Book Review – Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

While I was reading this book, I was amazed at how closely Polanski’s film adapted the material. I’ve seen the movie so many times that I smiled every time I read a bit of dialogue that had been pulled directly for the film. I smiled a lot during my time reading this.

If you haven’t seen the film, it follows Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband as they move into an old apartment building with a history of witchcraft and people dying horrifically. Her husband, Guy, is a struggling actor. When they befriend the elderly couple in the apartment next to them, the neighbors insert themselves into their lives. Eventually, Rosemary wants to have a baby and Guy agrees. Unknown to Rosemary, he has made a pact with the neighbors to have her drugged and raped by Satan so she can bare his unholy child.

I’ll be doing a blog series this October about how the color yellow is used in horror, and Rosemary’s Baby is one of the films I will talk about extensively. I’m so very happy to report that the use of yellow in the film – Rosemary’s floral dresses, paint colors on walls, and upholstery on pillows and furniture – is also used in the book. It’s meant to show how childish Rosemary is at the beginning of the story. How very naive she is about how far Guy will go to improve his career and how much trust she put into the neighbors who end up being part of a witches coven. Yellow is the color that signifies her loss of innocence when she realizes what is going on and tries to flee only to be locked in her apartment against her will so they can steal her baby.

This book, much like the movie, has a lot to say about consent. About how women are treated as hysterical when they stand up for themselves or try to find safety when they are in danger. Rosemary wakes up the morning after her romp with Satan while she was drugged with scratches on her body. Guy says he had is way with her while she was out and expected this excuse to be something she should just be okay with. Its pretty disturbing and his gaslighting behavior continues. Later he throws a book away that was given to her by a friend who passed away and is part of the conspiracy who tells Rosemary her baby is dead when it isn’t.

In the book, she learns from her mistakes and refuses to reach out for help when she realizes her baby is alive. People will just think she is crazy so she knows she can only help herself. She goes into the neighbor’s apartment to retrieve her baby which she can hear crying only to find that its eyes are yellow. An evil yellow with black slits, like a snake. But what’s a mother to do?

The thing I like better in the book is after Rosemary decides to be a mother to the child, she demands that they give him the name she desires and also requires that the child not constantly be dressed in black. She is so adamant about this that she wins out, but only because Minnie, her female neighbor, overrides her own husband in the process. It takes a woman to stand by another woman for Rosemary to get what she demands.

This story has a lot to say about how women are treated and those tropes are still very prevalant to day. A surprisingly modern experience set in an era when women were housewives and mothers. It also speaks heavily on cult behavior and how perhaps it isn’t the women who speak up who are hysterical in their beliefs.

5 out of 5 stars.