Wow, you actually get a warning when you post in a reallyreally old topic. And I'm aware nobody will probably read this, unless they, like me, have only recently discovered Pseudopod and are listening to all the episodes in turn.
Just felt like commenting, though.
I really liked the story atmosphere and setting. It was decidedly creepy.
On the other hand, the pragmatist in me was banging its head against the wall all through the story.
So, you have a setting that's obviously hard to live in for all people, with the winter lasting almost all year. However, the men don't seem to go insane, presumably because they, unlike the women, get to work together, sharing laughs and stories and community.
The story doesn't TRY to posit the men as inhuman sadists - they seem to be sad and worried when the women go mad - but it inadvertently does: why oh why don't they just use one summer to make a huge compound house, with common rooms and private rooms, where women can live together during winter? A community of women might actually get some interesting stuff done, like raising kids (don't know how the children can grow up healthy and happy with the fathers gone all day and the mothers maniacally cross-stitching their ennui away, yet they were laughing and playing all the time in the story), and creating progress in other ways. That the women, who are isolated and shut-in, don't manage to get this done is not that remarkable, but the men . . .
The fact that no man really does anything to save his wife (and presumably daughters) from insanity makes them out to be criminally negligent bastards. There's no reason posited why they should live the way they do, so they must do it because they LIKE it.
