Catch The Stepford Wives Scripted By Ira Levin Presented As File
read this a few years ago, but my review vanished, However I only had one thing to say and that was “We wouldnt want this to happen would we Or has it already in some places, . . “ Warning: spoilery stuff ahead
The amazing thing about this story is its widereaching cultural impact, Whether you've read the book or seen any of the film versions, when you hear the term "Stepford wife", you know what it refers to: an immaculate woman in as throwback poodle skirt, with an impressive rack and a glassy, eerie gaze.
She's "so busy" with her housework and pleasing the husband she is so lucky to have, she doesn't have time for anything else,
The idea behind this chilling social satire is nothing less than ingenious and that is why this book has achieved iconic status,
But the reading of this novella is a whole other thing, A briefpages, this reads like poor YA with a few errant sex scenes, The super simplistic plot, the cardboard characters, and the lack of tension for the most part, combine to make for a truly lacklustre reading experience, Had I not the stunning visuals in my mind from the silver screen versions, it would have been far more forgettable,
It's a satire on misogyny and oppression, It portrays an exaggerated, negative male response to feminism, I understand that. However, the author failed to interest me not with language, motivation, characterisation, or fear, He repeats the word "hausfrau" at least a dozen times, And he employs a monochrome brush of the broadest possible size to paint the men in this book, Are we to believe after a few meetings at the Stepford Men's Association, every man is going to be sold into murdering his wife and turning her into a robot There could have been so much more complexity and believability if we could have seen ANY thought process any at all on the part of the men, especially our main character's husband.
Sadly, the end result is bland, underdeveloped and a little bit boring,
As I said, the idea is brilliant, Ira Levin is the same man who brought us sitelinkRosemary's Baby, Based on these two books, it's safe to say Levin didn't have a great opinion of husbands, or neighbours either, for that matter! And it's equally safe to say this guy's imagination translated remarkably well to film.
for ideas that keep us thinking, decades later, Ira Levinsnovel The Stepford Wives is a darkly comedic and satirical modern horror story with cautionary but subtle overtones,
Originally and commonly misunderstood to remark upon the growing feminist movement in the late sixties it is instead a scathing indictment on conservative attacks on womens liberation.
Levin describes a family that has recently moved into the quiet suburban township of Stepford, where a caste of upwardly mobile male professionals have barricaded themselves into an affluent and influential Mens Association.
Joanna Eberhart, a smart and talented married mother of two realizes quickly that she does not fit into the picture perfect stylized stereotype of the wives of Stepford who toil about the house in crisp Donna Reed dresses and makeup while their husbands while away the nights at the Mens club.
More disconcerting, Joanna realizes that there is a more sinister explanation for this odd discontinuity, Reader's will notice a similarity with Jack Finney's brilliantallegory sitelinkInvasion of the Body Snatchers and with Robert A, Heinlein's sitelinkThe Puppet Masters, though Levin eschews scifi fun for a mainstream horror genre delivery,
Levins prose is elegant and direct, his storyline tight and focused on his understated message,
A very good read,
All the beautiful people live in the idyllic village of Stepford, Connecticut, an affluent suburban Eden populated with successful, satisfied hubbys and their beautiful, dutiful wives, For Joanna Eberhart, a recent arrival with her husband and two children, it all seems too perfect to be true from the sweet, accommodating Welcome Wagon lady to all those cheerful, friendly faces in the supermarket checkout lines.
But just beneath the town's flawless surface, something is sordid and wrong something abominable with roots in the local Men's Association, And it may already be too late for Joanna to save herself from being devoured by Stepford's hideous perfection,
back cover As Peter Straub points out in the introduction to this book, a lot of people miss the point, It is not "the easy satire on the banality of suburban housewives that it is commonly taken to be a misconception that has installed its title in our language as shorthand for those homemakers who affect an uncanny perfection.
" This resulted in the fact that, after Ann Romney's recent speech at the RNC, I was asked whether I thought she was "like a Stepford Wife, " No, she's not. For one thing, her vocabulary is too large, But, more than that, referring to politicallyactive conservative women as Stepford wives undermines the feminist argument of this novella,
The critical point here is that this novella is not a parody of the WOMEN of Stepford, it is a parody of their HUSBANDS, As with sitelinkRosemary's Baby, which is actually about Guy Wodehouse, not Rosemary or her baby, the title here is a deliberate distraction, This book is a humorous critique of the antifeminist backlash that takes the antifeminist slogan "War of the Sexes" at its word and suggests that men are so frightened by women's liberation that they will start executing them to prevent it.
The fact that our narrators husband is “a good guy,” who at first treats his wife as an almostequal only heightens the irony that, when offered a pleasureandroid with bigger breasts who will keep the house meticulously clean, he is just as willing as all of the others to kill his own wife to get it.
It was interesting to me to see how the book differs from the movie, Unlike most filmadaptations, several scenes have been added to the novella, and fairly little was cut, resulting in a rather long movie forsci fi, anyway, There is even the addition of a surprising new character with the unlikely name of Raymond Chandler who isn't in the book, It also seems to me that the truth of the “Mens Association” is lost in the film: that it isnt a longstanding organization with an archaic membership policy, but it was a recent innovation founded to combat a growing feminist presence in Stepford after sitelinkBetty Friedan gave a wellreceived speech.
Also unusual for a filmadaptation, the movie has more explicit sexual references than the book does, and plays up that side of what the men are “up to” while the book leaves this largely to the readers imagination.
At any rate, the premise of this book is disturbing, and it is intended to be, The prose is efficient and the pacing effective, At its short length, it is a quick read and may actually comment more deeply on American society than it is generally given credit for doing,
Stepford Wives definitely is one of the most engaging books Ive ever read, it totally grabbed me and I thought the pacing is insane,
We follow Joanna, who is a modern woman of thes, interested in the Womens Liberation movement, politics, feminist theory and photography, Scattered throughout those really suspenseful moments in the lives of Joanna and her husband Walter moving to the idyllic suburban town Stepford to escape the stress of the city, thanks to Joannas interests there is a variety of early feminist namedrops, ideas and examples from the lives of different women.
But once they move to Stepford, Joanna first slightly and progressively more intensely senses that things are off here, All
women become perfect and pretty and give up their own hobbies and professions and think of nothing but housework they become plain, Their husbands and children love the changes in these women and everything is great for them, but what about the women Is this a natural process or is there a plot, a conspiracy against women orchestrated from the anachronistic Gentlemans Club
I loved reading this the writing was awesome, the characters interesting to follow, useful literary references Then there is the ending.
I have to say I was a little shocked and not amused, .
This was a buddy read over at the Shine and Shadow reading group!
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