Walter Eberhart is Joanna’s husband and the major antagonist of the novel although he maintains secrecy about his intentions until the novel’s conclusion. In the novel’s exposition, Walter is a seemingly feminist husband. He supports Joanna’s personal endeavors, helps with housework and child-rearing, and has a healthy sexual relationship with his wife. However, as soon as Walter joins the Stepford Men’s Association, he slowly transforms into a sexist copy of the other Stepford men. Walter insists he wants to change the institution from the inside, but Joanna has a hunch that the men’s values are too solidified to be changed. Apparently brainwashed by the patriarchal culture of the Men’s Association, Walter starts masturbating, asking Joanna to host events for the club, and eventually telling Joanna to start taking better care of her appearance.

Walter’s primary action as a villain is to make Joanna doubt herself. When Joanna changes their plans, he responds: “Do you hear how you’re talking? I want you to think about what I said. You can’t disrupt all our lives on the spur of the moment this way. It’s unreasonable to expect to” (88). In addition to telling Joanna she is wrong outright, another gaslighting technique Walter uses is to agree with her, but delay. When Joanna asks to move out of Stepford, Walter tells Joanna that they should wait until the children are done with school. This sounds like a reasonable suggestion, but his goal is to delay moving long enough for Joanna to be replaced. In the end, Walter gets what he wants, just as all the other Stepford men do, which is a pessimistic commentary about the possibility of feminist social reform.

Bobbie Markowe is Joanna’s closest friend in Stepford and someone that Joanna relates to regarding the chaos of running a family and the strange atmosphere in Stepford. Together, they begin theorizing about the possible reasons for why Stepford women are so emotionally flat and obedient. Bobbie is a catalyst character because she helps spark Joanna’s campaign to get to the source of Stepford’s secret. Her reference to lithium in the soil of a Texas town that experienced a drop in crime rates suggests a link between crime and psychology; lithium is used to treat bipolar disorder and other psychiatric conditions. This foreshadows the psychiatrist’s recommendation of a sedative for Joanna to free her from her aberrant ideas.

Bobbie is sarcastic and full of vigor: “You’re not going to get any true confessions out of me. I’m a Leo, and our thing is changing the subject” (35). Like Joanna, she thinks independently; at first, Joanna thinks Bobbie’s suggestion of a toxic chemical in Stepford’s environment is too extreme, not realizing that the truth is even stranger. All this changes when Bobbie is replaced with a robot. She is no longer her vivacious self, and when Joanna goes to visit her, she finds Bobbie just like all the other Stepford wives. The robotic version of Bobbie calls her previous self lazy and entitled, which implies that, in the Stepford view, women wanting to think for themselves is a character flaw. In the novel’s conclusion, Bobbie is the one who tricks Joanna into being killed. She takes advantage of Joanna’s trust in her, and this ends up being Joanna’s downfall.

Ruthanne Hendry is a secondary character who shares the same feminist values as Joanna. She is a writer of children’s novels who is attempting to not only make herself happy and pursue her craft, but to change how young girls view themselves. Her children’s book, Penny Has a Plan, features a young girl who makes her own decisions. Ruthanne comes to Stepford a month or so after Joanna moves there, and Ruthanne belongs to the first Black family to move to Stepford. As she gets to know the town and people, Ruthanne starts to suspect that she is being treated so strangely because she is Black. However, when she meets Joanna, Joanna assures her that the women of Stepford act that way toward everyone. Still, Ruthanne knows that suburban America can often be a hotbed of racism and maintains this caution until the novel’s conclusion. It ironically becomes her tragic flaw, as her suspicion of racism leads her completely away from the true underlying problem.

Ruthanne is a foil for Joanna because she experiences a similar character arc once she arrives in Stepford. The final chapter and denouement of the novel sees Ruthanne go through the same series of events as Joanna, going to the grocery store and feeling out of place, then going home to discuss her upcoming weekend alone with her husband. Ruthanne’s downfall is a pessimistic commentary on the inability of all kinds of social reform, including civil rights and feminism, to conquer a patriarchy intent on maintaining power.

Charmaine Wimperis is a secondary character and a potential ally to Joanna at the beginning of the novel. She begins her life as the opposite of a stereotypical housewife; she is secure in herself, dislikes the company of men (including her own husband), pursues her greatest passion (tennis), and criticizes the women of Stepford for being so flat and dull. Joanna and Bobbie meet Charmaine when they are searching for other women in Stepford who are like them—unsatisfied with the status quo, critical of other housewives, and self-sufficient.

Charmaine’s character highlights how the members of the Men’s Association manipulate their wives sexually. When Charmaine announces that she and her husband are going to spend a weekend away together, she confesses that she is dreading it, as she has no interest in her husband or sex: “I’m just not interested in sex. I don’t think any woman is, really” (51). Still, she is a married woman and feels obligated to her husband. As far as the wives know, the weekend trips are supposed to be a romantic getaway, and this includes the expectation of sexual intercourse. Charmaine’s change is so dramatic that Joanna knows there is something about Stepford making the women different. Charmaine’s claim that no women enjoy having sex with men was one of the debates that was part of the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s. Women’s sexual satisfaction both in and outside of marriage was a controversial topic, as birth control became more widely available and Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973.

The Stepford Wives are the animatronic women who reside in Stepford and exist only to make their husbands happy. They follow a cookie-cutter model: beautiful, well-dressed—including a push-up bra and girdle—soft-spoken, blandly cheerful, and intent on pleasing their men by doing housework and other forms of domestic labor. These women were all different before their arrival in Stepford. Women like Kit and Carol were feminists of the Women’s Liberation movement when they arrived in Stepford, even running women’s organizations designed to give women a political voice. When Joanna meets them, though, they are entirely preoccupied with housework. They have no aspirations and no drive toward anything other than perfecting their wifely duties. The Stepford wives are also programmed to explain away their changes with self-deprecation and denial. For example, Charmaine says, “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” (53). They are each foils to Joanna, who remains skeptical of the Stepford wives until she becomes one.

Pete and Kim Eberhart are Joanna and Walter’s children. They are both in elementary school and remain static throughout the novel. Pete and Kim’s role in the novel is to demonstrate Joanna’s position as a mother and the conflicting demands that she experiences. From the first page, Joanna is overwhelmed by Pete and Kim’s arguing and misbehavior. She is always trying to find ways to keep them amused and find a minute to herself. While Pete and Kim often get along and behave, it is always more pronounced when they do not. Despite her frustration, Joanna cares deeply for her children and does whatever she can to take good care of them. When she discovers that Walter is planning to turn her into a robot, she risks returning to the house to take Pete and Kim with her but finds that Walter has already sent them elsewhere.