual social contact (and possible rape), or confined to brothels. The setting is reminiscent of the old west, in a near-modern-tech way, with a bit of feudalism thrown in for structure.

By: Dani

Dani — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:38:56 +0000

I didn’t not like this book at all. I didn’t like the writing style. I didn’t like the story. It left a very bad taste in my mouth. Mostly it made me think poorly of the author and her view of humanity. I got an image of a very bitter and twisted human (yes I got all Judgey McJudgerson about someone I don’t know the first thing about, bad me).

I need to re-read Parenting for a Peaceful World (Robin Grille) as an antidote to this.