1. Are there aspects of this gender-reversal utopia that indicate its author's interest in educational reform for Muslim/Indian women?
2. What are some advantages of the use of a dream narrative frame?
3. How does this work resemble other utopian/science fiction works you have read? For example, does it resemble Christine de Pisan "The City of Ladies," William Morris's News from Nowhere, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915)? What are some similarities in tone, as well as clear differences in emphasis? (preoccupied with ending institution of purdah)
4. What is purdah, and why does the author consider it offensive? What alternative does she propose? Why do you think she is unable to imagine a world in which men and women cooperate?
5. What do you make of the use of the figure of a queen? Could this have been influenced by the fact that England had long been nominally headed by a female monarch? (Britain ruled India until 1947).
6. What character traits are ascribed to women in general in this utopia? Have other feminists/feminist theorists made such claims? Would you describe this as essentialist?
7. How do the members of this female world respond to nature and to science? (keen on using science for agriculture, aviation, and medicine) What are some inventions which have improved life? (weather is controlled, electric power is widely used)
8. How are sexual/personal relationships conducted in the new female society? What is the aim of these changes? Can you see how these will be worked out? (continued regulation of relations between women and their male relatives, though more relaxed than in her society)
9. Why does this new society place so much emphasis on gardens and nature? Does the new land of Sultana's dream resemble its author's native Calcutta? Are the gardens of "Sultana's Dream" similar to those in News from Nowhere and Herland?
10. Does the writer seem preoccupied with British colonialism or the British presence in her country?
11. What does the narrator/guide believe women should do to better themselves? (they must fight for self-determination and respect: "You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests")
12. What has caused a decline in infant and child deaths? (better medicine)
13. How have kitchens changed? What does this indicate about the projected future of domestic work? Who tends to cooking and other domestic arts?
14. What US/European inventions resemble the dream's suggestion that agriculture be electrified? (compare use of tractors at beginning of 20th century)
15. Is it consistent to describe men as meekly accepting their subjection yet at the same time as violent and competitive by nature?
16. Considering its length, how successful do you think this is as a literary projection? Are there problematic aspects to the author's imagined world? How may these be accounted for by aspects of her cultural background? (unable to imagine a society in which men and women mingle freely and share public endeavors)