Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club

The Stepford Wives (1972)
A chilling satire

Harper Torch paperback 2004
movie tie-in cover
afterward by Peter Straub
195 pages (left)

Fawcett Crest Books 1973
first paperback printing
uncredited cover art
190 pages (right)

This is a skillfully written thriller.  It moves at a good pace, yet includes enough mundane detail to build the tension slowly, as well as to make a point about how difficult it is to find satisfaction in everyday activities.  For most of the book, it is easy to believe that Joanna's feelings of discontent with her day-to-day life are causing her to imagine everything.  Unlike the film versions, the novel leaves this ambiguous right through the end.

More importantly, Levin uses the thriller plotline to frame some wonderful social commentary.  This includes not just the obvious issues of feminism, but also some less obvious points: Joanna's feelings of guilt about her career, and not being as devoted to her home and family as the other Stepford wives; the assertion that men who have more progressive ideas about women are in fact simply less honest; the danger that two-career marriages will inevitably prevent spouses from paying each other enough attention.  While our society has answered the central "women's lib" question of whether it's all right for women to have careers, these less obvious issues remain very relevant.

Today, for example, Joanna's guilt at not being a great homemaker can cut both ways.  Women who have successful careers are made to feel badly about not devoting more time to their families, while women who are great homemakers are made to feel guilty about not being ambitious career women.  And commonly, women themselves impose these unrealistic standards.  What the men did to their wives in The Stepford Wives, women now often do to themselves, right down to augmenting their breasts to conform to an absurd ideal of beauty.

The folks in Hollywood who did the recent uninspired remake of The Stepford Wives missed a great opportunity.  To update the story, it should be the wives in Stepford who, to their husbands' horror, willingly replace themselves with perfect robots.