The Stepford Wives

I bought this book recently and finished it pretty quickly — I’d been waiting a long time to read it, intrigued by the description and positive reviews. And as both a feminist and a horror/thriller fan, I couldn’t pass up something described as “feminist horror”.

There are two film adaptations — 1975 and 2004. Before talking about the book, I want to briefly address the 2004 adaptation with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken and others. I was surprised the film had such a low rating with that cast, but after watching it I completely understood. The ratings are IMDB 5.4/10, Rotten Tomatoes 25% & 30% and Kinopoisk 6.6/10 — and honestly, 6.6 from the Russian audience is way too generous, because this movie is incredibly bad.

I’m really disappointed — though not surprised — by the film and by the fact that the creators (men, of course) either didn’t read the book at all, only skimmed a summary, or got offended by it and decided to turn everything upside down. The main character is presented as a woman so obsessed with work that she loses her mind and ruins her relationships with her husband and kids because of it. Of course — only women can lose their minds and destroy their families over work. Men would never! On top of that, instead of keeping the suspense and leaving some questions unanswered, the creators decided to provide their own version of the story — and it was really bad. The ending is even worse than everything that came before it, which surprised me, because I thought they’d already hit rock bottom. Apparently rock bottom isn’t the limit. In the ending, the main character’s husband is turned into a hero — and the villain is, of course, a woman. Because it’s not patriarchy that forces women to serve their husbands, cook, clean and wear bows and dresses. No no — turns out they actually want to do it themselves!

They simply distorted the entire meaning of an amazing book. It’s disgusting, twisted and disrespectful. This film literally betrays the book and everything it stands for. I’ve never been this angry about a film adaptation — it’s completely outrageous. I definitely don’t recommend it: 3/10, purely for the cast and visuals.

Now, the book: the language is simple and it’s very short, making it an easy and quick read — about 5 hours of non-stop reading for me.

The book is intriguing and unsettling. It raises themes of feminism and the controlling, possessive nature of men who would rather replace their wives with obedient robots than accept them as they are. Though, interestingly, a lot of sources say Levin is 100% talking about robots — I didn’t quite catch that myself. Yes, the men are engineers and scientists, and the women have their suspicions, but it’s never fully confirmed, as far as I remember. So other interpretations fit just as well, in my opinion.

It also seems to me that the creators of Don’t Worry Darling — and in some ways Companion — were inspired by this book, but updated it with modern technology. Which is cool — it’s great that a story like this keeps living on.