Stepford wife

English

Alternative forms

Stepford Wife

Etymology

From the 1972 novel The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (adapted into a 1975 film of the same name), in which a woman moves to the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut and discovers its eerily docile housewives are android replacements.

Noun

Stepford wife (plural Stepford wives)

(derogatory) A woman who unquestioningly submits to and serves her male partner, and/or does not seem to have interests, wishes, or pursuits of her own.
- 1995, Regina Barreca, Perfect Husbands & Other Fairy Tales): Demystifying Marriage, Men, And Romance‎^[1], page 214:
  Parroting back her husband’s words, by the end of the play, Kate sounds either like a brainwashed member of a bizarre religious cult or a Stepford wife, a woman whose personality has been wiped out and replaced by one more acceptable to her husband.
- 2005, Mollie Molay, An Engagement of Convenience‎^[2], page 210:
  "You can't just sit there and tell me you want Lili to become a 'Stepford wife' at your beck and call. […]
- 2006, Na'ima B. Robert, From My Sisters' Lips: A Unique Celebration of Muslim Womanhood‎^[3], page 272:
  So that prompted me to ask the question: isn’t the ideal Muslim wife in actual fact a Stepford Wife?
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Stepford wife.

Derived terms