Consider Her Ways (Wyndham 1956)

Consider Her Ways (1956) is a longish short story by John Wyndham. (See Consider Her Ways (disambiguation) for other works by this title.)

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.

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.

"Consider Her Ways" followed a very common pattern for depictions of all-female societies: thinking that they would establish ant-like or bee-like hierarchies.

Of interest, though, is a debate between the first-person narrator and the historian, in which the historian defends her society. Unlike 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.

Editions

• 1956 - in ??
• 1961, Consider Her Ways and Others
• "Consider Her Ways" was adapted for "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour", starring Barbara Barrie and Gladys Cooper.