"Sultana's Dream" takes place in the female utopia Ladyland, where men are excluded from the community and relegated to mardanas, the male form of the female zenana, where women were kept secluded from society during the practice of purdah. Sultana, lounging in a chair and contemplating the "condition of Indian womanhood," awakes to find herself in a fictional version of her home in Calcutta. Although she is nervous to go outside at first, describing herself as a woman who is practicing purdah and therefore unable to go outside and into spaces with men, a woman who Sultana mistakes for one of her own friends—Sister Sara—comes and accompanies her throughout Ladyland. Sister Sara shows Sultana around the country, explaining all of the technological advancements and improvements the women have been able to make ever since eliminating men from public social life.
Without men, the women of Ladyland have been able to revolutionize society. They move around in flying cars and automated agriculture using electricity. There are no longer any vehicular or public transportation accidents, and crime has been entirely eliminated. The women live in peace and have enough time to accomplish both their regular work, which they do in laboratories, and hobbies like embroidery. As Sister Sara describes, women are far more efficient at working than men. Sister Sara and Sultana engage in a dialogue during which Sister Sara uses several metaphors to explain how women have come to dominate society, even though she admits that men are physically stronger. She explains that Ladyland was founded after women were able to gain access to university education and begin to develop their own technological inventions. During a war with a neighboring country, one of the female scientists—referred to as a Lady Principal—was able to engineer a machine that harnessed solar heat.
While men were busy fighting the war using physical violence, the women utilized the solar-heat weapon and won the war, imprisoning the men in the process. After their victory, the women were able to develop Ladyland as a female-only society. The women practice a religion that is founded on "Love and Truth," and under the Queen's reign, refuse to trade with any country where women continue to be kept in zenanas. Sultana is amazed at the utopian qualities of Ladyland and after touring around its laboratories and universities, falls asleep on Sister Sara's flying car, only to wake once more back in her Calcutta home. Despite Ladyland's verisimilitude, the feminist utopia is revealed to have been only a dream.
