Author | Ira Levin |
---|---|
Genre | Thriller, Satire |
Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | September 1972 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
Pages | 145 (first edition, hardback) |
ISBN | 0-394-48199-2 (first edition, hardback) |
OCLC | 303634 |
813/.5/4 | |
LC Class | PZ4.L664 St PS3523.E7993 |
The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical "feminist horror" [1] novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer, wife, and young mother who suspects that something in the town of Stepford is changing the wives from free-thinking, intelligent women into compliant wives dedicated solely to homemaking. As her friends slowly transform, Joanna realizes the horrific truth.
The book has had two feature film adaptations, both using the same title as the novel: the 1975 version, and the 2004 remake. Edgar J. Scherick produced the 1975 version as well as all three of the television sequels. Scherick was credited posthumously as producer of the 2004 remake.
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 (24 km) away. [2]
The premise involves the married men of the fictional Fairfield County 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 submissive wives of Stepford who seem to lack free will, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends (Bobbie, Charmaine), fellow new arrivals to Stepford, turn into mindless, docile housewives, each time beginning after a romantic weekend with their respective husbands. All the women deny anything is wrong. Joanna's own husband, Walter, 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 researches the pasts of Stepford's wives, discovering that some of the women were once feminist activists and successful professionals. 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 state department of health to inquire about possible toxins in Stepford. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife after a "romantic getaway" with her husband.
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 and they take her to Bobbie's house. Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing. 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, having given up her career as a photographer because, as she puts it, "housework's enough for me". Ruthanne Hendry (a new resident and the first black woman in Stepford) appears poised to become the next victim.
Michelle Arrow says: "not only a satire of male fears of women's liberation, but a savage view of heterosexual marriage. In this telling, a man would rather kill his wife and replace her with a robot than commit to equality and recognise her as a whole person." [1]
There are many feminist themes in The Stepford Wives. The novel tackles the role of women in the nuclear family and the control they have over their bodies by allowing the readers to observe what happens in Stepford when Joanna moves in. [3] Before the women in Stepford turned into lifeless, docile robots, they were avid activists and successful career women who had lives outside of being a wife. However, the men in Stepford were opposed to this, turning their wives into robots and reducing their only purposes in life down to serving their husbands.
The theme of consent is tackled in The Stepford Wives franchise. The reason why the men in Stepford make their wives into submissive robots is that they are afraid of losing control over their wives. The similarity between sex robots and the women in Stepford is that they are both lifeless and docile, hence the men do not need consent in order to fulfill their sexual desire. [4]
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. 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's actress wife Nanette Newman was cast as one of the town residents. [5]
A 1980 television sequel was titled Revenge of the Stepford Wives . In this film, instead of being androids, the wives underwent a brainwashing procedure and then took pills that kept them hypnotized. In the end, the wives broke free of their conditioning and a mob of them killed the mastermind behind the conspiracy.
In a 1987, a television sequel/remake titled The Stepford Children , both the wives and the children of the male residents were replaced by drones. It ended 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.
Another film titled 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 the previous versions. The new script by screenwriter Paul Rudnick has the women being transformed into carefully controlled cyborgs rather than being murdered and replaced with robots. The script culminates in a twist ending in which it is a powerful woman (played by Glenn Close) who is the evil mastermind of the injustice perpetrated on other women, and features a "Stepfordized" male partner of a gay town resident. Unlike the original novel and most of the adaptations, the perpetrators of the conspiracy neither die nor get away with their crimes; the victims are freed from their control programming and subject their husbands to a taste of their own medicine as restitution.
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.
The term "Stepford wife" entered common use in the English language after the publication of Levin's book. It is generally used as a derogatory term for a submissive and docile wife who seems to conform blindly to the stereotype of an old-fashioned subservient role in relationship to her husband. [6] [7]
Wilton is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 18,503. The town is part of the Western Connecticut Planning Region.
"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.
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The Stepford Wives is a 2004 American science fiction black comedy film directed by Frank Oz from a screenplay by Paul Rudnick and starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Faith Hill, and Glenn Close. The second feature-length adaptation of Ira Levin's 1972 novel of the same name following the 1975 film of the same name, it received generally negative reviews from critics and was a box office failure, grossing $103 million worldwide on a $90–100 million budget.
The Female Man is a feminist science fiction novel by American writer Joanna Russ. It was originally written in 1970 and first published in 1975 by Bantam Books. Russ was an ardent feminist and challenged sexist views during the 1970s with her novels, short stories, and nonfiction works. These works include We Who Are About To..., "When It Changed", and What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism.
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. Some regard her as becoming more powerful than Macbeth when she does this, because she is able to manipulate him into doing what she wants. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes and kills herself offstage.
The Stepford Wives is a 1975 American satirical psychological thriller film directed by Bryan Forbes. It was written by William Goldman, who based his screenplay on Ira Levin's 1972 novel of the same name. The film stars Katharine Ross as a woman who relocates with her husband and children from New York City to the Connecticut community of Stepford, where she comes to find that the women live lives of unwavering subservience to their husbands.
"Good Wife, Wise Mother" is a phrase representing a traditional ideal for womanhood in East Asia, including Japan, China and Korea. First appearing in the late 1800s, the four-character phrase "Good Wife, Wise Mother" was coined by Nakamura Masanao in 1875.
Nanette Newman is an English actress and author. She appeared in nine films directed by her husband Bryan Forbes, including Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), The Whisperers (1967), Deadfall (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975) and International Velvet (1978), for which she won the Evening Standard Film Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for another Forbes-directed film, The Raging Moon (1971).
Peter Masterson was an American actor, director, producer, and writer. He made his Broadway debut in November 1967 in The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, playing the title character. Although he got good notices, the play closed after nine performances.
Traditional Sunni and Shia Islamic marital jurisprudence allows Muslim men to be married to multiple women. Men can have up to four wives at a time according to the islamic jurisprudence.
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The Stepford Children is a 1987 American made-for-television horror science fiction thriller film inspired by the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was directed by Alan J. Levi with a screenplay by Bill Bleich and starring Barbara Eden, Don Murray, Tammy Lauren, Randall Batinkoff and Pat Corley. It is the second in a series of sequels inspired by the 1972 novel and the original 1975 film The Stepford Wives.
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The Stepford Husbands is a 1996 American made-for-television thriller-drama film inspired by the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was directed by Fred Walton with a screenplay by brothers Ken Wheat and Jim Wheat and starring Donna Mills, Michael Ontkean, Cindy Williams, Sarah Douglas and Louise Fletcher. It is the third in a series of sequels inspired by the 1972 novel and the original 1975 film The Stepford Wives.
Revenge of the Stepford Wives is a 1980 American made-for-television science-fiction thriller film inspired by the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was directed by Robert Fuest with a screenplay by David Wiltse and starring Sharon Gless, Julie Kavner, Don Johnson, Arthur Hill, and Audra Lindley. It is the first in a series of sequels inspired by the 1972 novel and the original 1975 film The Stepford Wives.
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