Book and Movie Review: The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin
The classic sci-fi thriller that became a part of American jargon.
Random House, 1972, 145 pages
For Joanna, her husband, Walter & their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.
At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense & a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth & beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.
Even if you've never read or watched The Stepford Wives, you probably know the premise, because "Stepford wife" has become part of the pop culture lexicon. It refers to a married woman who performs a traditional, subservient housewife role in a (literally!) robotic fashion: mindlessly, smilingly cheerful as she devotes herself to keeping the house clean but always being available to please her husband with an afternoon quickie. She has no ambitions, no desires of her own, and no internal life. She is a wifebot, a bangmaid, and every man's dream.
Well, maybe not that last part. But that is what I think makes this 70s classic (and its various film adaptations) more interesting than the very short and simple story would be by itself.
Here is the plot (including spoilers, because it's a 50-year-old classic): Joanna and Walter, a nice middle class couple with two children, decide to leave Manhattan and move to a nice suburb in Connecticut called Stepford. Joanna makes a little side money as a photographer and isn't particularly radical, but she is disturbed by how complacent and boring all the women of Stepford are. The only social activity in the town at all is the "Men's Association." Walter, her supportive and progressive husband, joins the Men's Association saying it's just a place for the guys to gather and play poker and stuff, and they're going to change the rules to open it up to women soon.
Joanna initially makes friends with a couple of other women who similarly don't fit in in Stepford. They also discover that Stepford used to have an active women's movement, which included many of the women who now spend all day cleaning the house in high heels and makeup. She watches with horror as one by one her friends also turn into complacent housewives no longer interested in anything but cleaning and being sexually available to their husbands. Suspecting that the same thing will happen to her, she tells her husband that she wants to leave. Walter, with some resistance agrees, but demands she see a psychiatrist first. Joanna eventually discovers the horrible truth: the Men's Association is secretly replacing their wives with robots. The book ends with Joanna meeting her inevitable fate, as it turns out the clock had been ticking since the moment she arrived in Stepford.
Ira Levin, a popular horror/thriller author who wrote such classics as Rosemary's Baby and A Kiss Before Dying, published The Stepford Wives in 1972, and the first movie version came out in 1975. It is very much an artifact of its time. Feminism was still kind of radical, women were starting to be seen in career roles, and men were having a hard time adjusting. Boomers who grew up with stay-at-home moms and June Cleaver on TV might have talked a good game about supporting "women's lib" but what guy wouldn't actually want a docile and subservient wife who's always waiting at home for you, never argues, never complains, and never asks for things? At least, that is the assumption in the book. Joanna's wife Walter initially appears to be a modern-minded supportive husband, but his mask slips little by little. There is some ambiguity about his transformation: did he arrive in Stepford a normal, decent guy who became entranced by the vision of submissive sexbots that the bros in the Men's Association showed him? Or did he move his family to Stepford already knowing what it offered?
Later takes on The Stepford Wives treat it as a satire of the American housewife stereotype and the emptiness of suburban life, but Levin wrote it as an actual horror story. There is the physical horror of women literally being murdered and replaced with robots, but I think the psychological aspect is more interesting: for a woman, the message might as well be "Can you really trust any man?" If your darling husband was offered a chance to turn you into a submissive, obedient bangmaid (who, incidentally, gets free body sculpting and breast enlargement as part of the package), are you really sure he wouldn't take that deal? It seems no man in Stepford ever said no.
Although the references in The Stepford Wives are certainly dated, it's a book that still reads well today. It's short and concise and even if you know the plot already, thanks to its age, there is still a slow creeping sense of doom as Joanna realizes the situation she is in.
The Stepford Wives (1975)
The 1975 movie starring Katharine Ross was released in the same era of the early 70s, and so was very faithful to the book. If anything, it's longer and fills in many details that weren't in the book. It's a little more explicit in showing Walter's unraveling into a mask-off resentful and emasculated pig, as well as Joanna's final fate, but should be watched as the gloriously 70s time capsule it is. You can watch it in its entirety for free on YouTube.
