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| '''Consider Her Ways''' is a longish short story by [[John Wyndham]]. | | '''Consider Her Ways''' may refer to one of two stories: |
| | * [[Consider Her Ways (Grove 1948)]] |
| | * [[Consider Her Ways (Wyndham 1956)]] |
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| The story tells of someone who wakes up, with a memory of a past life in ordinary Earth; she has woken up in a future of only women. The narrator realizes this is an intentionally drug-induced experience, permitting exploration of out-of-body experiences and the future. In this future, a doctor accidentally created a virus that killed all the men, leaving only women in the world. After exploring this society, the narrator leaves the future time.
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| The story follows a typical utopian pattern, the travelogue: a visitor to a different society explores the society and how it came about, and engages with some member of the society who explains it, permitting the reader to contrast her own society with that portrayed in the story. Here, the "visitor" is the person who wakes up in the woman's body; the "native" is a historian.
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| "Consider Her Ways" followed a very common pattern for depictions of all-female societies: thinking that they would establish [[matriarchal hive|ant-like or bee-like hierarchies]].
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| Of interest, though, is a debate between the first-person narrator and the historian, in which the historian defends her society. Unlike [[All-woman worlds encounter men|some such novels]] (see, e.g., [[L. Sprague de Camp]] ''[[Rogue Queen]]'' and [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[Virgin Planet]]''), the characters do not abjure their own society when given the choice of a heterosexual patriarchy. Thus, within the context of the story, their choice is seen as valid; although it is apparent that for the author, it is a somewhat horrific and dystopian vision.
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| ==Editions==
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| * 1956 - in ??
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| * 1961, ''Consider Her Ways and Others''
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| * "Consider Her Ways" was adapted for "[[The Alfred Hitchcock Hour]]", starring Barbara Barrie and Gladys Cooper.
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| [[Category:Short stories]]
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| [[Category:1956 publications]]
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| [[Category:Works featuring female-only worlds]]
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| [[Category:Mid-length fiction]]
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