The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical thriller novel by Ira Levin.
The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that
the frighteningly submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may
be robots created by their husbands.
The book has had two feature film adaptations, both using the same title as the novel: the
critically acclaimed 1975 version, and the critically panned 2004 remake.
Edgar J. Scherick produced the 1975 version, as well as all three of the made-for-television
sequels.
Scherick was posthumously credited as producer on the 2004 remake.
The term "Stepford wife," which is often used in popular culture, stemmed from the novel
and is usually a reference to a submissive and docile wife.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it was sometimes used in reference to any
woman, even an accomplished professional woman, who had subordinated her life and/or career
to her husband's interests and who affected submission and devotion to him even in the
face of the husband's public problems and disgrace.
In a March 27, 2007 letter to The New York Times, Levin said that he based the town of
Stepford on Wilton, Connecticut, where he lived in the 1960s.
Wilton is a "step" from Stamford, a major city lying 15 miles away.
Plot summary The premise involves the married men of the
fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful
wives.
The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City
with her husband and children, eager to start a new life.
As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the zombie-like, submissive wives
of Stepford, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends—fellow new
arrivals to Stepford—turn into mindless, docile housewives overnight.
Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's
association, mocks her fears.
As the story progresses, Joanna becomes convinced that the wives of Stepford are being poisoned
or brainwashed into submission by the men's club.
She visits the library and reads up on the pasts of Stepford's wives, finding out that
some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals, while the
leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists,
capable of creating lifelike robots.
Her friend Bobbie helps her investigate, going so far as to write to the EPA to inquire about
possible environmental toxins in Stepford.
However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest
in her previous activities.
At the end of the novel, Joanna decides to flee Stepford but when she gets home she finds
that her children have been taken.
She asks her husband to let her leave but he takes her car keys.
She manages to escape from the house on foot and several of the men's club members track
her down.
They corner her in the woods and she accuses them of creating robots out of the town's
women.
The men deny the accusation and ask Joanna if she would believe them if she saw one of
the other women bleed.
Joanna agrees to this and they take her to Bobbie's house.
Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing—as if to cover screams.
The scene ends as Bobbie brandishes a knife at her former friend.
In the story's epilogue, Joanna has become another Stepford wife gliding through the
local supermarket and has given up her career as a photographer, while Ruthanne appears
poised to become the conspiracy's next victim.
Adaptations
In 1975, the book was adapted into a science fiction thriller directed by Bryan Forbes
with a screenplay by William Goldman and starring Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson
and Tina Louise.
The film also marked the screen debut of Brat Pack actress Mary Stuart Masterson, playing
one of Joanna's children.
While the script emphasis is on gender conflict and the sterility of suburban living, and
thus the science fiction elements are only lightly explored, the movie still makes it
much clearer than the book that the women are being replaced by some form of robot.
Goldman's treatment of the book differed from that of Forbes, with the robots closer to
an idealized "Playboy Bunny"; it has been claimed that the look was scrapped when Forbes'
actress wife Nanette Newman was cast as one of the town residents.
A made-for-television sequel was produced in 1980, titled Revenge of the Stepford Wives.
It was critically panned.
In this film, instead of being androids, the wives undergo a brainwashing procedure and
then take pills that keep them hypnotized.
As suggested by the title, in the end the wives are broken free of their conditioning
and a mob of them kill the mastermind behind the conspiracy.
Yet another made-for-television sequel/remake was released in 1987 called The Stepford Children,
wherein both the wives and the children of the male residents were replaced by drones.
It again ends with the members of the conspiracy being killed.
A 1996 version called The Stepford Husbands was made as a third television movie with
the gender roles reversed and the men in the town being brainwashed by a female clinic
director into being perfect husbands.
A largely panned remake of the original The Stepford Wives was released in 2004.
It was directed by Frank Oz and featured Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick, Christopher
Walken, Roger Bart, Faith Hill, Glenn Close and Jon Lovitz.
It was intended to be more comedic than previous versions.
The new script by prominent gay screenwriter Paul Rudnick featured several other changes,
most importantly the almost complete erasure of the powerful feminist message of the original
film, culminating in a role reversal in which it is the powerful woman who is the evil mastermind
of the injustice perpetrated on other women and featuring a Stepford-drone replacement
for the male partner of a gay town resident.
Both versions were filmed in various towns in Fairfield County, Connecticut, including
Redding, Westport, Darien, New Canaan, Wilton and Norwalk.
The 1975 version had several locations in the Greenfield Hill section of Fairfield,
including the Eberharts' house and the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church.
Additional scenes from the 2004 movie were filmed in Bedminster, New Jersey, with extras
from surrounding communities.
In language The term "Stepford wife" entered common use
in the English language after the publication of Levin's book and is generally used as a
term of satire.
It has been used by critics to describe Laura Bush, as well as Katie Holmes after her marriage
to Tom Cruise.
The label "Stepford wife" is usually applied to a woman who seems to conform blindly to
an old-fashioned subservient role in relationship to her husband, compared to other, presumably
more independent women.
It can also be used to criticise any person, male or female, who submits meekly to authority
and/or abuse; or even to describe someone who lives in a robotic, conformist manner
without giving offense to anyone.
See also Cult of Domesticity
References
External links The Stepford Wives at the Internet Movie Database
The Stepford Wives at the Internet Movie Database