Essay Questions

Most stories about artificially engineered machines designed—either by intention or oversight—to fool people into believing they are actual human beings tend to pursue a narrative that turns on a very specific plot point. What is that plot device and why might Levin have ignored it?

Blade Runner features the Voight-Kampff machine to test the empathy of replicants while in films such as Westworld (released just a year after Levin's novel was published) robots are subject to some sort of system breakdown. Whatever the specific mechanics, a recurring plot twist in most stories about artificial human beings is appropriately encompassed by the overarching theme of Rise of the Machine. The machinery inevitably reveals the failure of its creator to play god to the maximum effect because inevitably—somehow—there is a glitch that allows the machine to pursue its own concept of humanity. This glitch never occurs in Stepford; the Disney animatronic worker has apparently mastered the art of playing god. Why does Levin ignore or avoid this natural dramatic arc to his story? It is a story about the domination of the patriarchy which has dominated civilization since civilization began. The point of the story is that feminism is the path to correction. Since robots are not feminine, they cannot be the corrective mechanism.

Why does Stepford seem like something out of the 1950’s?

Politicians and old people love to talk about returning to the “simpler days” and the days when America was great and almost invariably they are talking quite specifically about the 1950’s. The newly improved Stepford has a definite 1950’s vibe going on: the Men’s Association bears a great similarity to the “lodges” that men in TV shows set in that decade always seem to going off to (the Raccoons in The Honeymooners” or the Leopards in Happy Days) and new “improved” wives all return conforming more to the “hourglass figure” of sex symbols of that decade. The “simpler” days when America was “great” typified by the 1950’s springs from re-establishment of male dominance and the strengthening of the patriarchy brought on by victory in World War II. Millions of returning soldiers sent millions of working women back home to lives of domesticity. Men had saved the world from fascism and paid for it with the horrors of surviving battle so, in effect, they felt entitled to privileges, special treatment and allowances. In addition, they sought out the camaraderie missing from their days in the service. All these things contributed to a very specific sort of male-dominant society in the America of the post-war year and it is this era that the men of Stepford are trying to recreate.

How is the ending of the novel prescient in its understanding of how deeply ingrained into the fabric of the social consciousness the patriarchy really is?

The novel ends on a note suggesting that Stepford—despite looking to the 1950’s as it model—is ready to admit a black man into its elite as long as he is willing to “play along.” The number of white women outnumber of the number of black men in Stepford exponentially, yet they are denied access to all the privileges offered to the black man, suggesting that when it comes to the patriarchy, racial lines are less restrictive than gender. The election of a black man—despite a violent and abusive history of racial intolerance in America at the hands of white women as well as men--as President before a woman of any color seems to confirm that this is so.