Consider Her Ways
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Consider Her Ways is a science fiction novella by John Wyndham, regarded by some[weasel words] as his best novella or short story. Copyright appears to be from 1956[1], although it was published as part of a 1961 collection with some short stories called Consider Her Ways and Others.
The additional short stories in the book were: "Odd", "Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?", "Stitch in Time", "Random Quest", and "A Long Spoon".
Consider Her Ways was adapted as an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, featuring Barbara Barrie and Gladys Cooper.
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[edit] Plot
The story (full text here), which is mostly a first-person narrative, begins with a woman who has no memory of her past waking up and discovering that she is a mother of some description, in a bloated body that she believes is not her own. After some confusing experiences her memory gradually returns and she recalls that she was part of an experiment using a drug to see if it enabled people to have out-of-body experieces. It seems that the drug has worked far better than anyone could have anticipated: she has been cast into the future. She also realises that she is in a society consisting entirely of women, organised into castes, most of whom have never heard of men.
Eventually the narrator meets a historian. It seems that the narrator is in a society around 100-150 years after her own time (this is not explicitly stated but it can be deduced from one comment in the story). Shortly after her own time a Dr Perrigan carried out scientific experiments that unintentionally created a virus that killed all the men in the world, leaving only women. After a very difficult period of famine and breakdown the small number of educated women, found mainly in the medical profession, took control and embarked on a crash programme of research to enable women to reproduce without males. The women also decided to follow the advice of the Bible: "Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways", and created a caste-based society.
The drug wears off. The narrator returns to her own time and decides to stop Dr Perrigan. The story has an interestingly ambiguous ending, which may suggest that it is the narrator's own actions that will lead to the catastrophe she hopes to prevent.
[edit] Conclusions
Consider Her Ways is more than just an original science fiction story. Particularly notable is a lengthy argument between the narrator and the historian about whether the new society is better than the old one, during which the historian attacks the concept of romance.
The story is perceptibly of and about England in the 1950s, a time and place in which Wyndham's speculation on the nature of a women-only society, and his references to genetic manipulation and drug-related experiences, may have seemed more shocking and "alien" to many readers than they do now.
[edit] Other stories in the collection
Odd is a the tale of how an ordinary man profited from an extraordinary time paradox when he stops to help a man seemingly lost and confused, and then learns the reasons why.
Stitch in Time concerns an elderly lady reflecting on a lost love and, thanks to her sons' experiments with time, finally discovering the reason why her lover abandoned her so many years ago.
Oh Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? is a social satire on Hollywood glamour in which a bright, individual young Irish woman becomes part of the celebrity circuit, and loses all that makes her special in the process of becoming a star.
A Long Spoon is the story of how a demon is summoned by mistake and the lengths the couple that invoked him have to go to get rid of him without losing their souls in the bargain.
[edit] External links
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