The Stepford Wives

by Ira Levin

  She looked at him, and he looked away, flushing, and looked back at her. ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘You’re a very pretty woman and you don’t do a damn thing with yourself any more unless there’s a party or something.’

  He turned away from her and went and stood at the stove. He twisted a knob one way and the other.

  She looked at him.

  He said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do—’

  ‘Do you want me to change?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not, don’t be silly.’ He turned around.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ she asked. ‘A cute little gussied-up hausfrau?’

  ‘All I said was—’

  ‘Is that why Stepford was the only place to move? Did somebody pass the message to you? “Take her to Stepford, Wally old pal; there’s something in the air there; she’ll change in four months.”’

  ‘There’s nothing in the air,’ Walter said. ‘The message I got was good schools and low taxes. Now look, I’m trying to see this from your viewpoint and make some kind of fair judgement. You want to move because you’re afraid you’re going to “change”; and I think you’re being irrational and – a little hysterical, and that moving at this point would impose an undue hardship on all of us, especially Pete and Kim.’ He stopped and drew a breath. ‘All right, let’s do this,’ he said. ‘You have a talk with Alan Hollingsworth, and if he says you’re—’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘Alan Hollingsworth,’ he said. His eyes went from hers. ‘The psychiatrist. You know.’ His eyes came back. ‘If he says you’re not going through some—’

  ‘I don’t need a psychiatrist,’ she said. ‘And if I did, I wouldn’t want Alan Hollingsworth. I saw his wife at the P.T.A.; she’s one of them. You bet he’d think I’m irrational.’

  ‘Then pick someone else,’ he said. ‘Anyone you want. If you’re not going through some kind of – delusion or something, then we’ll move, as soon as we possibly can. I’ll look at that house tomorrow morning, and even put a deposit on it.’

  ‘I don’t need a psychiatrist,’ she said. ‘I need to get out of Stepford.’

  ‘Now come on, Joanna,’ he said. ‘I think I’m being damn fair. You’re asking us to undergo a major upheaval, and I think you owe it to all of us, including yourself – especially yourself – to make sure you’re seeing things as clearly as you think you are.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  She didn’t say anything. She looked at him.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Doesn’t that sound reasonable?’

  She said, ‘Bobbie changed when she was alone with Dave, and Charmaine changed when she was alone with Ed.’

  He looked away, shaking his head.

  ‘Is that when it’s going to happen to me?’ she asked. ‘On our weekend alone?’

  ‘It was your idea,’ he said.

  ‘Would you have suggested it if I hadn’t?’

  ‘Now you see?’ he said. ‘Do you hear how you’re talking? I want you to think about what I said. You can’t disrupt all our lives on the spur of the moment this way. It’s unreasonable to expect to.’ He turned around and went out of the kitchen.

  She stood there, and put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She stayed that way, and then lowered her hand, opened her eyes, and shook her head. She went to the refrigerator and opened it, and took out a covered bowl and a market-pack of meat.

  He sat at the desk, writing on a yellow pad. A cigarette in the ashtray ribboned smoke up into the lamplight. He looked at her and took his glasses off.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll – speak to someone. But a woman.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘And you’ll put a deposit on the house tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Unless there’s something radically wrong with it.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s a good house and it’s only six years old. With a good mortgage.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  She stood looking at him. ‘Do you want me to change?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d just like you to put on a little lipstick once in a while. That’s no big change. I’d like me to change a little too, like lose a few pounds for instance.’

  She pushed her hair back straight. ‘I’m going to work down in the darkroom for a while,’ she said. ‘Pete’s still awake. Will you keep an ear open?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, and smiled at her.

  She looked at him, and turned and went away.

  She called the good old Department of Health, and they referred her to the county medical society, and they gave her the names and phone numbers of five women psychiatrists. The two nearest ones, in Eastbridge, were booked solid through mid-January; but the third, in Sheffield, north of Norwood, could see her on Saturday afternoon at two. Dr Margaret Fancher; she sounded nice over the phone.

  She finished the Christmas cards, and Pete’s costume; bought toys and books for Pete and Kim, and a bottle of champagne for Bobbie and Dave. She had got a gold belt buckle for Walter in the city, and had planned to canvass the Route Nine antique stores for legal documents; instead she bought him a tan cardigan.

  The first Christmas cards came in – from her parents and Walter’s junior partners, from the McCormicks, the Chamalians, and the Van Sants. She lined them up on a living-room bookshelf.

  A cheque came from the agency: a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

  On Friday afternoon, despite two inches of snow and more falling, she put Pete and Kim into the station wagon and drove over to Bobbie’s.

  Bobbie welcomed them pleasantly; Adam and Kenny and the dogs welcomed them noisily. Bobbie made hot chocolate, and Joanna carried the tray into the family room. ‘Watch your step,’ Bobbie said, ‘I waxed the floor this morning.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Joanna said.

  She sat in the kitchen watching Bobbie – beautiful, shapely Bobbie – cleaning the oven with paper towels and a spray can of cleaner. ‘What have you done to yourself, for God’s sake?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not eating the way I used to,’ Bobbie said. ‘And I’m getting more exercise.’

  ‘You must have lost ten pounds!’

  ‘No, just two or three. I’m wearing a girdle.’

  ‘Bobbie, will you please tell me what happened last weekend?’

  ‘Nothing happened. We stayed in.’

  ‘Did you smoke anything, take anything? Drugs, I mean.’

  ‘No. Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Bobbie, you’re not you any more! Can’t you see that? You’ve become like the others!’

  ‘Honestly, Joanna, that’s nonsense,’ Bobbie said. ‘Of course I’m me. I simply realized that I was awfully sloppy and self-indulgent, and now I’m doing my job conscientiously, the way Dave does his.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘How does he feel about it?’

  ‘He’s very happy.’

  ‘I’ll bet he is.’

  ‘This stuff really works. Do you use it?’

  I’m not crazy, she thought. I’m not crazy.

  Jonny and two other boys were making a snowman in front of the house next door. She left Pete and Kim in the station wagon and went over and said hello to him. ‘Oh, hi!’ he said. ‘Do you have any money for me?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, shielding her face against the downfall of thick flakes. ‘Jonny, I – I can’t get over the way your mother’s changed.’

  ‘Hasn’t she?’ he said, nodding, panting.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ she said.

  ‘Neither can I,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t shout any more, she makes hot breakfasts …’ He looked over at the house and frowned. Snowflakes clung to his face. ‘I hope it lasts,’ he said, ‘but I bet it doesn’t.’

  Dr Fancher was a small elfin-faced woman in her early fifties, with short swirls of greying brown hair, a sharp marionette nose, and smiling blue-grey eyes. She wore a dar
k blue dress, a gold pin engraved with the Chinese Yang-and-Yin symbol and a wedding ring. Her office was cheerful, with Chippendale furniture and Paul Klee prints and striped curtains translucent against the brightness of sun and snow outside. There was a brown leather couch with a paper-covered headrest, but Joanna sat in the chair facing the mahogany desk, on which dozens of small white papers flag-edged the sides of a green blotter.

  She said, ‘I’m here at my husband’s suggestion. We moved to Stepford early in September, and I want to move away as soon as possible. We’ve put a deposit on a house in Eastbridge, but only because I insisted on it. He feels I’m – being irrational.’

  She told Dr Fancher why she wanted to move: about Stepford women, and how Charmaine and then Bobbie had changed and become like them. ‘Have you been to Stepford?’ she asked.

  ‘Only once,’ Dr Fancher said. ‘I heard that it was worth looking at, which it is. I’ve also heard that it’s an insular, unsocial community.’

  ‘Which it is, believe me.’

  Dr Fancher knew of the city in Texas with the low crime rate. ‘Lithium is what’s doing it, apparently,’ she said. ‘There was a paper about it in one of the journals.’

  ‘Bobbie and I wrote to the Department of Health,’ Joanna said. ‘They said there was nothing in Stepford that could be affecting anyone. I suppose they thought we were crackpots. At the time, actually, I thought Bobbie – was being a little overanxious. I only helped with the letter because she asked me to …’ She looked at her clasped hands and worked them against each other.

  Dr Fancher stayed silent.

  ‘I’ve begun to suspect—’ Joanna said. ‘Oh Jesus, “suspect”; that sounds so—’ She worked her hands together, looking at them.

  Dr Fancher said, ‘Begun to suspect what?’

  She drew her hands apart and wiped them on her skirt. ‘I’ve begun to suspect that the men are behind it,’ she said. She looked at Dr Fancher.

  Dr Fancher didn’t smile or seem surprised. ‘Which men?’ she asked.

  Joanna looked at her hands. ‘My husband,’ she said. ‘Bobbie’s husband, Charmaine’s.’ She looked at Dr Fancher. ‘All of them,’ she said.

  She told her about the Men’s Association.

  ‘I was taking pictures in the Centre one night a couple of months ago,’ she said. ‘That’s where those Colonial shops are; the house overlooks them. The windows were open and there was – a smell in the air. Of medicine, or chemicals. And then the shades were pulled down, maybe because they knew I was out there; this policeman had seen me, he stopped and talked to me.’ She leaned forward. ‘There are a lot of sophisticated industrial plants on Route Nine,’ she said, ‘and a lot of the men who have high-level jobs in them live in Stepford and belong to the Men’s Association. Something goes on there every night, and I don’t think it’s just fixing toys for needy children, and pool and poker. There’s AmeriChem-Willis, and Stevenson Biochemical. They could be – concocting something that the Department of Health wouldn’t know about, up there at the Men’s Association …’ She sat back in the chair, wiping her hands against her skirted thighs, not looking at Dr Fancher.

  Dr Fancher asked her questions about her family background and her interest in photography; about the jobs she had held, and about Walter and Pete and Kim.

  ‘Any move is traumatic to a degree,’ Dr Fancher said, ‘and particularly the city-to-the-suburbs move for a woman who doesn’t find her housewife’s role totally fulfilling. It can feel pretty much like being sent to Siberia.’ She smiled at Joanna. ‘And the holiday season doesn’t help matters any,’ she said. ‘It tends to magnify anxieties, for everyone. I’ve often thought that one year we should have a real holiday and skip the whole business.’

  Joanna made a smile.

  Dr Fancher leaned forward, and, joining her hands, rested her elbows on the desk. ‘I can understand your not being happy in a town of highly home-oriented women,’ she said to Joanna. ‘I wouldn’t be either; no woman with outside interests would. But I do wonder – and I imagine your husband does too – whether you would be happy in Eastbridge, or anywhere else at this particular time.’

  ‘I think I would be,’ Joanna said.

  Dr Fancher looked at her hands, pressing and flexing the wedding-ringed one with the other. She looked at Joanna. ‘Towns develop their character gradually,’ she said, ‘as people pick and choose among them. A few artists and writers came here to Sheffield a long time ago; others followed, and people who found them too Bohemian moved away. Now we’re an artists-and-writers town; not exclusively, of course, but enough to make us different from Norwood and Kimball. I’m sure Stepford developed its character in the same way. That seems to me far more likely than the idea that the men there have banded together to chemically brainwash the women. And could they really do it? They could tranquilize them, yes; but these women don’t sound tranquilized to me; they’re hardworking and industrious within their own small range of interests. That would be quite a job for even the most advanced chemists.’

  Joanna said, ‘I know it sounds—’ She rubbed her temple.

  ‘It sounds,’ Dr Fancher said, ‘like the idea of a woman who, like many women today, and with good reason, feels a deep resentment and suspicion of men. One who’s pulled two ways by conflicting demands, perhaps more strongly than she’s aware; the old conventions on the one hand, and the new conventions of the liberated woman on the other.’

  Joanna, shaking her head, said, ‘If only you could see what Stepford women are like. They’re actresses in TV commercials, all of them. No, not even that. They’re – they’re like—’ She sat forward. ‘There was a programme four or five weeks ago,’ she said. ‘My children were watching it. These figures of all the Presidents, moving around, making different facial expressions. Abraham Lincoln stood up and delivered the Gettysburg Address; he was so lifelike you’d have—’ She sat still.

