Kate Middleton Is so Far From a ‘Stepford Wife,’ Biographer Says
According to a royal author, Kate Middleton is far from “Stepford Wife.” Instead, they’d describe the Princess of Wales, 42, as a “great role model” and a “solution finder.” Ahead, where the “Stepford Wife” comparison came from—hint: another royal author—and what Kate did that took “a lot of courage.”
Kate’s a ‘solution finder,’ not a ‘Stepford Wife’
“She was wrongly dubbed a ‘Stepford Wife’ in the past, which was really wrong because she’s able to do so many things,” Robert Jobson, author of Catherine, The Princess of Wales, told the Australian morning show Sunrise (via Newsweek).
The term is, per the outlet, a nod to Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, The Stepford Wives, which featured “robot-like serial housewives” and has, in the decades since, been used as a “derogative term to describe women.”
Rather, Kate is someone whom the biographer called “a great role model” and problem solver. “She’s focusing so hard on the things that she does for young kids. And the work supporting the king and Prince William.”
“But also, she’s a young woman,” Jobson said. “She’s got a young family. She wants to spend a lot of time devoted to them with the three young children as well as supporting William.”
The Prince and Princess of Wales are parents of three: Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6. They live in Windsor, England, at Adelaide Cottage.
“So I think she’s a great role model in the way she does what she does,” he explained. “She is not, I think, someone who wants to cause dramas. She gets on with the job in hand. She’s a solution finder, really, rather than someone that creates problems.”
It took ‘courage’ to stand up to Queen Elizabeth and King Charles
Speaking to Hello! Magazine in a separate interview, Jobson noted the level of “courage” it must’ve taken Kate to face the late Queen Elizabeth II and her father-in-law, King Charles III. Particularly on the subject of her and William’s kids and that they’d do things her way, not the royal way.
(This lines up with a previous report that Kate would be fine starting a “full-out war” when it comes to decisions about the Wales kids.)
“With her children, she made it very clear to both the late queen and to the Prince of Wales, as he was—now the king—that she’s not going to be rushed into doing things that she doesn’t necessarily want to do.”
“That takes quite a lot of courage because you’re in a very alien world,” he added.
Kate was called ‘Stepford Wife-like’ in a 2023 biography
So, where did the Stepford Wife comparison come from? Author Omid Scobie described Kate as “Stepford Wife-like” in his November 2023 book, Endgame. (The Dutch translation included names of British royals related to discussions about Prince Archie’s skin color before being pulled from shelves.)
Appearing on This Morning following the book’s release, Scobie discussed the “Stepford Wife-like” comment, which the interviewer labeled “offensive.”
He noted that part of Endgame discussed how Kate “never puts a step wrong. But also that the role does require that kind of stately detachment.”
Additionally “it compared her to the queen in a very favorable way, actually. But of course, if you compare that to, say, everyday folk, there is a very reserved, almost Stepford-like approach to the position.”
