50 Years of The Stepford Wives
Binging the book and the 1975 film adaptation in a single weekend, in the book's half-centennial
I started reading the book, The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin, about midday on Saturday. Well before the same time on Sunday, I was finished. It’s 123 pages of adult Nancy Drewish fiction that had me transfixed in one, two, three. Literally. Literary. Three chapters. Three women (Bobbie, Charmaine, Joanna) are taken in, cult-like, and swapped out of existence in exchange—well, forsaken by their own husbands, who wanted their robotic, subservient editions.
The Town That Time Forgot1
The husband convinces his wife and children to move to the suburbs. He commutes to work and joins the local and very sinister Men’s Association, housed in a 19th century house but housing a creepy and timeless evil plan for male domination. The wife cooks, she cleans, she sings lullabies to the children. Joanna, though, is a shutterbug. Instead of fawning on her husband whenever he’s home, she actually has other interests and hobbies and likes to read feminist literature. Her husband, Walter, loves her; at least he tells her so enough times in the book to convince you he does. But there’s definitely a sense that he wishes she might give him more attention. It’s even worse between Charmaine and her husband because Charmaine hates having sex with him! And Bobbie, well, she’s wild and unkempt, and she licks her fingers after she eats Ring Dings. Bobbie won’t even try to clean her house. Joanna at least tries to keep the house reasonably tidy so her family isn’t living in a pigsty.
One by one, these three women are transplanted to the Town That Time Forgot. One by one, they are transcribed and recorded, and eventually replicated in robotic form. The physical traits are mostly the same—just enhanced. Bigger breasts, you know. More glowing skin. Face all made up. Rouge lips. You get the idea. The robots have the facts of the woman’s biography, recorded on tape by the unsuspecting women themselves. All details are there so that no one will suspect….
The men, they stand there, darker than the darkness.2 Their plan of “audioanimatronics”3 (talking, walking robots) is straight out of Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.
We see everything from Joanna’s perspective, and that includes the men and the dreaded association, until the third and shortest chapter, when the perspective changes to the next lady in line for transformation. That’s a code word (transformation) for death, of course. Death of free will, death of consent, of identity, of everything that is aliveness. The robots do appear to be alive, and they smell nicely.
Her sheepskin coat lay warm on her shoulders. Its smell was strong and good—of animals, of life.4
I vaguely remember seeing the 2004 adaptation starring Nicole Kidman as Joanna, but while I didn’t remember the film terribly well, I remembered the feeling of not enjoying it. So after I binged the novel in approximately a 24-hour period, I googled the title and was pleased to find the 1975 film, starring the exquisite Katharine Ross as Joanna. You can watch it free with ads on the tubi app. It was a 70s book, and so I liked watching an adaptation that had a 70s feel. And Katharine Ross was truly exquisite—the wild, wavy but silky smooth hair, the zero makeup, the eyes full of longing…. Director Bryan Forbes shows you the gorgeous creature in the first shot, and in the last shot, he shows you the walking dead version whose light has gone out. Forbes also succeeded in conveying the cultish vibes that pervade the story. There are strong echoes, both in the novel and the 1975 film, of Rosemary’s Baby, another novel by Ira Levin that was made into a film. In both, Woman is forsaken by the man who took vows to love and cherish her always. In both, Woman is none the wiser until it’s too late.
It’s not that she was dumb. She just couldn’t imagine, not after being convinced that what she did “imagine” was just her being irrational.
For once, I won’t spoil the ending. I’ll just say that the denouement is snowy in the book, rainy in the film, and chilling to the bone.
Levin, Ira. The Stepford Wives. Random House, 1972. Paperback perennial edition: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins © 2002. p.23.
Levin p.112
Levin, p.99
Levin p.115