Amazons

The novel Wicked Thomasin Carey was published in 1943 and the title page assures us, "This book is produced in complete conformity with the War Economy Agreement."
For nearly two hundred pages I thought this was going to turn out to be one of those books that actually shouldn't have been in the gynotopian category. It's a conventional, downright mawkish adventure novel in which a virtuous, impoverished girl's efforts to support herself after her father is rooked out of his property somehow leads to her and her sweetheart's being pressed into service on a slaving ship and then sold into slavery themselves in Africa. Also, standard methods of preserving the heroine's virginity are used: a half-Arab chieftain buys the "white girl" as a novelty slave for his favorite wife. The heroine, Thomasin, is the typical saccharine superwoman of the time; no misfortune, however horrible, can daunt her pious devotion to her father and sweetheart.
Finally, on page 191, she wakes from an illness that killed several of the tribe she had been with to find herself in "The Valley of Women". The Valley Women, whose skin is café au lait with a lot of lait and who have Greek names, found her and healed her, and then comes a wonderfully bizarre origin story:
Many centuries ago, so the legends held, a party of people with white skins, who were in disgrace in their own country, in the North, sailed to this land, Africa, in ships. Their leader had been a saintly woman who had come under the influence of a strange new teacher in the East, and she had the dreams of waking, visions, so that though the land was unknown and uncharted, she had knowledge of their destination which was denied to others. The ships had sailed to a river mouth and then been rowed inland. At a certain part the people had disembarked and the ships had been destroyed so that no one might weaken and wish to return. After many days of journeying they had come, as the leader had promised, to this valley. And there they had stayed.
"There were men amongst us in that time," said the old woman, "and soon dissensions broke out. Men quarrelled over the women and women contested amongst themselves for the possession of the man of their choice. And the family life militated against the good of the state; the women would say, when required to work in the fields or the quarries, that they must return home and cook the meals for their men, or tend their children. [Notice that it's assumed that of course women are obligated to neglect their own families for The Good of the State. Just who would be cooking for the family, or taking care of the children, is blithely unspecified.] Moreover, as soon as a settled form of life was established the men forgot that the women had taken their turn in the rowing, the marching and the building and sought to subjugate them as their mothers and all the women in the old land had been subjugated to the men. Some of the women, resenting this treatment as unworthy, appealed to the leader, now an old woman and little regarded. But vision and wisdom were within her still though her heart had been broken by her failure to make a state upon the pattern of the teachings of the holy man whom she had met in Jerusalem. The old leader called together the midwives, who, being women themselves, and mostly old, listened to her bidding. Gradually there began to be a dearth of male children. They died at birth, unaccountably at first; but in the second generation, when women had attained the ascendancy and the power it was allowed to be known that the old leader, now dead, had instructed the midwives to place their hands upon the nostrils of the newly born males and stifle out the life that had hardly been begun. The women, dubiously at first, but elated by their new freedom and the progress that was made in a community where jealousy and sexual competition were dying out, gradually became resigned to the death of their male offspring. Since then the valley has been the Land of Women."
So there we have it: early Christianity somehow leading to mass murder of males. I have read enough gynotopian fiction that I think I can say with certainty that this is an absolutely unique excuse. Also notice the standard premise that "jealousy and sexual competition" would vanish if there was only one sex. Of course, when this book was published, no one could talk about homosexuality openly and many people didn't even know it existed, but anyone who knows anything about prisons or single-sex boarding schools can testify that it wouldn't have taken the inhabitants of the Valley of Women long to figure it out. The "sexual competition" would continue right on.
For reproduction, every twenty years one boy baby is allowed to live. When he is twenty years old his predecessor, now forty, is killed and he is pressed into stud service. A few girls become infatuated with the male, and if they do not cease this unseemly behavior after a reprimand they are put to death. But the author keeps assuring us that, aside from killing all males and all women who see males as something more than livestock, the Valley is a peaceful and nonviolent society. It's a democracy ruled by a Council with twelve elected members. Also, they are fairly technologically advanced, though of course without steam or any other kind of power, and even invent things. Like many gynotopias, it's pleasant, but dull: It was, in many ways, a perfect state. There were no classes, no poverty, no overwork, no buying or selling, no idleness. By what system the work was divided Thomasin never quite understood, but she saw that the heavier field-work was done by the young and lusty, things like weaving, spinning and cooking by the elderly and infirm.... In theory it seemed to be an almost perfect state - but, as her knowledge of it grew, the English girl decided that it was completely soul-less. It was all as orderly, as clean, well-regulated and soul-less as a hive of bees. Nobody was ever hurried, cross or rude.... Here where the one sex ruled, all the imperfections and injustices beneath which poor mankind had struggled for centuries had been abolished. There were no ill-doers, no punishments, no crimes. However, Thomasin decides that, without romance (men), all this beauty and abundance is flat, empty and sterile.
Now and then the man dies ahead of schedule and they have to acquire a man from outside the valley, which is how the café got into the lait. They're racists, though, so when they find out about Thomasin's boyfriend they set out to capture him; their breeding stud died of an infection recently and a white man is a huge stroke of luck for them. But thanks to her steadfast bravery and some improbable strokes of luck, his virginity is also preserved so that they can escape and return to England and live happily ever after.

Three young men journey up the Amazon in search of a rare black orchid. On the way, they encounter the Amazon warriors Sir Walter Raleigh reported seeing. Most of the women are over six feet tall, while the men are smaller and weaker; men do the cooking and cleaning while women rule, hunt and fight. There are no weak or elderly people because they are euthanized when they are no longer robust enough to do productive work or bear strong children. This adventure yarn deserves credit for resisting the usual temptation of having any of the Amazons fall in love with these dashing men from the world of patriarchy.

Dr. Traprock's memory book;: Or, Aged in the wood by George S. Chappell
The title character amuses his friends by telling outrageous tall tales. One is about an Amazon tribe in the Andes called the Bearded Ladies of Quilaquil who kill most of their male offspring, only keeping enough alive to sire the next generation. He claims he met them once and that they were extremely beautiful, despite their long red beards. It's interesting that he should claim these Amazons were bearded; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many feminists claimed that only social conditioning prevented women from growing beards and that if women had equal rights, we would also have equal facial hair. I am exceedingly relieved that they have turned out to be wrong about this.

When Women Rule
A collection of short stories depicting various female-only or female-dominated societies.

A Brother's Price
A friend recommended this to me because of my interest in fiction about all-female or mostly-female worlds, but it's also just a really good read.
In many ways this novel is simply a reverse romance: the innocent but sensual young man hoping his family will arrange a love match for him, with swaggering Amazons being chivalrously protective towards their menfolk. What makes this novel stand out from other gender-reversal stories is that the system is made plausible. The pressure on unmarried young men to remain chaste, and the care with which families protect their sons' virginity, is explained by the fear of disease, which could spread throughout a family. In this fantasy world, some genetic anomaly means that far more daughters are born than sons, making sons very precious. In addition, this society operates on a sort of clan system. An entire set of sisters will marry one man. In real life, of course, this would be a recipe for jealousy and division, but Spencer makes the reader believe that in this world, it's actually a workable and loving system. The hero falls in love with every one of the sisters he marries, and the author makes this work.
In addition, the adventure as the feisty hero becomes a prize in a bid to steal the throne is page-turning. A very good read.

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