“The Stepford Wives” depicted the backlash against second-wave feminism

IN THE EARLY 1970s the feminist movement in America was organised and effective. As the head of a new Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was taking sex-discrimination cases to the Supreme Court and winning. An amendment to the constitution, guaranteeing that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged…on account of sex”, was approved by the Senate. Roe v Wade conferred the right to abortion.

Women had been galvanised, in part, by Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”, a landmark book of 1963 which chronicled an epidemic of ennui among housewives. Some had decided that domesticity was oppressive—that there was more to life than preparing sandwiches and endless rounds of laundry—and campaigned for economic and sexual freedom. Conservative Americans, meanwhile, decried what they saw as the destruction of the social fabric. “The Stepford Wives”, Ira Levin’s sharp “feminist horror” novel of 1972, dramatised this culture war.

When Joanna, the protagonist, moves from New York to the quiet town of Stepford in Connecticut, she hopes to find people similarly interested in women’s liberation, photography and tennis. But making friends proves hard: most ladies would rather wax the hardwood floors than sit down for a cup of coffee. Joanna’s suspicion is aroused when she discovers that there had, until recently, been a feminist society in the town—which had dozens of members and was visited by Friedan herself. One by one, the members had suddenly realised that they had been neglecting their domestic duties. They had decided that “running a clean comfortable household” was a better use of their time than activism.

Half a century on, Levin’s novel has an enduring theme: that progress and reprisals go hand in hand. He saw that some men perceived women asking for a better lot in life as an attack. A film adaptation of 2004 (pictured, above) has the Stepford women’s brains rewired with a nanochip implant, but Levin’s story is more sinister still. In his telling, husbands are willing to murder their wives and replace them with eerily lifelike robots. Even seemingly enlightened men do not care about having a real partner, a multifaceted human being with their own interests and foibles. They want someone to cook and clean; they want a wife with perky breasts who never complains.

“The Stepford Wives” is funny, masterfully crafted and short—it can be read in a single thrilling sitting. It is timely in an age when nostalgia for the so-called traditional values of the 1950s has once again returned in some quarters. Far-right politicians around the world push traditional ideas about family. Andrew Tate, a kickboxer-turned-influencer, was recently banned from mainstream social-media platforms for his misogynistic arguments. He has said that women should stay at home and that there “is no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist”. He has argued, too, that in the 21st century the equilibrium of society has been lost, and that “there are more invisible men than invisible women”.

“Don’t Worry Darling”, a new film, is heavily indebted to “The Stepford Wives”. Just as Levin did, Olivia Wilde, the director, saw that a backlash to women’s progress was under way. In her tale, men trap their wives in Victory, a strange desert town created by Frank (Chris Pine), an elusive, cult-like figure (pictured, below). Ms Wilde has said that the model for Mr Pine’s character was Jordan Peterson, a polarising academic and author whose work has been embraced by men’s-rights activists. (Mr Peterson has stated that he is not an anti-feminist, though he has also said that reading “The Feminine Mystique” might “drive a modern person mad”.) The women in Victory spend their days drinking martinis and vacuuming while their husbands go off to work. They are asked not to question how their spouses make a living.

Unfortunately the film does not delve deeply into the men’s motivations for joining the “Victory Project”, only implying that they are driven by a sense of inadequacy or emasculation. Jack (Harry Styles) is failing to thrive in the modern world; after consuming propaganda on the internet, he dispatches himself and his wife, Alice (Florence Pugh), back to a time when men were the undisputed breadwinners. As Mr Peterson has said, people who “don’t find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them in difficult times—and they’re certain to encounter difficult times—are left bitter and resentful and adrift.”

Both these stories seem timely as several gains for women, including some achieved in the 1970s, have recently been reversed. The Equal Rights Amendment is in legal limbo. In June the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, jeopardising reproductive rights across America. Fifty years after the publication of Levin’s pioneering novel, the prospect of sending women back to the kitchen remains a powerful one—at least for those who feel, as someone always seems to, that the push for gender equality has gone too far. ■