The Stepford Wives

Rating:
Summary: I can relate- I am an officer's wife
Review: I was terrified at the coincidences between the seemingly perfect and dutiful housewives in Stepford and my own life!! When I married an officer in the Air Force..some friends in college joked I should read this book. The women in Stepford all seem to be living in the past..50's style. A more modern family ..the Eberhart's move in and find this behavior odd and almost silly...I mean it's the 60's! Female Power! Joanna Eberhart, like myself is a modern woman..can handle marriage, life and profession on her own, without relying on her husband. So why are the other Stepford wives so submissive and ancient! Joanna teams up with a few other women, not unlike herself and they vow not to change and become like the "other" women. Weird things start to happen to her new friends. Their husbands take them on "vacations" and they return in an altered state. They return submisssive, strange, and almost robotic-like, abandoning their vows and become like the other Stepford Wives. Joanna and her two remaining friends become frightened until one by one they are also changed...leaving Joanna alone, clinging to her vow not to let anyone change HER. I'll stop here because the ending is horrific and actually almost made me giggle! And YES, I remember being asked to join the officer's wives club along time ago....I recalled the Stepford Wives and laughed to myself inside..and politely declined. Honestly, I am surrounded by "Stepford Wives" everyday of my life. I understand Joanna's struggle to be herself....I take the book all in good fun! :)

Rating:
Summary: NOT Feminist commentary as widely perceived!
Review: If you find a story about mindless chatter, housework and male chauvanism to be fascinating then this book is for you. I picked this book up out of curiosity over how the term "Stepford Wife" became such a popular expression in
American vernacular. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story was always perceived as being a woman's lib commentary in the 60's. Instead what I found was the author seemed to revel in his own fantasy of what it would be like to have a "sexy", willing robotic housewife. The book appears to be a subtle thumbs up to oppresive male archetypes; the so-called heroine doesn't do a whole lot to fight actively against her fate but SUBMISSIVELY submits to it with not much of a struggle. There aren't any exciting parts of the story and no real drama. Honestly, the ending isn't as "disturbing" or "eerie" as others claim it to be. If anything it seems to enforce the type of life it so tediously talks about for it's 100+ pages. In short it's a boring book about women of the suburbs. As a matter of fact the only people I can find enjoying this book would be a stepford wife (one that finds housework and a bland existence enjoyable) or a chauvanist.

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Summary: A Sly, Subtle Novel of Ingenious Suspense
Review: Ira Levin never fails to impress me. I've only had the great luck of reading "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives." Rosemary's Baby was unbelievable, and reading it was like watching a speeding train coming at you. Part Two of that novel (it's written in three parts) becomes so incredibly frantic towards the end, yet Levin himself is so calm about it all. It's as if he's merely opening the doors to the insane asylum and letting you in, without ever stepping in himself. It's brilliant.

And he manages to best that book with "The Stepford Wives," which if anything, should be used in a study for subtlety, less-is-more, and incredible foreshadowing. Re-reading the novel and knowing what's going to happen, it's amazing the way he drops clues, in the most inconspicuous of places. And the way he writes scenes--he's very concise about what details he puts in, and while he doesn't go overboard, he gives you the one or two details that are absolutely perfect, and you feel like you know everything.

The characters are also finely drawn. You learn a lot about Joanna, just in tiny details, and how she is with her children, her husband, and her friends. ...P>Levin's ending, as others have noted, is also quite amazing, and you're almost too out of breath to realize what has happened. I remember the first time I read the last section, with Ruthanne (a black woman who's the newest to move to Stepford after Joanna) and her husband, and it wasn't until I read it a second time that I just got so freaked out, just in the subtle hints. And how it almost seems to end abruptly, and yet ends at the perfect moment.

...

Rating:
Summary: Scary Movie
Review: Ira Levin's "The Stepford Wives" is already one classic of the feminism --or the chauvinism, depending on where you come from. Written in the early 70s the novel was published when all the feminist movement --and the sexual revolution-- was still fresh, so that it allowed a reading that nowadays is a little dated, nevertheless important.

As some have pointed, the book's strength is not the language, but the ideas. Sure it is a quick read. Levin is not worried with the creating of crafted sentences, or using difficult and obscure words --his style is very straight. The major point in "The Stepford Wives" is the story indeed: battle of genders.

The concept of women against men is as old as the mankind, but never has it taken such a dark and creepy bend in the road. In the town of Stepford everything seems to be perfect --as if perfection is a plausible thing. Women are housewives who adore their working husbands. Joanna Eberhart and her family have just moved. Like some women of her time, she wants to have a job, and also tackle her family. Little does she know that such thing is not possible in that place. With a new friend, the spirited Bobbie, she will discover that living in Stepford is not the best place in the world.

Playing with sci-fi and the absurdity, Levin wrote a work that is timeless. He has taken the battle of the sexes one step further. It is impossible not to laugh at some point, and be desperate at others. His plot is a metaphor with a naturalistic approach --this is hard device for a writer, but he can manage that very well. At some point --mostly in the first part of the novel --not much happens. There are pages describing Joanna's day, which, by the way, happen to be very boring. And the writer has a point with that.

For this novel, Levin should be nominated as the undisputable king of the subtleness. Different from many contemporary writers, he creates the mood without giving too much --in this point he is precise. We always have the feeling that we should know a little more --but he leaves much room for the imagination, and it is great. Maybe one of the best disciples of Levin is Stephen King --not all the time, but he has learned a few tricks with the master.

As I aforementioned, this is a quick book, and won't take more than two or three sittings to read, but its effect is everlasting. Just like in "Rosemary's Baby" it is impossible to be tell with precision what is really happening and what is the paranoia. Maybe everything is happening inside the protagonists' head --or not. And this is the creepiest aspect of his novels.

