39 pages • 1 hour read
The Stepford Wives
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BetaChapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2, Pages 66-82 Summary
Bobbie writes a letter to the government citing her concerns about local pollution, but she gets a reply saying there are no contaminants in the area. She decides she wants to move sooner, and she and Joanna go to a nearby town to look at houses. That night, Joanna lies in bed after having sex with Walter, feeling as if he has been distant and dissatisfied lately. She asks if he is having an affair, and he assures her she is worrying over nothing. She goes shopping with Bobbie a few days later, and Bobbie tells Joanna that she and her husband, Dave, are going away for a weekend together. Joanna thinks back to Charmaine and how she changed after a similar weekend. Joanna sells a few photographs to a local agency and celebrates her mild success.
Joanna goes to the library to pick up some books and meets a woman who just moved to Stepford. The woman is Black and belongs to the first Black family to move to Stepford. She greets Joanna warmly and introduces herself as Ruthanne Hendry. The name sounds familiar to Joanna, and Ruthanne reveals she wrote a children’s book. The book features a young girl who “actually does something besides make tea for her dolls” (72) and is one that Joanna appreciates. They go for coffee and learn about each other, and Joanna assures Ruthanne that the women in Stepford are not distant due to Ruthanne’s skin color—they are like that with everyone. Afterward, Joanna spots Dale outside, and he stares at her while holding a small lamb in his arms.
Bobbie asks Joanna to watch her son, Adam, for the weekend while she and her husband spend time together. When Bobbie and Dave come to pick up Adam on Sunday, Bobbie looks immaculate and seems flatly cheerful and Dave seems happier than usual. Joanna hopes the change is only due to the couple having an amazing weekend together, and even suggests to Walter that they do the same. When Joanna calls Bobbie a few days later, Bobbie doesn’t even recognize Joanna’s voice at first. Joanna asks her to call her back the next day, but Bobbie never calls, so Joanna goes to check up on her. Bobbie is once again immaculate, seems to be wearing a push-up bra, and her house is pristine. Like Charmaine, she self-deprecates, stating how her priorities have shifted to maintaining her house and looking beautiful. Joanna is certain that Bobbie has changed, and when she tells Bobbie this, Bobbie simply dismisses it, saying she is happy and there is nothing wrong with Stepford.
Chapter 2, Pages 83-95 Summary
Joanna calls Walter in a panic and demands they move immediately. She knows of a house they can buy and wants to leave the following day. Walter comes straight home and dismisses her concerns, telling her that Bobbie was due for a change and that her house needed cleaning anyway. Walter even tells Joanna that she should consider her own appearance from time to time, which shocks and insults Joanna. She asks if he secretly hopes she will become like the other Stepford women and if he moved there for that reason. Irritated, Walter denies everything. She continues demanding to move, but Walter insists that she see a psychiatrist first to ensure she isn’t having delusions. She reluctantly agrees on the conditions that she pick the doctor and that the doctor be female.
When Joanna goes to visit Bobbie later, she again asks Bobbie if she realizes what has happened to her. Bobbie insists it is nothing—she just realized she was “awfully sloppy and self-indulgent” (90). After the visit, Joanna tries to assure herself she isn’t losing her mind. She goes to see Dr. Fancher, a psychiatrist in a nearby town, and tells her all of her suspicions about Stepford, the Men’s Association, and a possible chemical or technology they may have invented in secret. Dr. Fancher feigns empathy for Joanna, telling her that she understands the conflict she feels as a result of being pulled in two directions by society, “the old conventions on the one hand, and the new conventions of the liberated woman on the other” (94). She gives Joanna a prescription for a sedative and assures her it won’t affect her desire to do housework. She asks Joanna to consider coming back for therapy.
Chapter 2, Pages 95-118 Summary
Joanna goes to the library to research the history of Stepford and finds out when the Men’s Association emerged, and why the Women’s Club failed—due to declining membership. The president of the Women’s Club intended to recruit new members, but never did. Another women’s organization, the League of Women Voters, had a similar problem; Joanna is shocked to find it was once led by her neighbor Carol. She finds an article on the Coba family, which describes Dale’s former position as an “audioanimatronic” (99) technician at Disneyland. He now works for Microtech, a technology plant in town.
When Joanna gets home, she tells Walter that she is taking the children and leaving for the city. Walter pretends to be confused and tells Joanna she is acting “delusional” again. Already having planned for tonight to be the night that he murders her, Walter tells Joanna that the kids aren’t at home. Joanna confesses that she knows everything and suspects that the men are replacing their wives with animatronic robots. Walter tells her to go lie down, and Joanna goes up to her room to get dressed and leave. As she is sneaking out of the house, she overhears Walter on the phone saying something about not being able to “handle her myself” (107). She escapes out the patio door and runs out into the snow, resolving to reach Ruthanne’s house and get help.
