The Stepford Wives

The modern example of a "robot" that comes to mind would be from the novel/movie The Stepford Wives. Essentially the story is about a woman who, along with her husband and children, moves to a small, rural suburb in Connecticut called Stepford. Eventually she comes to the realization that the women in the town are in fact robots created by their husbands - finding it disturbing that the women in the neighborhood are very zombie like and submissive to their husbands. Much of the novel centers around being a woman in modern society and gender roles that play out amongst them. In the novel/movie, the main character discovers that the women in the town were once feminist activists. To their husbands' dismay, the women are whipped into shape and turned into the "perfect housewife". It's clear that the women are turned into robots because of their husbands' envy over their successes. The men are jealous and together they create a machine that will obey and submit to all of their needs. This particular figure of the robot plays in to the notion that women are only successful at being housewives and they must be submissive to their husbands (doing the dishes, making meals, doing laundry, etc.) The men of the movie, just as men in modern society, don't like the idea of women having more power than they do and by creating the "step ford wife robot", one is able to keep that in control. The robot as a whole is wanted by human society because of what it can produce, how it can behave, and the most important part of all - it lacks human emotions, which are considered problematic and get in the way. Hence why the Stepford Wives are created!