There were several sequels, most of them made-for-TV trash like The Revenge of the Stepford Wives, The Stepford Children, and The Stepford Husbands. I haven't watched any of these except for brief clips, and they don't seem to be nearly as sharp or intelligent in their social commentary, or as scary, simply repeating the premise of "What if people were getting replaced with robots?" in several iterations.
The Stepford Wives (2004)
The 2004 remake starred a bunch of A-listers: Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick as Joanna and Walter, Bette Midler and Glenn Close camping it up as Stepford wives, and Christopher Walken being his usual creepy self as the man behind the Stepford scheme.
It wasn't good, but it probably couldn't have been. By 2004, feminism was already the default and independent career women no longer raised eyebrows, so the entire movie was done as a satire, rather than an anti-feminist horror story. Nicole Kidman, as Joanna, is not a housewife with a side hustle as a photographer, but a powerful TV exec who has just been canned by her network. Matthew Broderick plays her husband as an emasculated softboy whose recruitment into the Men's Association is played for dark comic laughs.
This scene, by the way, is one of many ways in which the movie is an incoherent stinker. We learn at the end that the "Stepfordizaton" process consists of putting nanochips in the womens' brains, which means they cannot be literal robots, so where the fuck do those dollar bills come from? Of course, given the ending, Christopher Walken might have been lying; maybe the women are actually murdered and replaced by robots, as in the original. But this doesn't make sense given the other ways in which the ending is altered in the remake (spoiler: Walter turns on the Men's Association and decides he likes being married to an emasculating bitch, and of course it wasn't a male evil genius behind the Stepford Wives, but a delusional wannabe tradwife who wants "men to be men and women to be cherished"). It's a funny but dumb movie that pokes fun at right-wing stereotypes and male anxiety, and concludes that both are jokes.
Also by Ira Levin: My review of A Kiss Before Dying.
My complete list of book reviews.
Random House, 1972, 145 pages
For Joanna, her husband, Walter & their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.
At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense & a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth & beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.
Even if you've never read or watched The Stepford Wives, you probably know the premise, because "Stepford wife" has become part of the pop culture lexicon. It refers to a married woman who performs a traditional, subservient housewife role in a (literally!) robotic fashion: mindlessly, smilingly cheerful as she devotes herself to keeping the house clean but always being available to please her husband with an afternoon quickie. She has no ambitions, no desires of her own, and no internal life. She is a wifebot, a bangmaid, and every man's dream.
Well, maybe not that last part. But that is what I think makes this 70s classic (and its various film adaptations) more interesting than the very short and simple story would be by itself.
Here is the plot (including spoilers, because it's a 50-year-old classic): Joanna and Walter, a nice middle class couple with two children, decide to leave Manhattan and move to a nice suburb in Connecticut called Stepford. Joanna makes a little side money as a photographer and isn't particularly radical, but she is disturbed by how complacent and boring all the women of Stepford are. The only social activity in the town at all is the "Men's Association." Walter, her supportive and progressive husband, joins the Men's Association saying it's just a place for the guys to gather and play poker and stuff, and they're going to change the rules to open it up to women soon.
Joanna initially makes friends with a couple of other women who similarly don't fit in in Stepford. They also discover that Stepford used to have an active women's movement, which included many of the women who now spend all day cleaning the house in high heels and makeup. She watches with horror as one by one her friends also turn into complacent housewives no longer interested in anything but cleaning and being sexually available to their husbands. Suspecting that the same thing will happen to her, she tells her husband that she wants to leave. Walter, with some resistance agrees, but demands she see a psychiatrist first. Joanna eventually discovers the horrible truth: the Men's Association is secretly replacing their wives with robots. The book ends with Joanna meeting her inevitable fate, as it turns out the clock had been ticking since the moment she arrived in Stepford.