The battle of the sexes and the portrait of time --plus its entertaining aspect-- make of "The Stepford Wives" a timeless book. For further enjoyment I suggest the original movie, the one staring Katherine Ross and Paula Prentiss.


Rating:
Summary: Quite a good book
Review: It was good, that we could read a book in the English classes. I didn't know the novel Stepford Wives, but I was suprised about the book, because I don't think, that the title and the front of the book looked very promising. But the story is good. I like the fact that Joanna is such a powerful, lovely woman. She has her own life, and she doesn't only care about housework. The men aren't sympathetic, they deal with women as if their only duty was to stay at home the whole time and clean the home like it was some 50 years ago. I suppose that there are some men who would still to turn back the wheel of time. My only criticism is the end, which is a little bit unbelievable. Why does Joanna go with the men to Bobbie's house? She knows that they want to kill her. I don't think that this is very logical. Joanna isn't stupid, why should she do that? Why doesn't she run away to get help?

Rating:
Summary: Suburban Gothic
Review: Just as much as New York City is a major character in "Rosemary's Baby", a haunting tale also conceived by Ira Levin, the elegant suburban village of Stepford is also a major character in the story of the undoing of Joanna Eberhart, loving mother, avid photographer and horrified housewife.

This slim, little book, sharp as a knife, got itself (along with the excellent movie version) embedded with its gothic atmosphere of menace on bucolic surroundings, chilling implications and dark, pernicious and irreverent satire, in the roots of American culture, from the time of its first publication, to the present day. There will always be a kind of woman whom we will come to know as "The Stepford Wife".

The much-commented ending in this story is managed with such subtlety by the author, (after a taut, panic-laden sequence much similar to the one in Part Two of "Rosemary's Baby")that you have to read very carefully, for it will leave you devastated once you realise all it implies.

In short, a must read for both horror fans and dedicated readers.

Rating:
Summary: Short But Potent
Review: Like many of you that have already read this book and like the many of you who right now are searching high and low for a copy will eventually need to do, I scoured the countryside(alright, just library shelves)before I found this modern classic. "The Stepford Wives," short though it may be, is still one of my favorite books. It's a genuinely creepy story written with a feminist touch that you can't help but appreciate. It deals with a young couple who move to the small town of Stepford and hope to become part of its social scene. But when the protagonist's husband suddenly becomes involved with an exclusive and secretive men's club who seek to control their wives in a fashion more sinister than any reader could anticipate, she begins to fear for their safety. Through time, the term "Stepford Wife" has become a pop culture reference, and deservedly so. I'll let you have the satisfaction of finding out why.

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Summary: Intelligent and engaging
Review: Like many others, I was able to read this short story in one sitting. It is a very well-written book in my opinion, and the main characters of Joanne and Bobbie are well-developed and interesting. With the new Mathew Broderick movie coming out, I imagine there will be a lot of renewed interest in the original story.

I think it is somewhat of a misnomer to call this book "science fiction." Though judging from the trailers the new movie has a lot of explicit science fictiony scenes, the book does not. In fact, in the end the true nature of the Stepford Wives is never revealed, and it is up to the reader to draw his own conclusion based on a series of clues and hints the author reveals in the book's three chapters.

I must admit, I was initally disappointed with the story's anti-climactic ending, but it has since grown on me. This is a highly intelligent story that does not patronize the reader. I think it will easily be regarded as a 20th century classic decades from now.

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Summary: Classic Supernatural, Psychological Thriller
Review: Nathaniel Hawthorne, when explaining why he wrote supernatural stories, said that he was in love with analogy. Great dark supernatural fiction (like Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and, here, "The Stepford Wives") deals with fears and dangers that we hardly understand, maybe don't even want to acknowledge, yet feel the need to grapple with on an analogical level.

"The Stepford Wives" is a classic for this reason (and because it's a well-written, very scary story). The antagonism husbands and wives feel toward each other, often unconsciously, because of the inherent difficulties in running the three-legged race that is marriage, was hard enough to cope with before Feminism came along. Now, women have greater personal freedom and feel less resentment toward men (perhaps). But how about the way men feel?

Writing about the contemporary social scene must be very difficult. Ira Levin here found the perfect plot to sketch the current battleline in the War between Men and Women. (Although, of course, the modern solution most frequently resorted to is, in reality, divorce, which is actually no solution at all, but a starting over, a re-throwing of the dice.)

Unlike the other reviews below, I thought the ending was subtle, horrible, perfect. I think fans of supernatural fiction (I hesitate to call it horror because of the connotation that word carries of explicit blood and gore, and there's very little of that in "The Stepford Wives") will be reading this book a hundred years from now.

Rating:
Summary: It creeps up on you
Review: One of the most memorable thrillers of all time is probably a feminist's worst nightmare. It begins when a family moves to the seemingly perfect town of Stepford, Conn. To all outward appearances, Stepford is normal, quiet and just right to raise a family in. But Joanna, wife and mother of two, begins to suspect that this is nothing more than a facade, hiding something much darker. To begin with, there is the ever-present men's club, which seems to have roots in every household and establishment within the township. Then she notices the Stepford wives, women with no apparent amibitions and who are perfectly content to stay home and do household chores all day. Dismayed by a lack of comraderie, she finds only one friend, a woman as determined as she. But as they begin to look behind the picture-perfect exterior of the town, they discover something more horrifying than anything imaginable, more terrifying than anything thought possible. You actually feel this novel more ! than read it, and it leaves you with a foreboding sense of unease that is quite difficult to shake. Highly recommended. My only complaint is that Mr. Levin's finale fails to satisfy, as is his custom.