Zitner-Crawford, Thorun.

Throughout The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri S. Tepper covers the patriarchal structures of her imagined society with a veneer of feminism. The novel contains many hallmarks of a feminist utopia, such as a concern for the environment and a distrust of men and technology; yet all are undercut by the traditional structures that she retains of class, military machismo, sexuality, and motherhood. An attempt to read The Gate to Women's Country as "a fortifying tonic" (Simmons 22) leads one instead into the "politics of despair" ("Reconsiderations" 44), as one realizes that Tepper is exaggerating, not resolving, the problematic relations that continue to exist between genders. Too perceptive to be overly optimistic about "surmounting humanity's most dangerous flaws" (Miller 15), Tepper's dystopian novel ultimately acknowledges that the genetic solutions of "Women's Country" are nearly futile. She leaves the struggling utopian and dystopian forces of the novel unresolved and men and women in perpetual conflict.