Ira Levin, a popular horror/thriller author who wrote such classics as Rosemary's Baby and A Kiss Before Dying, published The Stepford Wives in 1972, and the first movie version came out in 1975. It is very much an artifact of its time. Feminism was still kind of radical, women were starting to be seen in career roles, and men were having a hard time adjusting. Boomers who grew up with stay-at-home moms and June Cleaver on TV might have talked a good game about supporting "women's lib" but what guy wouldn't actually want a docile and subservient wife who's always waiting at home for you, never argues, never complains, and never asks for things? At least, that is the assumption in the book. Joanna's wife Walter initially appears to be a modern-minded supportive husband, but his mask slips little by little. There is some ambiguity about his transformation: did he arrive in Stepford a normal, decent guy who became entranced by the vision of submissive sexbots that the bros in the Men's Association showed him? Or did he move his family to Stepford already knowing what it offered?
Later takes on The Stepford Wives treat it as a satire of the American housewife stereotype and the emptiness of suburban life, but Levin wrote it as an actual horror story. There is the physical horror of women literally being murdered and replaced with robots, but I think the psychological aspect is more interesting: for a woman, the message might as well be "Can you really trust any man?" If your darling husband was offered a chance to turn you into a submissive, obedient bangmaid (who, incidentally, gets free body sculpting and breast enlargement as part of the package), are you really sure he wouldn't take that deal? It seems no man in Stepford ever said no.
Although the references in The Stepford Wives are certainly dated, it's a book that still reads well today. It's short and concise and even if you know the plot already, thanks to its age, there is still a slow creeping sense of doom as Joanna realizes the situation she is in.
The Stepford Wives (1975)
The 1975 movie starring Katharine Ross was released in the same era of the early 70s, and so was very faithful to the book. If anything, it's longer and fills in many details that weren't in the book. It's a little more explicit in showing Walter's unraveling into a mask-off resentful and emasculated pig, as well as Joanna's final fate, but should be watched as the gloriously 70s time capsule it is. You can watch it in its entirety for free on YouTube.
Click to view There were several sequels, most of them made-for-TV trash like The Revenge of the Stepford Wives, The Stepford Children, and The Stepford Husbands. I haven't watched any of these except for brief clips, and they don't seem to be nearly as sharp or intelligent in their social commentary, or as scary, simply repeating the premise of "What if people were getting replaced with robots?" in several iterations.
The Stepford Wives (2004)
The 2004 remake starred a bunch of A-listers: Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick as Joanna and Walter, Bette Midler and Glenn Close camping it up as Stepford wives, and Christopher Walken being his usual creepy self as the man behind the Stepford scheme.
It wasn't good, but it probably couldn't have been. By 2004, feminism was already the default and independent career women no longer raised eyebrows, so the entire movie was done as a satire, rather than an anti-feminist horror story. Nicole Kidman, as Joanna, is not a housewife with a side hustle as a photographer, but a powerful TV exec who has just been canned by her network. Matthew Broderick plays her husband as an emasculated softboy whose recruitment into the Men's Association is played for dark comic laughs.
This scene, by the way, is one of many ways in which the movie is an incoherent stinker. We learn at the end that the "Stepfordizaton" process consists of putting nanochips in the womens' brains, which means they cannot be literal robots, so where the fuck do those dollar bills come from? Of course, given the ending, Christopher Walken might have been lying; maybe the women are actually murdered and replaced by robots, as in the original. But this doesn't make sense given the other ways in which the ending is altered in the remake (spoiler: Walter turns on the Men's Association and decides he likes being married to an emasculating bitch, and of course it wasn't a male evil genius behind the Stepford Wives, but a delusional wannabe tradwife who wants "men to be men and women to be cherished"). It's a funny but dumb movie that pokes fun at right-wing stereotypes and male anxiety, and concludes that both are jokes.
Also by Ira Levin: My review of A Kiss Before Dying.
My complete list of book reviews.