The Stepford Wives: What’s a Living Doll to Do in a Postfeminist World?

Abstract

Since the publication of Ira Levin’s novel The Step ford Wives (1973), his title has become proverbial in popular culture. One need not have read the book or seen the films to know that a Stepford Wife is a woman enslaved to a patriarchal definition of femininity, a wife who has no life, a wife who is almost literally an automaton. Levin’s novel, like its predecessor Rosemary’s Baby (1967), was an immediate best-seller. Like Rosemary’s Baby which was followed by Roman Polanski’s spectacularly ominous film in 1968, this later novel was quickly made into a film. The first Stepford Wives movie (1975) did not match Polanski’s masterpiece of urban Gothic, but it attained something of a cult status among horror-movie fans. It was recently re-released on DVD in a “Silver Anniversary Edition” that includes interviews with the director, Bryan Forbes, and several cast members, including Katherine Ross, who played the heroine Joanna, and Paula Prentiss, her best friend Bobby.