This is the second novel I've read from Ira Levin for this challenge. And just like A Kiss Before Dying The Stepford Wives failed to thoroughly impress me. You probably all know the story about a little suburban town called Stepford where the housewives are beyond perfect, scarily so. Joanna Eberhart moves into this little community and she also notices straight away that something is fishy in suburbia. Maybe fishy is not the right word, maybe I should say roboty...
It could be just me, but I seem to remember that a lot more of the actual events are shown in the film with Nicole Kidman. We actually see an army of robots. Not here. Levin keeps it all very secretive (I am going on a limb here by assuming I'm not giving anything away when I'm describing this book. I feel that saying The Stepford Wives is about robots is the same as saying American Psycho is about a American psychopath). What Levin gives us is the desperation Joanne feels when she can't reveal the Men's Club's secrets and when she might be next after all her friends have turned into those things.
I reckon this novel was very much with the times in 1972, nowadays, it would be unthinkable that men control women. If a woman would move into a suburban town where all other women are just doing housework without any ambitions of their own, there would definitely be something wrong. The strength of this novel lies in the fact that we really don't know if that's the case here (well we do, but I'm talking about the original readers from back then) We wouldn't know if Joanne is feminist who is ahead of her time or whether there is actually something wrong in Stepford. Nevertheless, this novel is a classic and I wouldn't dare to talk it down because it is slightly outdated.
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