"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."
"Consider Her Ways" is a 1956 dystopian Science Fiction novelette by British writer John Wyndham.
The story is told from the First-Person Perspective of an amnesiac protagonist, who awakens suddenly in a strange world with no memory of who or where she is. She is given the identity of 'Orchis', a Class One Mother, whose sole duty is to reproduce within a bizarre stratified society where tough 'Workers' toil in laborious jobs and enforce the law, diminutive 'Servitors' complete menial tasks, and the educated technocrats of 'The Doctorate' boss everyone else around. Oh, and men are nowhere to be seen. Understandably perplexed, and convinced she is hallucinating, 'Orchis' attempts to make sense of her odd surroundings, and winds up learning some very disturbing truths about where she really is: her name is Jane, and she's a present-day doctor who has been transported to a possible future Earth where all men died long ago.
In 1965 it was adapted into an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Consider Her Ways contains examples of:
- Apocalypse How: Class 1: Planetary Societal Disruption. In the future Jane travels to, Perrigan's virus killed off roughly half the world's population, leading to backsliding living standards and two decades of lawlessness. Luckily, the Doctorate discover how to induce asexual reproduction in humans, and rapidly stabilizes society.
- Amazon Brigade: The Worker caste, conditioned from birth to become brawny but not too bright, conduct all heavy labouring and law enforcement duties in the future society. Jane repeatedly refers to them as 'Amazons'.
- Author Tract: It's hard to see Laura the historian's rant about how consumerism was used to reinforce sexism as anything but Wyndham railing against this in his present day.
- Baby Factory: The function of the "Mother" caste. Thanks to biological modification, each of its members is grossly obese by nature and all but helpless to do anything without the help of attendant Servitors. They spend their days devouring huge meals and repeatedly, asexually, producing quadruplets. They're treated well and seem to be content with their existence, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they have absolutely no choice in the matter.
- Crapsaccharine World: The Doctorate's society is harmonious and peaceful, with everyone Jane meets seeming to be happy with their life, but people are biologically modified from birth to take roles in a rigid caste system, with the Mothers especially being treated like livestock, shunted around from place to place depending on whether they produce 'Class One' or 'Class Two' babies, heavily implying some form of eugenics at work. Furthermore, no caste except the Doctorate has access to any historical information or is even literate - if it's of no use to their work, why should they be?
- Drunk with Power: After the Synthetic Plague finally disappears, some members of the future society propose recreating males. While the Doctorate claim to object to this out of concern that women would once again be subjugated, it's made very clear that their real motivation was to avoid the loss or weakening of their power. The reason doctors came to rule the society in the first place was because they had the sole means of enabling asexual reproduction, and recreating men would break this monoply.
- Easy Amnesia: As noted, Jane starts out with no memory at all of who she is, but stages a full recovery before too long.
- Fantastic Caste System: A form of this is established by the Doctorate in the male-less future. They form the educated ruling class, who still resemble ordinary human beings and work in a range of high-level professions, although most are medics. Unusually, members of the three lesser classes (Mothers, Workers and Servitors) are all roughly equal in social standing, but are conditioned in such a way to make any challenge to the authority of the Doctorate nigh-impossible. Mothers are held in high esteem by the Workers and Servitors, but are uneducated and so oversized they are incapable of independent function, while the Workers regard the Servitiors as weaklings and the Servitors consider the Workers brutes.
- Fantastic Drug: The fictional drug "chuinjutain" is central to the plot, being the means behind Jane's Mental Time Travel. It's derived from a plant and before scientists got their hands on it the substance was used ritualistically by a Native American tribe.
- Gendercide: No men exist in the Doctorate's society, because they were all wiped out by an artificial virus intended to kill all brown rats. It did, however, also kill the brown rats. Success!
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Dr. Perrigan, a biochemist, devoted his life to producing targeted artificial viruses with which to eradicate vermin. After successfully killing off all rabbits in Australia, he attempts to purge the world of brown rats — and somehow, his virus mutates to attack humans, killing off all men on the planet, but for some reason women were mostly immune.
- The Great Exterminator: In the future/Alternate Universe the story is set in, a biochemist named Dr. Perrigan was renowned for creating an artificial virus which killed all rabbits in Australia (where they are an invasive species that has devastated farmers and the environment alike). He attempted to follow it up with a virus which would wipe out all brown rats worldwide — unfortunately it ended up killing all men as well, and his name is remembered in a rather different way than he intended.
- Hypocrite: Laura claims that while the Synthetic Plague-induced Gendercide was unfortunate, it had the positive side effect of liberating women from male oppression. She says this as a member of an elite ruling class in a rigidly caste-based society in which reproduction and education are strictly controlled and dissidents are harshly punished, possibly even executed.
- Lady Land: Considering that all the men are dead, this is kind of a given.
- Mental Time Travel: Jane volunteered to test the drug chuinjutain, which causes users to have out-of-body experiences - and it turns out this is what it does, projecting her mind into the body of Orchis decades, if not centuries, into the future.
- Skewed Priorities: Jane seems far more concerned about the absence of romantic love in the future she experiences than the eugenics, caste system and totalitarianism.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Possibly. After returning from her trip, Jane tracks down "Dr. Perrigan", kills him, and destroys most of his research, but it turns out he has a son who vows to carry on his work...
