39 pages • 1-hour read
The Stepford Wives
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
Themes
The Conflicting Expectations of Modern Women
Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of sexual activity and psychological horror.
The town of Stepford, Connecticut is a place where the women seem to be free of a conflict that was common among women in 1970s America: the opposing pulls of a woman’s responsibilities as a mother and wife and her desire to express herself and become self-reliant. Stepford exists to keep men dominant over women, and for women to be perfectly happy in such an existence. Levin’s work was heavily inspired by the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s and by Betty Friedan’s work on feminism and the pervasive dissatisfaction of homemaker women in post-war America. He sought to illustrate how women of this era were caught between a desire to care for the people they love and to become their own independent people. The main goal of the men of Stepford is to keep their wives in Stepford long enough for them to be replaced by animatronic robots that are completely unconcerned with feminism, independence, or their own personal passions. For instance, after Charmaine is replaced, she states, “Ed’s a pretty wonderful guy” (52). This comes from a woman who deeply resented her husband and disliked men in general prior to her weekend trip with her husband. When Joanna is replaced, she tells Ruthanne that she is much happier and more comfortable with herself now that she no longer cares about anything but her family. The Stepford men know they have to kill their wives to achieve their goal because, regardless of one’s politics or marital status, no human being wants to be completely subservient to another.
Joanna’s conflict between her desire to care for her family and pursue her own interests remains the novel’s central conflict. Joanna deliberately does less housework than she wants to as a form of protest:
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 (12).
Meanwhile, she unwittingly assists the men in creating her animatron: She records a voice track, hosts a party in which the men spend time sketching and observing her, and allows Walter to continue attending Men’s Association meetings. She finds herself regularly pulled back to her family duties and away from her photography. This is significant because Joanna’s photography has a political side to it: She wants to document civil rights inequality. Turning her into a Stepford wife not only ensures that she will stop advocating for herself, but also that she will stop advocating for others.
The Patriarchal Refusal to Share Societal Power
The term patriarchy means a system of political and social governance by men. The term comes from “patriarch,” a word of Greek origin meaning a male leader or head of the family. Thus, male leadership is the foundation on which patriarchal societies are based. Western culture was founded on a patriarchal model of leadership, and the institutions of government, economics, industry, and education have been historically led by men from the privileged race and class. Social reform movements have been aimed at expanding the rights of women and underrepresented groups, which means that patriarchal leaders have had to increasingly share power with those interests may conflict with their own. This has led to pushback against social movements that some feel threaten the established social order, which in Western culture is white male leadership.
The town of Stepford is an example of a society that defends the patriarchy ad absurdum, to the point replacing all female residents with robots so that there is no one to oppose the men’s dominance. Stepford is a middle-class almost exclusively white town that the represents mid-20th century American values of a nuclear family with a father who is the breadwinner and a wife who is a stay-at-home mother and housekeeper. By the 1970s, this version of American middle-class life was on the decline, with more women entering the workforce, deciding to remain single, or deciding not to have children. The idea of more political, economic, and personal freedom for women frightened those who wanted to maintain the postwar order, and Stepford is the embodiment of that fear. It is telling that most of the Stepford women are revealed to have been part of the Women’s Liberation movement before their arrival, which implies that their husbands were not happy with free-thinking wives. Murdering the women and replacing them with robots ensures that nothing will ever change; if the robot breaks down, it can be replaced as many times as necessary. The men make sure that anyone new in town who tries to make changes, like Joanna, will be outnumbered and will eventually succumb to their plan. This means that Stepford must remain a closed, tightly monitored community. This aspect of Stepford parodies the real-life suburban communities that maintain a high degree of homogeneity in income level, marital status, race, and lifestyle with the goal of keeping out people and ideas that threaten their social order.
The novel’s goal is not to suggest that societal change is impossible or that all men desire subservient robotic wives. Rather, it is a vision of the extreme measures American society would have to employ to stop progressive changes from occurring.
The Dangers of a Cult-Like Mentality
The Stepford Wives is in many ways a demonstration of the dangers of a cult-like mentality. Everything about the way the people of Stepford act and think resembles the features of a cult. The town accepts new people but is fairly isolated from the outside world, and nobody ever seems to want to leave. From the moment that Walter and Joanna arrive, Walter is indoctrinated by the Men’s Association, and Joanna is asked to provide all of her family’s personal information. Walter is instantly swept into the allure of having a perfect robotic wife and the feeling of power that comes from being a master over another person. He begins fantasizing about this new wife and ignores the woman lying beside him. Once he has been indoctrinated, he starts lying to Joanna and gaslighting her at every turn. He loses the feminist values he held prior to arriving in Stepford, and all of Walter’s behaviors going forward exhibit his initiation into the Stepford cult. Finally, the fact that the women of Stepford are killed and replaced with robots reflects the idea that the cult of Stepford has leaders (the men) and followers (the women), all of whom must hold exactly the same beliefs. Joanna observes that all the women are like “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” (42-43).
Joanna’s slow descent into a state of confusion and self-denial is another example of Stepford’s cult-like mentality. She is punished for questioning the groupthink that characterizes the town. This is particularly apparent when she looks into the town’s history, which shows that things used to be different. The Men’s Association supplanted the Women’s Club several years prior, which means there was a drastic change within a relatively short period of time. A feature of cults is that they need to control the narrative of their history, and it is surprising that Joanna is able to find evidence that shows Stepford’s abrupt cultural transition; however, since any dissenters in Stepford are far outnumbered and will soon be turned into believers, so to speak, Joanna’s discovery does not pose as much of a threat as it might have otherwise.
Cults thrive on their members believing that there is no alternative for them but to remain in the cult. This is taken care of for the women by killing them and replacing them with robots programmed with a single goal: to please their husbands. For the men, this is achieved through their complicity in their wives’ murders. Knowing they are guilty of murder means they are unlikely to think of leaving Stepford. Bonding members through collective acts of violence is a feature of some cults, gangs, and other groups that use fear as a means of control.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence