In The Stepford Wives, the secrecy surrounding what goes on in Stepford makes it possible for the town’s men to get away with their twisted schemes: nobody outside the town’s Men’s Association knows they have been turning their wives into subservient robots. This secrecy makes it that much harder for women like Joanna and Bobbie to protect themselves, even though they can clearly see that something is amiss in Stepford. The community at large is exceptionally good at hiding the sexist horrors that are just waiting to antagonize the women who move there, and it is precisely because of this secrecy that such horrors are able to exist in the first place. This dynamic is a good representation of the reaction many Americans in the mid-20th century had to the Women’s Liberation Movement and the push for gender equality: many people denied the significance of gender inequality, arguing that there wasn’t a problem with society’s sexist cultural norms. Instead of recognizing the injustice at play, many men—and even many women—criticized the people calling for change, ultimately trying to frame them as crazy or unrealistic. Similarly, Walter and the other members of the Men’s Association try to make Joanna feel crazy by suggesting that her theories about robots are outlandish and silly—Walter even says she’s being “hysterical” at one point. The men thus throw her into a state of uncertainty, causing her to doubt herself and suspect that she has “spun into […] madness.” This is a tactic (known as “gaslighting”) often used by people in positions of power to force others to second-guess legitimate concerns about their own mistreatment. Joanna, of course, was right all along, but because Walter and the other men were able to throw her into uncertainty, they ultimately succeed in getting her to let her guard down—at which point they kill her and turn her into a robot. In this way, the novel spotlights the unsettling way that sexist, male-dominated societies often undermine women’s attempts to protect and advocate for themselves by framing them as crazy and irrational.
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Secrecy, Doubt, and Uncertainty Quotes in The Stepford Wives
“I’ve changed my mind; I’m joining that Men’s Association.”
She stopped and looked at him.
“Too many important things are centered there to just opt out of it,” he said. “Local politicking, the charity drives and so on…”
She said, “How can you join an outdated, old-fashioned—”
“I spoke to some of the men on the train,” he said. “[…] They agree that the no-women-allowed business is archaic.” He took her arm and they walked on. “But the only way to change it is from inside,” he said.
They spent a morning calling on women together, on the theory (Bobbie’s) that the two of them, speaking in planned ambiguities, might create the encouraging suggestion of a phalanx of women with room for one more. It didn’t work.
“Jee-zus!” Bobbie said, ramming her car viciously up Short Ridge Hill. “Something fishy is going on here! We’re in the Town that Time Forgot!”
“These things came out nice and white, didn’t they?” She put the folded T-shirt into the laundry basket, smiling.
Like an actress in a commercial.
That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleaners, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.
He had radioed a message about her, and then he had stalled her with his questions while the message was acted on, the shades pulled down.
Oh, come on, girl, you’re getting nutty! She looked at the house again. They wouldn’t have a radio up there. And what would he have been afraid she’d photograph? An orgy in progress? Call girls from the city?
“I’m not joking,” Charmaine said. “[My husband’s] a pretty wonderful guy, and I’ve been lazy and selfish. I’m through playing tennis, and I’m through reading those astrology books. From now on I’m going to do right by [my husband], and by [my son] too. I’m lucky to have such a wonderful husband and son.”
Walter wasn’t particularly surprised to hear about the change in Charmaine. “[Her husband] must have laid the law down to her,” he said, turning a fork of spaghetti against his spoon. “I don’t think he makes enough money for that kind of a setup. A maid must be at least a hundred a week these days.”
“Joanna,” Bobbie said, “I think there’s something here. In Stepford. It’s possible, isn’t it? All those fancy plants on Route Nine—electronics, computers, aerospace junk, with Stepford Creek running right behind them—who knows what kind of crap they’re dumping into the environment.”
“What do you mean?” Joanna said.
“Just think for a minute,” Bobbie said. She fisted her free hand and stuck out its pinky. “Charmaine’s changed and become a hausfrau,” she said. She stuck out her ring finger. “The woman you spoke to, the one who was president of the club; she changed, didn’t she, from what she must have been before?”
“How was the second honeymoon?” Walter asked.
“Better than the first,” Dave said. “Just shorter, that’s all.” He grinned at Walter.
Joanna looked at Bobbie, expecting her to say something funny. Bobbie smiled at her and looked toward the stairs.
“Speak to you tomorrow,” Joanna said.
“Sure,” Bobbie said. They smiled at each other. Bobbie moved to Walter at the door and offered her cheek. He hesitated—Joanna wondered why—and pecked it.
“I spoke to Bobbie tonight,” she said. “She sounded—different, washed out.”
“She’s probably tired from all that running around she’s been doing,” Walter said, emptying his jacket pockets onto the bureau.
“She seemed different Sunday too,” Joanna said. “She didn’t say—”
“She had some make-up on, that’s all,” Walter said. “You’re not going to start in with that chemical business, are you?”
In her immaculate kitchen she said, “Yes, I’ve changed. I realized I was being awfully sloppy and self-indulgent. It’s no disgrace to be a good homemaker. I’ve decided to do my job conscientiously, the way Dave does his, and to be more careful about my appearance. Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich?”
He came closer to her. “There’s nothing in the water, there’s nothing in the air,” he said. “They changed for exactly the reasons they told you: because they realized they’d been lazy and negligent. If Bobbie’s taking an interest in her appearance, it’s about time. It wouldn’t hurt you to look in the mirror once in a while.”
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.”
“[…] Now look, I’m trying to see this from your viewpoint and make some kind of fair judgment. 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.”
“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.
“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.”
“I’m going out,” she said.
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not when you’re talking like this. Go upstairs and rest.”
She came down a step. “I’m not going to stay here to be—”
“You’re not going out,” he said. “Now go up and rest. When you’ve calmed down we’ll—try to talk sensibly.”
“You must think we’re a hell of a lot smarter than we really are,” the man in the middle said. “Robots that can drive cars? And cook meals? And trim kids’ hair?”
“And so real-looking that the kids wouldn’t notice?” the third man said. He was short and wide.
“You must think we’re a townful of geniuses,” the man in the middle said. “Believe me, we’re not.”
“You’re the men who put us on the moon,” she said.
“Who is?” he said. “Not me. […]”
She was wrong, she knew it. She was wrong and frozen and wet and tired and hungry, and pulled eighteen ways by conflicting demands. Including to pee.
If they were killers, they’d have killed her then. The branch wouldn’t’ have stopped them, three men facing one woman.
[…]
Bobbie would bleed. It was coincidence that Dale Coba had worked on robots at Disneyland, that Claude Axhelm thought he was Henry Higgins, that Ike Mazzard drew his flattering sketches. Coincidence, that she had spun into—into madness. Yes, madness.
When had it begun, her distrust of him, the feeling of nothingness between them? Whose fault was it?
His face had grown fuller; why hadn’t she noticed it before today? Had she been too busy taking pictures, working in the darkroom?
“I want to get it done with,” she said. “Otherwise I won’t enjoy next weekend.”
