Jefferson Market Library

By Corinne Neary

Last month, in our novella discussion, we talked about a book recently translated into English, and shortlisted for the 2026 Booker International Prize: The Witch by Marie NDiaye. This novella, originally published in French, in part uses the loose framework of magic and witchcraft to explore the limitations women can feel in family life. Many of us at the meeting saw a commentary on marriage, children, and suburban life represented in the pages, wherein husbands fear the magical power of their wives, leaving the women isolated.

Continuing a bit on these lines, and keeping in mind that we are in Halloween season, this month we will be reading Ira Levin’s 1972 classic of satirical, feminist horror, The Stepford Wives, as well as showing the 1975 film adaptation, starring Katharine Ross.

The premise of Levin’s novella, which became a bestseller with enormous cultural impact, describes the married men of the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful wives. The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City with her husband and children, eager to start a new life. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the wives of Stepford who seem to lack free will, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends turn into mindless, docile housewives. All the women, and Joanna’s own husband, deny anything is wrong, but there is something sinister beneath the perfect surface.

We’ll be discussing this book on Wednesday, October 21 at 4:30 p.m., in our third floor Mae West room. We have copies available to borrow at our second floor circulation desk, so stop by to pick one up before they are all gone!

The 1975 film, directed by Bryan Forbes, became a cult classic and brought the term “Stepford Wife” into the cultural lexicon. Roger Ebert wrote in his 1975 review of the movie, “if television affects the way we think, dress and behave — and, heaven help us, I’m afraid it does — then someday we may all be a nation of those perfect plastic robots on TV.” Ebert couldn’t have known then about the culture of influencers now driving people even further in the pursuit of an impossible perfection.

In the 50 years since the film’s release, our world has changed in so many ways, but with popular influencers celebrating the “Tradwife” ideal, and mommy bloggers showing carefully curated content, the pressure to be perfect still haunts us. We’ll be screening the movie on Monday, October 26 at 5:30 p.m. in our first floor Willa Cather room.

In other movie programming, we’ll be finishing the month out with a truly horrifying film, the 1969 Pigsty (Porcile) written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. This Italian allegory, with the tagline “I killed my father. I ate human flesh. I quiver with joy,” shows two parallel stories, one in the year 1500, and the other set in 1967. Both stories involve unspeakable and taboo acts of humanity, and have been interpreted as commentary on the horrors of hidden fascism, consumerism, and moral decay in postwar European society. This movie will be shown on Thursday, October 29 at 6 p.m. in our first floor Willa Cather room, and is in Italian with English subtitles.