The Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes in 1975, was about men who turned their wives into robots so that the women would only do what the men wanted. The whole idea of this is disgusting. When Joanna Eberhart, played by Katharine Ross, and her husband, depicted by Peter Masterson, move to Stepford, they notice that all the women act exactly the same. Eventually, the men steal Joanna's children so they can trap her in a house to turn her into a robot. So the entire movie is about women needing to submit to their husbands basically. The men all want women with no opinions or minds of their own.

     The 1879 play written by Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, and the movie based on it, directed by Patrick Garland in 1973, incorporated these ideals as well. Nora, portrayed by Claire Bloom, plays the submissive wife who does whatever her husband, Torvald, acted by Anthony Hopkins, tells her to. Throughout the movie she is trying to hide the one action she had done on her own. Eight years before, she had secretly borrowed enough money to take her husband to Italy to save his life. Unfortunately, she had also forged her dead father's signature because she, as a woman, could not get a loan on her own.

     She always has to ask his permission to do anything. If he does not instruct her to do something or tell her how to do it, she does not do anything at all unless it is behind his back. The whole movie is a travesty to independent women. The only good part of the movie is the time when she stands up for herself in the end. Unfortunately, the Stepford Wives are unable to do that because they have had their identities literally stripped away from them.

     It does go to show that the only way one can completely take away a person's will is to take away his or her brain.

Allison Groner

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