The Stepford Wives

“You look reborn.”

After Joanna takes a refreshing shower and ties her hair back, she looks relaxed and beautiful, and when Walter sees her, he pays her this compliment. His statement foreshadows the future transformation that Joanna undergoes when her personality and voice are implanted into an animatronic robot, and she is killed. When the Stepford wives are finally replaced, it is as if they are being reborn as a version of themselves that is more appealing to their husbands.

“She wished—that they would be happy in Stepford. That Pete and Kim would do well in school, and that she and Walter would find good friends and fulfilment.”

Joanna’s wish seems to be coming true at first, as she makes friends with Bobbie and Charmaine and experiences some success with her photographs, but the plot soon turns in the other direction, as the time of her replacement draws closer. By the time Joanna is dissatisfied enough to leave Stepford, it is too late.

“As a matter of principle she wasn’t going to do any housework. Not that there wasn’t plenty to do, God knows, and some that she actually wanted to do, like getting the living-room bookshelves squared away—but not tonight, no sir. It could darn well wait. She wasn’t Carol Van Sant and she wasn’t Mary Ann Stavros.”

The conflicting expectations she faces lead Joanna to wrestle with her duties as a mother and house keeper and her desire to thrive in a place that values conformity over individuality. Ultimately, Joanna loses her struggle.

“If his expression enlarged well, and if she darkened the background to bring up the blurred cab it could be an arresting picture—one she was sure the agency would be willing to handle. There were plenty of markets for pictures dramatizing racial tensions.”

Joanna’s photography represents her drive to express herself and build a career. She takes photographs that are not only politically driven but are also marketable. In this way, although Joanna is committed to civil rights, she also sees the movement as an opportunity for profit.

“Jee-zus! [...]. Something fishy is going on here! We’re in the Town That Time Forgot!”

When Joanna and Bobbie attempt to recruit women to their newly formed Women’s Club, they find little success. Here, Bobbie comments on how archaic and sexist the entire town seems to be, due to the fact that the women all seem to want to stay home and clean all day. By the 1970s, many women were breaking free from their traditional roles, but in Stepford, the women are still stuck in the post-war mentality of staying home and raising a family.

“At least they don’t pass it on to their daughters, Joanna thought.”

With each passing scene, another clue is presented as to the robotic nature of the Stepford wives. Joanna notices that the Stepford children don’t seem to have the same obsession with cleanliness that their mothers do and is relieved. This is one of the many moments that Joanna second guesses her instincts to tell herself that things must be more normal than they seem. It is also one of many examples of the free-indirect discourse that Levin draws upon to illuminate Joanna’s inner thoughts.

“I like to watch women doing little domestic chores.”

Dale is the president of the Men’s Association and the man chiefly responsible for the creation of the Stepford robots. When he comes over to the Eberhart home, he watches Joanna in the kitchen as she makes coffee, observing her every move and reveling in what he sees as a woman in her “proper place.”

“That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.”

Before Joanna realizes that the Stepford women are robots, she believes that they must be somehow brainwashed or controlled. It strikes her that all of the Stepford women (aside from Bobbie and Charmaine at this point) have no interests outside of their household duties. Not only that, but they seem unnaturally thrilled to be performing them. Comparing them to actresses highlights the messages that consumer culture sends to women about how they should look and behave.

“Oh come on, girl, you’re getting nutty!”

On the night that she attempts to photograph the Men’s Association house, a police officer distracts her in one of the first examples of a gaslighting campaign that the town initiates against Joanna to keep her from discovering Stepford’s secret.

“Everything in the house was working, everything was well.”

In the months leading up the novel’s climax, everything seems to be going fine for a while. It is never explicitly stated, but it is implied that Walter intentionally acts like a perfect husband for a period of time in order to fool Joanna into feeling comfortable and settled in Stepford. The illusion starts to break when she and Walter drift apart and Joanna’s friends start mysteriously changing.

“Charmaine was Miss Vamp, provocative and come-hithery in floor-length white silk cut clear to her navel; Dave and Shep were provoked and went thither.”

In this passage, it is the men who act like robots when Charmaine, who has no interest in men, dresses in a way she knows they will find attractive. This is a humorous moment that shows how easily the members of the Men’s Association can be manipulated with sex.

“Ed’s a pretty wonderful guy, and I’ve been lazy and selfish. I’m through playing tennis and I’m through reading those astrology books. From now on I’m going to do right by Ed, and by Merrill too. I’m lucky to have such a wonderful husband and son.”

After Charmaine comes back from her weekend with her husband, she is self-loathing and no longer sexist toward men. She no longer has her passion for tennis, and her only priorities are to keep her family happy. When Joanna sees how Charmaine has changed, her suspicion of the Stepford men doubles, and she decides she needs to leave town.

“I feel pre-adolescent every time I set foot in the market.”

