Ira Levin
The Stepford Wives
So, to the third novel in my set by Ira Levin…
A ‘Stepford wife’ has become synonymous with a rather vapid but pretty woman who is subservient to her husband and loves domesticity, but when the phrase was coined in The Stepford Wives, it was telling a cautionary tale about gender equality.
Levin’s writing in the early 70s. Feminism is on the ascendant; women have choices; and other women are the ultimate threat.
The Eberhart family – Mum Joanna, husband Walter, children Pete and Kim, move to Stepford from New York City – the ‘filthy, crowded, crime-ridden, but so-alive city’.
Numbering tennis, near-professional-level photography, politics, women’s lib – especially women’s lib – as her interests, Joanna is disconcerted to find the women who are her new neighbours are completely and compulsively absorbed in their household duties; all looking and behaving like pretty, big-bosomed actresses in commercials for domestic products. She’s rather horrified when Walter decides to join the Men’s Association in order to stay in touch with local issues, but he assures her the best way to effect change is from within.
She sets about discovering why, within months of moving to Stepford, women change so radically. And why for six years there have been no social groups for them. What happened to create this bizarre town? Is it anything to do with chemicals leaking from the industrial plants in the area, or seeping into the water supply from the ground? Or are the husbands – many working in those industrial businesses – concocting something at the Men’s Association with which to brainwash their womenfolk? Or is there something even more sinister going on?
I have to confess this story isn’t my kind of book at all. Totally fantastical and unbelievable. With a highly unsatisfactory ending to boot. So, something of an anticlimax after the promise of A Kiss Before Dying. But at least I’ve discovered that fact by actually reading them for myself before being influenced by other reviews or simply watching someone else’s interpretation. And I’m now done with this author.
Rosemary’s Baby
Hmm. A second helping of Ira Levin – and an entirely different genre.
Apparently he conceived the dark plot for Rosemary’s Baby by musing that building tension over nine months of pregnancy, with the evil inside the main character, would offer a new and rather frightening kind of terror. And he’s right; it does.
The Bramford nowadays has acquired the prestige of a grand nineteenth century apartment house with gracious dimensions and real character, but in the twenties it was known as Black Bamford because of its associations with the black arts and Satanism, ugly and unsavoury happenings, suicides and murders; sensible people stayed away. Even as recently as 1959 a dead infant was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement and an elevator man met with an unpleasant death.
But that was in the past. Now Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are thrilled to sign a two year lease on Apartment 7E in this stylish residence, determined to ignore the rumours and stories and warnings. At the end of that same week they are the proud inhabitants of ‘an emptiness of high ceilings and unfamiliar dark.’ Guy becomes increasingly swallowed up in his acting career but Rosemary throws herself into taking ownership of the space, creating her dream home, doing her best to suppress the vague feelings of unease and vivid dreams and strange noises.
Initially Guy resists the idea of a baby, wanting to establish himself as a recognised actor first, but tensions between them ease when he comes round to the idea. Rosemary is overjoyed when a pregnancy is confirmed by obstetrician, Dr Hill, although niggles of concern are raised when he requests a repeat blood test. His reasons don’t add up. But she and Guy vow to start again with a new openness between them.
However, that repeat blood test never takes place. Their new neighbours, Minnie and Roman Castevet, in the adjoining apartment, will hear none of any unknown ‘Dr Hill’ – nothing but the famous obstetrician-to-the-celebrities, Abraham Sapirstein, a personal friend of theirs, will do. They arrange everything. Indeed, from the outset Minnie Castevet takes an active interest in this pregnancy, plying Rosemary with special drinks and herbs, steering her away from the regular supplements recommended to other mothers, smothering her with care. Dr Sapirstein too is unusually solicitous for her welfare; seeing her every week, instructing her to throw away the pregnancy books, and personally reassuring her when she experiences problems – violent pains, strange cravings, loss of weight. No two pregnancies are the same, he soothes, this is all perfectly normal and the pain will pass. But other people express concern for her gaunt appearance and troubling symptoms. Indeed, a close friend is so appalled when he sees her that he questions her more fully, and asks her to meet him away from the house the following day. When he simply doesn’t appear, Rosemary becomes anxious, and she’s shocked to discover he’d suddenly gone into a coma and is lying unresponsive in hospital.
This is a pregnancy like no other, and Rosemary begins to imagine all sorts of scenarios to account for the troubling developments. Her mind goes into over-drive. The doctors do their best to give rational explanations and offer reassurance, but not only does she fear for her baby, but she becomes paranoid about those around her, suspecting some kind of conspiracy … dark arts … witchcraft …. As her mental anguish grows, so does her resistance to Minnie’s ministrations, and she becomes more devious and rebellious. Her misgivings mount exponentially as delivery day draws close and by this time she has convinced herself that even her own husband is in cahoots with a coven of witches. She secretly arranges to see Dr Hill and pours out all her experiences and fears to him. But, hearing her long and unbelievable story, he phones Dr Sapirstein and Guy, and hands her back to them. By this time she is beside herself, and Dr Sapirstein is on the point of sedating her when labour begins in earnest. He gives her an injection that renders her completely unaware of what’s happening.
