Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby and Stepford Wives)

Okay, so in the last two days I have read The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, and Rosemary's Baby, also by Ira Levin. Did this guy know how to make women feel paranoid JUST by being women or what? He can make you feel paranoid about being a woman like Stephen King makes you feel paranoid about having a cold.

If you read the two back to back you see the writing is (obviously) very similar in the execution of the whole 'the world is against this one woman' conspiracy...granted I don't think if they were written today he could've gotten away with a lot of it...you certainly wouldn't (I don't think anyway) hear about a critically acclaimed book in which all the men are talking down to the lead woman, all very condescendingly 'oh you're just overwrought, you're tired, you don't know what you want, don't take pills, don't read books, don't talk to friends or your mother, don't ask questions'. If a writer did that today I'd think there would be a serious backlash from readers and critics alike, but this was the 60s/70s when you had women's lib going on and massive argument over stay at home or make a career and that kind of stuff, so I'm guessing for the time it worked.

Anybody else got a comment about either of these two books?

Oh yeah, and somewhat on and off topic, has anybody noticed how similar Rosemary's Baby is with David Seltzer's novel, The Omen? Why is Satan incarnate always the child of lapsed Catholics? Anybody notice that? Never a lapsed Christian, a lapsed Espiscopolian, a lapsed whatever, always Catholics, why?