In a showing of Joanna’s sarcastic side, she and Bobbie discuss the large bosoms of the Stepford women. Each is a stereotypically sexualized ideal woman, with a perfect figure, large breasts, and immaculate hair and makeup. Seeing them makes Joanna feel like she has not gone through puberty, emphasizing the extremely unrealistic expectations that society places on women’s physical appearances.

“A Black family is moving in on Gwendolyn Lane. But I think it’s good, don’t you?”

Alongside the oppression of women in 1970s America was a continued oppression of Black people and other racial groups. When a Black family moves into Stepford, the welcome lady gossips about it with Joanna as if it is some sort of novelty. Ruthanne, the mother of the family, soon starts to suspect that the people of Stepford are racist—which they are—although that is not the cause of the Stepford wives’ behavior.

“They never stop, these Stepford wives […]. They work like robots all their lives.”

Joanna thinks up a catchy rhyme as she considers the women of Stepford: She compares the Stepford wives to robots not realizing they actually are. The women of Stepford are programmed to care only about raising good children and keeping their house clean and husband happy; they seem to be content in doing only that. At the end of Chapter 1, Joanna foreshadows her own future.

“Taker. Takes. Taking. Talcum. Talent. Talented. Talk. Talkative. Talked. Talker. Talking. Talks.”

Joanna unknowingly records the voice track for the animatronic robot that the Men’s Association is creating for Walter. She is lied to and told that the project is to help with police data, her good nature being taken advantage of. She repeats each word and its conjugations in an exhaustive, robotic fashion, foreshadowing her future as a robotic, thoughtless housewife.

“Is there anything that I—don’t do that you’d like me to do? Or that I do do that you’d like me not to?”

Joanna has a feminist, forward-thinking attitude toward sex and sexuality and demonstrates her ability to be mature and communicate about things that middle-class America at that time considered taboo. Walter, on the other hand, seems to withdraw and become increasingly adolescent in his actions and sexual responses to Joanna. Joanna’s question here also hints at Walter’s secret desire to have a perfect Stepford wife and maintain his position of power within the patriarchy.

“It’s not a town where reactions can develop—to anything.”

Ruthanne meets Joanna for the first time and senses that Joanna is forward-thinking and friendly. She asks Joanna if the people of Stepford are reacting negatively to a Black family moving into town, an understandable worry in 1970s America. Joanna assures her that the people of Stepford likely don’t care, as they are too preoccupied with their home lives to wonder what anyone else is doing.

“There’s nothing that’s going to make a hausfrau out of me. If they’re that way, fine. I was just concerned about it being about color because of the girls.”

Ruthanne ironically foreshadows her own future as a Stepford housewife when she states that she will never become one. Ruthanne is a feminist like Joanna, and in the middle of starting her second feminist children’s book. She seems skeptical of the other Stepford women, but unconcerned with their priorities so long as they’re not racist toward her or her children. Her mention of children raises the question of what will happen to the next generation of Stepford women.

“She hung up and sat looking at the phone and her hand on it. The thought struck her—ridiculously—that Bobbie had changed the way Charmaine had. No, not Bobbie; impossible.”

When Bobbie comes back from her weekend with her husband, she is no longer sarcastic and witty, and her appearance has changed into that of the other Stepford women. Joanna suspects that whatever happened to the other women of Stepford must now have happened to Bobbie, but she experiences cognitive dissonance as she cannot accept that their friendship may be gone forever.

“It sounds like the idea of a woman who, like many women today, and with good reason, feels a deep resentment and suspicion of men. One who’s pulled two ways by conflicting demands, perhaps more strongly than she’s aware; the old conventions on the one hand, and the new conventions of the liberated woman on the other.”

When Joanna goes to see a female psychiatrist in a neighboring town, she expects to be able to trust the woman to be objective and uninvolved in the politics of Stepford. However, what Joanna unknowingly finds is another person eager to gaslight her into believing that her problems stem from stress and a dislike of men, rather than an actual problem with the men of Stepford. Joanna unfortunately believes the woman, having felt the tug-of-war all her life.

“This town is full of lucky men.”

A Stepford woman who works at the pharmacy makes a suspicious remark toward Joanna that the men of Stepford are all very “lucky.” Their position is not due to luck at all, rather their engineered domination of the women in their community. Since the Stepford women are not sentient, they repeat the beliefs of the men who created them, which makes outsiders like Joanna mistake their compliance for happiness.

“She was wrong, she knew it. She was wrong and frozen and wet and tired and hungry, and pulled eighteen ways by conflicting demands. Including to pee.”

When Joanna is running through the mid-winter snow in an attempt to escape Walter and the other Stepford men, she still continues to wrestle with her own suspicions and the gaslighting she has experienced over the past few months. The psychiatrist’s words ring true for her, as she does not want to believe that the town of Stepford, along with her own husband and friends, is as dark and sinister as her theory suggests. This quote also illustrates Levin’s use of free-indirect discourse and the often humorous and relatable human thoughts that run through Joanna’s mind.