The Stepford wives door Ira Levin

Titel boek: The Stepford Wives
Auteur: Ira Levin

Joanna, Walter and their two kids, Kim and Pete, just moved to Stepford. The lady from the Chronicle wants to talk with them because she does the ‘Notes on ‘Newcomers’. Joanna’s interests are playing tennis, politics, the Women’s Liberation Movement and she is also a very good photographer. One evening the phone rang-it was Bobbie Markowe, a woman who read the article in the Chronicle. She wants to meet Joanna because they share the same interests. There is in Stepford a Men’s Association but nothing for women. Joanna and Bobbie wanted to start a club for women and they went from door to door to ask the women if they were interested in a get-together once or twice a week. But they all say that they hadn’t any time left because they always had to do their housework.

Joanna and Bobbie said that it’s not fair that there is only a Men’s Association that doesn't allow women. Joanna and Bobbie met a very nice woman, Charmaine, who’s not interested in housework either. She don’t mind that her husband goes to the Men’s Association because she doesn't have a very good relationship with him anyway. “The more he’s going out, the better” she said. But then something very strange happened. Charmaine and her husband went on a weekend alone and when they came back, Charmaine has completely changed. She was a just another obsessed housewife, just like all the other women, and she even liked her husband. Bobbie knew there was something very strange going on in Stepford. She thought that there was something in the water, in the air or in the ground that made women interested in housework and nothing else. Joanna first didn’t believe it but then she realised it could be right. The only thing they could do was move away.


They both asked their husbands but they didn't want to move until the end of the school year. Bobbie wrote a letter to the Department of Health but they wrote back that there was no need to concern and that all industrial plants were examined carefully. But Bobbie doesn’t believe it. One day, Bobbie said to Joanna that she and her husband, Dave, were going to have a weekend alone, a second honeymoon. But when they came back, Bobbie was just like Charmaine-completely changed. She had become a Stepford wife.

Bobbie said to Joanne that she realised that she was being sloppy and she also said that there is nothing around in Stepford, that there is no poison anywhere. Now Joanna became very scared, she thought that it has something to do with the Men’s Association because each time a woman went on a weekend alone with their husband they changed in a housewife. She wanted to move immediately but Walter said that she has to stay. When Walter is on the phone Joanna goes downstairs and she slips out of the house. She runs and runs and she doesn’t stop. She wants to go to a friend's house. But three men found her and she was scared to death. She says that they going to make a robot from her, just like they did to all the other women. But they said that it’s not true and that they could prove it when one of the women would cut in her finger and when she saw that the finger would bleed than she knows that she’s wrong. So they went to Bobbie and she wanted to cut her finger. The other three men called Walter and told him that they found his wife. At the end of the story Joanna became a ‘Stepford wife’. What really happened with all the wives is a mystery, but one thing is sure, it has to do with the husbands!!!