Major Themes
The nature of the novel is a subject of some contention, some believing that the setting is a feminist utopia, others holding it to be a dystopian work functioning as a post-feminist critique of feminism. The structure of the society is complex enough to make either interpretation possible, though the society's origin and structure is based on an extreme of separatist feminism. Also, the structure of the society as seen within the narrative supports the view of biological determinism when it comes to the relationship between genetics and gender roles.
The author, in an appendix to the novel, explains that the idea for the society in which the story takes place originated from a study of reproductive cycle of aphids, which is heterogamous. Aphids alternate between asexual reproduction in the Summer, i.e., when the environment is favorable and there is plenty of food, and sexually in the Fall when the organism is stressed by its environment. This has the biological advantage of ensuring identical copies of the parent will be well suited to take advantage of the favorable conditions, and variation in offspring in a stressful environment in hopes some of the offspring will find the environment favorable, even when the parents do not. The entire social construct in the novel is therefore an extrapolation of this idea onto a human culture, where successful female clans (female, because only they can produce offspring) can take advantage off their sociological niches by producing exact copies, and unsuccessful females produce variable offspring sexually. One could argue that successful human organizations such as the clans require a variety of personality types and individuals of complementary skill sets to be successful as an organization. While this criticism is not directly addressed, it might act as a limiter on how large a particular clan could grow, since inevitably a large organizational structure would require specialization of tasks for which none of the clan members may be suited.
Read more about this topic: Glory Season
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