  Dr Fancher waited, and nodded. ‘Rather than force an immediate move on your family,’ she said, ‘I think you should con—’

  ‘Disneyland,’ Joanna said. ‘The programme was from Disneyland …’

  Dr Fancher smiled. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘My grandchildren were there last summer. They told me they “met” Lincoln.’

  Joanna turned from her, staring.

  ‘I think you should consider trying therapy,’ Dr Fancher said. ‘To identify and clarify your feelings. Then you can make the right move – maybe to Eastbridge, maybe back to the city; maybe you’ll even find Stepford less oppressive.’

  Joanna turned to her.

  ‘Will you think about it for a day or two and call me?’ Dr Fancher said. ‘I’m sure I can help you. It’s certainly worth a few hours’ exploration, isn’t it?’

  Joanna sat still, and nodded.

  Dr Fancher took a pen from its holder and wrote on a prescription pad.

  Joanna looked at her. She stood up and took her handbag from the desk.

  ‘These will help you in the meantime,’ Dr Fancher said, writing. ‘They’re a mild tranquilizer. You can take three a day.’ She tore off a slip and offered it to Joanna, smiling. ‘They won’t make you fascinated with housework,’ she said.

  Joanna took the slip.

  Dr Fancher stood up. ‘I’ll be away Christmas week,’ she said, ‘but we could start the week of the third. Will you call me Monday or Tuesday and let me know what you’ve decided?’

  Joanna nodded.

  Dr Fancher smiled. ‘It’s not catastrophic,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m sure I can help you.’ She held out her hand.

  Joanna shook it and went out.

  The library was busy. Miss Austrian said they were down in the cellar. The door on the left, the bottom shelf. Put them back in their proper order. No smoking. Put out the lights.

  She went down the steep narrow stairs, touching the wall with one hand. There was no banister.

  The door on the left. She found the light switch inside. An eye-sting of fluorescence; the smell of old paper; the whi
ne of a motor, climbing in pitch.

  The room was small and low-ceilinged. Walls of shelved magazines surrounded a library table and four kitchen chairs, chrome and red plastic.

  Big brown-bound volumes jutted from the bottom shelf all around the room, lying flat, piled six high.

  She put her handbag on the table, and took her coat off and laid it over one of the chairs.

  She started five years back, leafing backward through the half-a-year volume.

  CIVIC AND MEN’S ASSOCIATIONS TO MERGE. The proposed union of the Stepford Civic Association and the Stepford Men’s Association has been endorsed by the members of both organizations and will take place within weeks. Thomas C. Miller III and Dale Coba, the respective presidents …

  She leafed back, through Little League ball games and heavy snowfalls, through thefts, collisions, school-bond disputes.

  WOMEN’S CLUB SUSPENDS MEETINGS. The Stepford Women’s Club is suspending its bi-weekly meetings because of declining membership, according to Mrs Richard Ockrey, who assumed the club’s presidency only two months ago on the resignation of former president Mrs Alan Hollingsworth. ‘It’s only a temporary suspension,’ Mrs Ockrey said in her home on Fox Hollow Lane. ‘We’re planning a full-scale membership drive and a resumption of meetings in the early spring …’

  Do tell, Mrs Ockrey.

  She leafed back through ads for old movies and low-priced food, through fire at the Methodist Church and the opening of the incinerator plant.

  MEN’S ASSOCIATION BUYS TERHUNE HOUSE. Dale Coba, president of the Stepford …

  A zoning-law change, a burglary at CompuTech.

  She dropped the next-earlier volume down onto the other one. Sitting, she opened the volume at its back.

  LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS MAY CLOSE.

  So what’s so surprising about that?

  Unless the recent fall-off in membership is reversed, the Stepford League of Women Voters may be forced to close its doors. So warns the league’s new president, Mrs Theodore Van Sant of Fairview Lane …