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Ira Levin wrote several successful books, including Rosemary’s Baby, yet ‘The Stepford Wives’ has taken on a cultural life almost entirely of its own. The phrase “Stepford wife” now describes an eerily perfect, submissive woman, often used by people who have never read the novel. Levin’s satire of marriage, suburbia and female erasure became larger than its plot, turning into shorthand for the horror of manufactured domestic perfection.