"Consider Her Ways" is a 1956 science fiction novella by English writer

John Wyndham John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (; 10 July 1903 – 11 March 1969) was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names ...

. It was republished as part of a 1961 collection entitled ''Consider Her Ways and Others'', where it forms over a third of the book. It initially appeared as one third of the anthology ''Sometime, Never'' along with " Boy in Darkness" by

Mervyn Peake Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the '' Gormenghast'' books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived ...

and " Envoy Extraordinary" by

William Golding Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel ''Lord of the Flies'' (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980 ...

Plot

Jane, a woman from the present day, has taken a drug called chuinjuatin, thought to induce

out-of-body experiences An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...

. She wakes up not as herself, but in a bloated body unknown to her. Initially she has amnesia. She has mentally

time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

led into the future. Society is in this time period made up only of women, organized into a strict hierarchy of

caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...

. She is a member of the mother caste. Jane's initial contacts have not even heard of men; they believe her to be mad. Doctors consent to take Jane to meet Laura, an aged historian. Jane learns that she has only travelled a little more than a century forward. Not long into her future, a Dr Perrigan unintentionally created a virus which killed all men. A small educated elite, mainly in the medical profession, salvaged the catastrophe-stricken world, and devised a way for women to reproduce artificially. They took inspiration from Chapter 6, verse 6 of the

Book of Proverbs The Book of Proverbs ( he, מִשְלֵי, , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different ...

's "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise" and created a caste-based society. Laura is certain that men were oppressors of women and that the world is far better without them. Jane, a happily married woman in her own time, disagrees. Distressed, Jane requests that she be administered another dose of chuinjuatin, in order to return home. The method works. Jane, in the present, sets out to stop Dr Perrigan at all costs. The story ends on an ambiguous note and suggests that a

predestination paradox A causal loop is a theoretical proposition, wherein by means of either retrocausality or time travel, an event (an action, information, object, or person) is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-menti ...

may doom her efforts.

Adaptations

"Consider Her Ways" was an episode of ''

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' is an American television anthology series created, hosted and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, aired on CBS and NBC between 1955 and 1965. It features dramas, thrillers and mysteries. Between 1962 and 1965 it was re ...

anthology series An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a differ ...

in 1964. The series usually presented crime and mystery stories. This was a faithful, if shortened, adaptation, with the action moved to America. The screenplay was written by

Oscar Millard Oscar Millard (March 1, 1908 – December 7, 1990) was an English writer who published two books set in Belgium before finding success in Hollywood as a screenwriter. Author In 1936 Millard published a biography of Adolphe Max, who had been ...

, and starred

Barbara Barrie Barbara Barrie (born Barbara Ann Berman; May 23, 1931) is an American actress and author. Her film breakthrough came in 1964 with her performance as Julie in the landmark film ''One Potato, Two Potato'', for which she won the Best Actress Awar ...

as the woman who travels through time and

Gladys Cooper Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, (18 December 1888 – 17 November 1971) was an English actress, theatrical manager and producer, whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television. Beginning as a teenager in Edwardian musi ...

as the historian.

External links

Amazon reviews of ''Consider Her Ways and Others''IMDB entry for Hitchcock's versionThe Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "Consider Her Ways" (1964)
on YouTube {{John Wyndham Post-apocalyptic short story collections Short story collections by John Wyndham Short stories by John Wyndham 1956 short story collections Single-gender worlds Michael Joseph books

Plot

Other stories in the collection

Adaptations

External links