The book's feminist themes are also related to an exploration of healing and wholeness, according to scholar Inge-Lise Paulsen. Snake is a professional healer, ostensibly fitting the stereotype of a woman in a nurturing role, but McIntyre depicts her as someone who is a healer because she was trained to be, and because it was an ethical choice, and not as a consequence of her femininity. Although she finds a family in Arevin and Melissa, that is not where Snake seeks her "ultimate fulfillment as a woman": her triumph at the story's end comes from her discovery of the dreamsnakes' breeding habits. Love is depicted as insufficient for a relationship; Arevin must learn to trust Snake's strength, and resist the temptation to protect her. The ideal of mutual respect is also shown in the utopian structure of the nomads' society. The nomads respect individual agency, in contrast to the people of the city, who isolate themselves from the world from a desire to protect themselves. Paulsen sees this as a cultural tendency typical of patriarchy, and writes that McIntyre's depiction of an ethical need for wholeness and an understanding of connections between the facets of society is also found in the work of Le Guin and in Doris Lessing's "Canopus in Argos" series.