She awakens to great pain … and silence. The baby is dead, they tell her; he was in the wrong position and there was no time or facilities to do surgery to save him. Lost and alone in her grief, Rosemary is haunted by what seems to her to be a baby crying in an adjoining room. The neighbours keep a constant vigil with her, helping her draw off the milk that she’s producing, and giving her medication to calm her. But gradually she pieces together an explanation for all that has seemed so inexplicable. I won’t spoil the ending by revealing details, but suffice to say there is dark devilry involved and nine months of mounting tension come to a shocking climax.
Not surprisingly the book attracted mixed reviews and a range of reactions, due to its satanic content and a ‘blasphemous’ subversion of the Christian Christmas story. Levin went to some pains to ensure people were aware that he himself was not a believer in Satan and that this was pure fiction, but decades later he worried that he’d gone too far and even felt somewhat responsible for the burgeoning of a number of fundamentalist groups. He wrote:
Lately, I’ve had a new worry. The success of Rosemary’s Baby inspired Exorcists and Omens and lots of et ceteras. Two generations of youngsters have grown to adulthood watching depictions of Satan as a living reality. Here’s what I worry about now: if I hadn’t pursued an idea for a suspense novel almost forty years ago, would there be quite as many religious fundamentalists around today?
A cautionary tale.
I must admit, I came to this book unaware of any of this. And indeed I only became conscious of the subversions of the Christian story towards the end, by which time I recognised that even the names used are deliberate and significant. It leaves an uncomfortable feeling. But it’s just a novel. A horror film was made from it but I have no desire to watch it.
Ira Levin: another masterclass
I have to confess the closest I’ve got to the American novelist/playwright, Ira Levin, is watching the film of The Stepford Wives during a period of convalescence. But given the stature of the man, I decided I really ought to remedy this and read some of his books for myself.
He was a mere 23 years of age when, in 1953, his first book, A Kiss before Dying, was published. It was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece in the crime-thriller genre, winning prizes and selling in eye-watering numbers. And it’s quite short – yeahhh! So that’s the one I decided to tackle first. Tackle? Says a lot about my overall approach, huh?
It was anything but. Accessible, gripping, masterfully plotted and written. And compulsive. Short chapters, and division into three parts, give added momentum. I easily finished it in a day in between wallpapering and weeding and cooking.
The story’s set in a small college campus. In Part 1 we see things from the perspective of the nameless murderer – blond, blue-eyed, handsome, street-wise, charming and a lady-killer in both senses. But also a gold-digger and a psychopath. We know he despises women and only wants them for what they can give him. In the first 84 pages we watch him manipulate and scheme to get rid of Dorothy Kingship aka Dorrie, a girl with a hefty inheritance and a baby on the way, who has dared – yes, dared in a most inconsiderate way – to thwart his plan to get rich quickly. We see him carefully and methodically get rid of her, completely confident the murder will be declared a suicide, and no one will ever know. And the effect is the more clever because we are in on the build up, the increasing threat of violence, but the actual moment of murder is left to our imaginations. So far, so fairly standard plotting.
But then comes the clever bit: a complete change of point of view. Part 2 sees Dorrie’s sister, Ellen Kingship, piecing together aspects of the circumstances that simply don’t add up. She’s convinced Dorrie didn’t take her own life. But how to prove it? She knows the man in question is a blond and handsome student in Dorrie’s cohort at college … but which one? Plenty of young men on the campus fit that description. And how can she trace him without endangering her own life? Approaching each potential blond suspect with a tissue of lies is fraught with peril. Was his the hand that pushed her sister so violently? Was his the smile that watched his ‘problem’ plummet from that 14th storey? As readers we grow increasingly tense as each betraying slip of Ellen’s tongue is detected through blue blue eyes, magnified by a suspicious brain. And who’d have thought torn paper snowflake crafting could be so spine chilling?
The body count increases. The murderer grows ever more audacious, intrepid, and bold. And now, we the readers know who he is.
Part 3 turns its focus on Marion, the third and last Kingship sister – our murderer’s last hope of inheriting a fortune. But there’s one blond handsome man who knew Ellen better, genuinely cared for her, and he is determined to bring this psychopath to justice, and save Marion from his clutches. Meticulously, incrementally, he obtains the evidence, by fair means or foul, and the net closes inch by agonising inch. Levin achieves a finale so tightly coiled and slowly released as to warrant the accolade from no less a personage than Stephen King: ‘the Swiss watchmaker of the suspense novel …. Every novel he has ever written has been a marvel of plotting … he makes what the rest of us do look like those five-dollar watches you can buy in the discount drug store’.
Oh, and even in his debut novel, a mere stripling, Levin had the confidence to describe Ellen running down 14 storeys and through deserted night streets in one long breathless 24-line sentence! Impressive stuff.
Treats in store …