The Stepford Wives and The Feminine Mystique Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford Wives, published in 1972, is a satirically dark look at suburban life in the nineteen-seventies during a climactic time in American history—after the civil rights movement, amidst the height of the feminist movement, right before the Watergate scandal, and the resignation of Richard Nixon.  In popular entertainment, the Hayes production codes were lifted on film and art was growing increasingly more sinister and risqué as a reaction toRead more