After becoming grandparents, usually in their late 30s or early 40s, people “drink the last draught”, to free jobs and houses for the coming generations. Women who produce more than three “defectives” are dismissed to make way for second wives. “Defective” babies, whose numbers are increasing because of the small gene pool, are killed at birth. Partly as a means of population control, after the births of two healthy children fathers are expected to have sex with their pre-pubescent daughters, although forbidden to do so with girls of reproductive age. They divert themselves with gossip and attendance at each other’s childbirths, these being the only occasions on which they may gather without a male chaperone.Įveryone must marry, girls after the “summer of fruition” following their first periods, boys at the end of adolescence. The women stay at home, contriving what they can by way of food, clothing and cleanliness with limited resources. Other men follow the kinds of trades one might find in a small medieval town: blacksmithing, weaving and carpentry (though the population is so limited that when the papermaker dies, the islanders simply run out of paper). The island is ruled by “the Wanderers”, a group of elite adult men who make regular trips to the Wastelands, returning with a small selection of useful commodities to eke out the produce of small-scale subsistence farming. On an island just out of sight of “the Wastelands” (the mainland, or the rest of the world), the descendants of 10 families live in a closed community with no technology later than pen and paper, no money and some disturbing sexual practices. G ather the Daughters is set in the alternative reality of a misogynist dystopia.
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