Ruthanne’s house is over an hour away by foot, and Joanna is aware that anyone might be out looking for her. Her feet start to go numb, and her legs are cold, but she makes her way through town, as various headlights and flashlights light up the darkness. Voices shout at her to calm down and trust them. Soon, she is cornered by three men. She picks up a large branch and holds it over her head, telling them to get back. To deescalate the situation, they tell Joanna they would never want a robot wife and aren’t even smart enough to create such a thing. She doesn’t believe any of it but now has no way out. They offer to take Joanna to the Men’s Association house and let her search it, admitting they have pornography there but nothing else. Joanna refuses, so they suggest having her witness one of the women cut her finger and bleed to prove she is real and not a robot. Joanna agrees, if the woman is Bobbie. As they walk, Joanna wonders if she was wrong after all, as the men didn’t try to kill her. She starts thinking of Walter and about their decaying relationship. When they reach Bobbie’s house, Joanna goes inside and finds Bobbie happy to help. Bobbie beckons Joanna into the kitchen, holding a massive knife, and it suddenly occurs to Joanna that Bobbie is going to kill her. Joanna stares at Bobbie as she approaches, unable to believe that she could be a robot because she looks so lifelike.
Chapter 3 Summary
Sometime later, Ruthanne arrives at the supermarket, irritated to have to be shopping but enjoying the nice weather. She makes the same observations as Joanna did when she first arrived, seeing the women filling their carts neatly, walking slowly, and staring at the products. Ruthanne encounters Joanna, who looks immaculate and much more beautiful than Ruthanne remembers. Joanna reports that she’s no longer taking photos and spends all of her time on housework now. She is happy doing so, which confuses Ruthanne, given their previous conversations. That night, Ruthanne gets to work on her second children’s book, but not before a quick conversation with her husband about their upcoming weekend away together.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
Suspense builds rapidly in the second half of the novel as Joanna comes to the realization that the women around her are not women at all but robotic versions of their previous selves. As she learns more about the truth, she is constantly told she has nothing to worry about, is overreacting, “delusional,” and imagining things. This is a technique of psychological manipulation known as “gaslighting,” in which one party tries to convince the other party that they cannot trust their perception of reality. This dynamic often exists in situations of domestic abuse and is one way abusers maintain power over their victims. Walter gaslights Joanna often, especially the closer she gets to discovering the truth. In fact, gaslighting becomes the primary modus operandi for the people of Stepford as they realize that Joanna knows their secret. The Stepford wives are programmed to speak that way, but the men are trained by each other through their involvement in the Men’s Association.
These chapters show Walter’s transition from a feminist husband to a Stepford husband. Before moving to Stepford, he was always ready to support his wife in her endeavors and help with domestic work. After moving to Stepford, Walter no longer respects Joanna and wants for himself what all the other Stepford men have: a beautiful, domestic, robot wife.
The psychiatrist is a conventional character in the horror genre who is supposed to represent the truth. Doctors, psychologists, and other medical professionals in this genre serve as an outside source and the voice of reason for the characters who are caught up in a psychological or supernatural horror plot. In this case, however, the psychiatrist only pretends to empathize with Joanna, telling her the problem is her being “pulled in two directions” (94) by society’s demands. Though Joanna is a strong-willed independent thinker, there are enough people telling her to doubt herself that she struggles with her suspicions about Stepford until the very end; this causes the cognitive dissonance that leads to her demise.
The days leading up to Joanna’s transformation into a robot are tense and littered with clues as to what will eventually happen to the novel’s feminist protagonist. Joanna fights against the inevitable for as long as she can, and when she discovers that Dale worked as an animatronics specialist at Disney, she is absolutely certain that the women in Stepford are robots. Anthropomorphic robots were a brand-new technology in 1972, and Levin’s inclusion of this concept as a method of maintaining patriarchy speaks to the skepticism and caution that many people felt toward this new technology. The science-fiction aspect of this novel lies in its portrayal of technology being used for destructive ends, which voices the perennial fear people have regarding the potential misuse of the newest, most powerful technology of their time. Anthropomorphic robots—usually called androids—are a staple of science fiction and speak to the fear that humanity is fragile, and the traits that make people human can easily be distorted, replicated, or destroyed. Because Joanna is captured and turned into a Stepford wife, Ruthanne becomes the “final woman”—or, more often, the “final girl”—a character trope of the horror genre in which one woman escapes death and, symbolically, goes on to continue humanity. Because this is a work of dystopian fiction, however, Levin implies that Ruthanne, too, will soon become a victim of the Men’s Association.
Levin’s streamlined writing style is one of the reasons for the novel’s continued relevance; it is easily readable, without unnecessarily complex language or technological descriptions. The plot arc works to build suspense, develop a character portrait of Joanna, and speak to issues of feminism while weaving in themes of technology’s dangers, all within the length of a novella. Levin also uses humor regularly, adding a satirical edge to the novel’s plot and character development: The way the Stepford wives act like well-trained servants is both horrific and comical, and at one point, Joanna finds herself laughing hysterically after reading about Dale in the archives.
The novel is written in third-person past tense, mixing in moments of free-indirect discourse of Joanna’s thoughts: “She felt suddenly as if she were naked, as if Mazzard were drawing her in obscene poses. She crossed her legs; wanted to cross her arms too but didn’t. Jesus, Joanna, he’s a show-offy artist, that’s all. You’re dressed” (29). As Joanna finds out more about Stepford and the plot taking place there, her cognitive dissonance is regularly demonstrated through her thoughts and actions: “Oh God, could she get away? None of the others had. But maybe none of the others had tried. Bobbie hadn’t, Charmaine hadn’t. Maybe she was the first one to find out in time. If it was in time” (109). Additionally, Levin only uses Joanna’s name occasionally, more often referring to her simply as “she” even when beginning a new paragraph or section. In this way, Levin hints that although Joanna seems different from the other Stepford women, she will soon be just like them.
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