From the outset, Rod Serling’s vision for The Twilight Zone was a specifically political one. Understanding that the tropes of the science fiction genre made it the perfect vehicle to slip pointed social critique past television’s censoring bodies, Serling was long interested in using the series to push back against social norms. With a body of work exploring men escaping to worlds of their creation as a response to emasculation, Richard Matheson was the perfect writer to help execute Serling’s vision.[1] Of the 16 episodes Matheson wrote for the series, “A World of His Own” (broadcast in the first season on July 1, 1960) is the one whose framework is most readily reflected in modern dystopian narratives such as AMC’s Humans and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. As a reaction to the era’s shifting cultural power dynamics between men and women, this episode establishes a template for male domination over the female body, both psychologically and physically, that is still obvious in satire today.
On its face, “A World of His Own” is the story of a writer, Gregory (Keenan Wynn), who discovers he can bring his characters to life by describing them via dictation. Tired of dealing with his domineering wife, Victoria (Phyllis Kirk), he creates Mary (Mary LaRoche), an idealized and subservient counter to his spouse. The resulting chaos hinges upon audience identification with Gregory as well as shifting post-WWII perceptions of masculinity. In constructing the more agreeable Mary, Gregory echoes the biblical story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who is cast out from Eden and replaced by Eve when she proves too unaccommodating to Adam’s wishes. In Victoria, Gregory finds a similarly difficult partner, and it is this casting of female power and agency as a threat to masculinity that is the crux of the story. As June M. Pullman and Anthony J. Fonesca note in Richard Matheson’s Monsters, Victoria’s growing power over and independence of Gregory is demonstrated by her ability to trick Gregory into admitting Mary’s existence.[2] She has become self-reliant, and the threat she thus poses to Gregory’s masculinity is enough to elicit panic in both Gregory and the audience.
Check out this clip from “A World of His Own” in which Gregory “creates” his perfect wife — and in which he speaks directly to Rod Serling; this is the only moment in the first season of The Twilight Zone in which Serling appears within the episode itself and interacts with a character.
The “perfect” woman
It is no surprise that narratives of men designing the “perfect” female arise during periods when the cultural conversation is leaning in on issues of gender equality. At the time of this episode’s airing, women were actively organizing against societal restrictions, including increasing access to birth control and demanding access to career opportunities outside the home. Public debate over what constituted a “good” wife and mother was at a fevered pitch, and it is the question that informs much of the action in “A World of His Own.” Gregory’s casting as a henpecked husband to the independent Victoria is supposed to garner audience sympathy and position dialogue wherein Mary refers to Gregory as “Master” as humorous. But the ending revelation that Victoria is a character created by Gregory means that neither woman has any autonomous agency. Their survival is wholly dependent upon pleasing Gregory. As such, this narrative reflects a specifically conservative view that would appeal to an audience threatened by any disruption to traditional gender roles within the home.
Mary as the docile counterpart to Victoria.
It is not coincidental that the entirety of the episode is situated in Gregory’s study, a defined masculine space within the context of the perceived feminine sphere of the family home. But to an audience ready to challenge conventional views of gender, there is a decidedly sinister undertone to Gregory’s actions. Not only does he threaten Victoria when she tries to leave, but he appears to delight in her fear and panic. Yet, at no point does Victoria appear to enjoy what she perceives to be her husband’s deteriorating mental state. Her only crime is being independent and voicing her opinions without reservation. That the audience is supposed to identify with Gregory when he replaces Victoria with the quieter, more agreeable model in Mary sends a very specific message that difficult women will find themselves replaced in the home by a nicer model if they don’t alter their behavior to please their husbands.
Victoria is traumatized by Gregory with the reveal that she is entirely at his mercy.
This notion of the replaceability of women anticipates the better known The Stepford Wives (1975). Like “A World of His Own,” Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Ira Levin’s 1972 novel centers on men creating more compliant versions of the wives they cannot control. Released at the height of the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment, The Stepford Wives is also supposed to be a satirical look at the inequality inherent in the cult of domesticity. But as film critic Tim Brayton notes, “even the most outspoken feminists in the film don’t actually go so far as to think that women should be employed outside the home; the story’s battlegrounds are set entirely around what they do with the time that they spend not having paying jobs.”[3] This failure to accurately depict the stakes of the culture war being spoofed is problematic because, like its television predecessor, the movie suggests you don’t necessarily have to be a bad guy to want an accommodating wife.
Satirical horror
One of the gambles of blending satire with horror is that satire presupposes audience agreement that the institutions and practices being mocked are on some level ridiculous. But when you have a culture divided over gender roles, as was the case in both 1960 and 1975, reaction runs the risk of being split between those who view the female robotic replacements as ridiculous and those who see the idea as something worth considering. Horror, as a specifically subversive genre, compounds this potential audience divide because most horror narratives are designed to operate on two levels: that which is obvious and reflects agreement over what is normal (typically the grounding sequences that shows the normalcy of the world) and that which exists as a response or disruption to the general confines of that normality (generally represented by the monster). For narratives like “A World of His Own” and The Stepford Wives, the audience isn’t only being asked to view constructions of femaleness from the perspective of those marginalized, but to also agree that the dominant view is imbued with a high level of ridiculousness. When that agreement doesn’t align, the social commentary can shift from advocating for the marginalized culture to the dominant culture.
Transgressive women get punished.
The reverberations of this template is not something consigned to the past. In recent years, dystopian narratives centered on the restricted agency of women have remained part of public discourse. In The Handmaid’s Tale (2017), Matheson’s template gets a makeover of sorts by making the idea of the perfect woman even more restrictive. With societal roles predicated upon fertility, women exist only in relation to men. A woman’s role is reflected in how she is allowed to dress, and independent thought is restricted via a ban on writing and reading. It’s hard to fathom how a world such as this could not be universally seen as problematic and yet, in 2021, there are still men’s groups advocating for the embrace of this ideal.
For a show as transgressive as The Twilight Zone, “A World of His Own” is a curious outlier. Serling referred to the episode as a “romantic story” meant to be comedic, but that rationale falls flat. Comedy that punches down rarely stands the test of time, and such is the case here where all of the humor is derived from Victoria demanding some level of autonomy within her marriage. Her biggest sin in the episode is a desire to put her own needs above that of her husband and for that, she invites the ridicule of the audience. It’s a world where the cultural default is to feel pity for a husband with an independent thinking wife instead of feeling outrage at the cultural disposability of women. And it begs the question of whether much has changed in popular cultural narratives in the 40 years since this Twilight Zone episode first aired.
The Twilight Zone is streaming on Netflix.
[1] See Matheson’s I Am Legend, in which protagonist Robert Neville is tormented most notably by women vampires.
[2] June M. Pullman and Anthony J. Fonesca, Richard Matheson’s Monsters: Gender in the Stories, Scripts, Novels, and Twilight Zone Episodes. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, p. 98.
[3] Tim Brayton, “The Stepford Wives (1975).” Alternate Ending, 12 Sept. 2004, https://www.alternateending.com/2014/09/hollywood-century-1975-in-which-the-quickly-changing-world-is-subjected-to-enthusiastic-if-wildly-clumsy-satire.html. Accessed 8 February 2021.
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